Universal Credit: Private Rented Sector

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) for securing this debate on a crucial subject. The two words “universal credit” are becoming feared and disliked in equal measure across this country. In my constituency, we are not due to experience the full effect of universal credit until June, yet already it is having an impact on the private rented sector. The problems that my hon. Friend and many others have warned about now threaten to put further pressure on a housing sector that is already in trouble, and to push vulnerable families into rent arrears and homelessness.

Just yesterday I heard from a constituent who has been given notice to quit their private rented accommodation. They are not in arrears and never have been, but their landlord has decided to sell his properties, influenced by fears of universal credit and the difficulties that collecting rent from people who are not yet receiving money from the benefit system will cause him. I hear daily tales of other private landlords either increasingly excluding those on benefits or simply opting to sell up. As we have heard, 87% of landlords asked said that they would not accept tenants on universal credit.

As my hon. Friend said, we already face a housing crisis in this country: there is a shortage of social housing while tens of thousands of properties lie empty. In Edinburgh alone, there are more than 20,000 people on the waiting list for a house. The figures quoted for Eastbourne and across the country show us that the situation will only get worse. In the six months for which I have had the privilege of serving Edinburgh West in this place, I have already taken part in numerous debates in which the Government have been urged to stop universal credit and rethink how it works. I make no apologies for urging them to do so again. It is simply not working in the way intended. Instead of making the system simpler, it is making it less helpful and supportive and increasing the threat of debt and homelessness. As my hon. Friends have said, there were warnings, and now we have the concrete evidence in the form of the mounting rent arrears of which every hon. Member has spoken. Private sector landlords have little or no faith that they will continue to receive payment.

I suggest that it is time to act. It is a problem for which a solution is already in place: default payments. Why can we not simply pause and get the Government to re-examine the issue to allow payments to go directly to landlords to reassure them, and to ensure that our constituents continue to have roofs above their heads?