Cost of Living
Debate between Damian Collins and Sheila Gilmore
Sheila Gilmore
As recently as February 2009, about 1 million private rented tenants claimed housing benefit. By October 2012, that number had risen to 1.7 million. Far more people in the sector need to claim housing benefit, largely because they are on lower wages or have lost working hours because they are on poor contracts.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady believe that mass immigration has contributed to the massive increase in demand for social rents and housing benefit?
Sheila Gilmore
No, I do not believe that. In fact, the number of recent immigrants who are housed by councils and housing associations is very small. The problem is the lack of building of affordable housing.
Government policy is about to stoke that problem further. They have decided to say that affordable housing is housing built at 80% of market value. They can therefore say, “We have replaced housing. We have built affordable housing.” However, that will stoke the problem further, because more people in that form of housing will have to claim benefit to afford it. The policy does not make sense. In 10 years’ time or even five years’ time, if that continues—hopefully it will not continue, because there will be a change of Government—people will turn around and say, “Why did the Government do that? Why did they yet again put all the onus on revenue and give us an even bigger benefit bill?”
As it turns out, the problem is happening not just in England. There is also a cut in the amount going for affordable housing in Scotland. We are building far more mid-rent housing, as it is called in Scotland. It is about 80% of market value. That is the only way in which housing is being built. I do not see any reason for not having some mid-market rented housing as a supplement to what is there already, but when it becomes a substitute for truly affordable housing, we are storing up problems with the balance of what we are spending.
Much has been made by this Government and the previous Government about the importance of making work pay. The cost of housing is one of the essential determinants of whether work pays or not. People get trapped by the lack of cheap, affordable housing. As my city is so short of housing, we introduced a scheme which solved the crisis for some people. I recently met a constituent who had separated from her husband two years ago. She had two children and no home to go to, so she applied to the council as homeless. She was in a crisis—the relationship had been violent—so she accepted a property under a private sector leasing scheme, in which the council leases properties from the private sector. It was a relief to her at the time, because she had a safe home for herself and her daughters. She was not working at the time; her life was in such a crisis that she had had to give up her job as well as her home, so she was receiving housing benefit to pay the very high rent.
Two years on, my constituent is ready and anxious to get on with her life. She wants to get a job, but she is stuck with a rent that is more than double the rent of a council or housing association house. She has been advised that if she got a job she would still get some housing benefit to help pay the rent, but she would still have to pay as much rent—from a fairly average wage—as she would have to pay on a council property. Everybody would lose out. My constituent would lose out, because it might not be worth her while to get a job, and taxpayers would lose out because they would still have to pay half the rent for her to live in a property that she does not now particularly need or want to live in.
We have to solve this problem and we have to do so quickly. The best way is to start investing directly in the building of affordable housing. If we do not do that, we will never be able to tackle the housing benefit bill. If that had been in the Queen’s Speech, we could have made some real progress for many people. My constituent is not alone, she is just a recent example of how people can get stuck. In fact, that is her word—she is stuck and she would have welcomed some progress from the Government in the Queen’s Speech.
The Economy
Debate between Damian Collins and Sheila Gilmore(12 years, 12 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Collins
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) is speaking from a sedentary position. I shall come to her remarks, which are pertinent to my constituency, particularly her comments on the habitats regulations and how they impact on the local economy.
Opposition Members have put to one side the seriousness of the debt situation. The other issue that has not been spoken about at all—certainly not by the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) or by the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls)—is the underlying competitiveness of the economy. When we look at the debt situation and the world economic crisis, which are grave and severe, we should also consider that our economy may not be as fit and competitive and as able to grow the sort of jobs that we will need in the future as we thought it was.
Statistics showing how this country has fallen behind in the competitiveness league tables published by the World Economic Forum are often brushed aside. From being seventh in 1997 when the Conservative party left office, we fell to 13th last year and are 10th now. That means that in 1997 we had the most competitive economy in the European Union. We find ourselves today behind Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark on competitiveness.
On the broader question of infrastructure, which is so important to the competitiveness of our economy, we find that Britain lies in 28th position, according to the latest figures, not rubbing shoulders with France, which is third, or Germany, which is 10th, but instead between Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic.
Sheila Gilmore
I am fascinated by the comparisons that have been given. Virtually all of the first group of countries that the hon. Gentleman mentioned have a very large public sector and a very comprehensive welfare system. It would appear that they have a competitive economy as well. Perhaps we should be looking more to the Scandinavian model.
Damian Collins
The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that we are also behind Singapore, the United States and Japan, so there are more countries ahead of us than there used to be, and more than there should be. When we consider trying to create jobs in the economy, Opposition Members seem wilfully to ignore the fact that our competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world matters. To them, competitiveness is not worth talking about and is irrelevant to creating jobs. If we are serious about doing what President Clinton has called getting back in the future business—his criticism of the US economy can be applied to the UK economy over the past 10 to 15 years—we must recognise that we have not invested as we should have done to make our economy as competitive as it should be.