Affordable Homes Bill

David Anderson Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

I am certainly not going to give way to the hon. Lady again.

I can entirely understand the rationale for advancing the regulations: to apply the regulations to the social rented sector that previously applied only to the private rented sector. As a rationale, that is entirely understandable. The Government certainly had an opportunity to see how those regulations would bed in. The purpose of the Bill is to reflect on the results of interim assessments of how the new regulations have fared since their implementation on 1 April last year.

We have now had long enough to be clear about how the regulations have an impact. Therefore, it is clear that if we are to ensure that private and social tenants are treated equally, yet the vulnerable are properly protected, we have as a result of the interim evaluation commissioned by the Government evidence of how the policy has fared. I propose, therefore, that the rules be changed so that existing tenants are not penalised when they cannot move into smaller accommodation because it is not available in their locality, or if they have a serious medical reason for requiring an additional room.

The findings, which have been widely reported, studied and understood, show that, certainly in the first six months of the implementation of the regulations, only 4.5% of affected claimants were reported to have downsized to a smaller social sector property. The researchers found little evidence of claimants finding work, increasing their pay or taking in a lodger, as the Government anticipated when they introduced the regulations. That needs to be taken into account as well. Tenants affected were making cuts and incurring debts, with 57% of them reporting cutting back on what they deemed to be household essentials.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the interim evaluation proved everybody right in what they said about how exactly the regulations would work out? The only people who were wrong were the Government and the Liberal Democrats who supported them.

[Andrew George]

I urge the hon. Gentleman to study the voting record. The Bill proposes moderate and reasonable measures that should receive the support of all Members from all parties because they are based on the evidence. Perhaps some people had remarkable foresight about how the regulations would fare, as the hon. Gentleman suggests he had, and we can look at Members’ voting record. Labour introduced similar regulations concerning a bedroom tax in the private rented sector. We have to reflect on the evidence and consider the consequences, and the Bill is simply a moderate and reasonable measure introducing new regulations based on that evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

We are supposedly here today because of the impact of the interim evaluation reports. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) who proposed the Bill, there is lots of evidence to suggest that we would end up exactly where we have. Hon. Members need not take it from people like me, who are completely opposed to the proposal on ideological grounds; they can take it from people such as the Chartered Institute of Housing, which said in 2011:

“Tens of thousands of households will be hit hard in the pocket or even be completely priced out of the communities where they are currently living and working. And all this is without consideration of the overall effect these changes will have when combined with significant cuts and changes to funding”.

It went on to say what we could expect: movement of low-income tenants from more expensive rental market areas to cheaper ones; households struggling to access private rented accommodation; increased hardship; a concentration of tenants in receipt of LHA in cheaper, poorer-quality private rented housing; and greater demand on homelessness and housing services.

That was said in April 2011. In February 2012, a study by Cambridge university looked at four specific areas and reached these conclusions a year before the Bill became an Act. The study said that in Sunderland, for example, moving people on the scale suggested by the Government would take eight years—it would take that long to get all the one-bedroom houses re-let. It continued:

“Evidence…from groups of local residents and Housing Officers in these…case studies suggests that many households will be pushed into severe financial difficulties by the cuts.”

I am not sure how many of the colleagues of the hon. Member for St Ives who were listening to that were taken in by it. Perhaps they were taken in by the DWP’s own impact assessment of February 2011. It asked whether there would be an impact on health and well-being—no; will there be an impact on human rights—no. If that is what they believe, this report has clearly proved them wrong.

For months and years we have been lectured by the Deputy Prime Minister—he has stood at the Dispatch Box to defend this policy—who said that there were 1.8 million spare bedrooms in this country. It is as if he was talking like someone looking after racing pigeons. Pigeons are put in what are called “duckets” in my part of the world; that is where the pigeons go. There we have it—1.8 million bedrooms, let’s stick people in there. Is that really happening in this country? If that is not social cleansing, I do not know what is. We are treating as second-class citizens people who have lived a long time in their communities and they might have lived in the same house in the same area for 40 or 50 years. These are people in stable communities who have a sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of security.

It was said earlier that the Englishman’s home is his castle. Most of these people will not be living in castles, but the same principle applies to them: they should be allowed to live in security in their own homes where they have lived for years. We all know what this is about: it is not about housing issues; it is about the failure of capitalism and who pays for the failed banking system. We know, too, who is not affected. It is not the fiddlers who fixed the LIBOR rate or the spivs selling mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them. It is the landlords who are the real gainers from housing benefit for decades, under both Governments, as they have been able to put up rents to whatever level they can get away with. When it is suggested that perhaps the one way to deal with this and keep the costs down is to apply rent controls, everyone waves their hands in the air to say, “Oh, no, we cannot interfere with the market.” Why not? It is the market that has got people into this situation in the first place, and the people who pay are the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the disabled and the dispossessed—the people without a voice. We in the House should obey that voice. We are trying to give them a little voice today, and some people are whispering when they should have been shouting while we Opposition Members have tried to help over the past few years, but the Government have ignored not just the voice of politicians, but the voice of people such as Citizens Advice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) intervened to try to explain the situation from her personal experience over many years of working in the real world with the people affected, but she was brushed aside. The Government have ignored people such as my hon. Friend, ignored the professionals who work in housing offices, ignored people working at the front line, people in local councils and in the trade unions who represent the workers, the Churches, the chartered institutes and especially the people who are living in and are affected by this situation. Some Members have ignored all those people; we are now trying to redeem the situation.

Is this debate really about putting things right? I would like to think it was, but the cynic inside me says that it is much more about some people trying to survive the next general election, or it might be about some people trying to write the headline for their next newsletter or about trying to rewrite history in the hope that people will forget what has happened here over the last four years. I shall support the Bill and anything we can do to alleviate the suffering that some people are going through, but I will not do that to give any succour to people who should have known better and did know better, but ignored the reality four and five years ago when they pushed these measures through this House.