Housing Benefit

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sandra Osborne]

I am going on to refer to that.

In East Ayrshire council, 2,300 tenants are caught by the bedroom tax, and more than 1,400 are already in arrears as a result—that is 62%—and the figure grows every month. The council estimates that it will have £500,000 of arrears by the end of the financial year as a result. In Scotland, as my hon. Friends have said, we have the added dimension of an SNP Government on pause, while they throw everything into their referendum campaign.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sandra Osborne]

I do not have time, sorry.

Even scrapping the bedroom tax is relegated to a “things to do after independence” file—a very fat file indeed. The SNP boasts that it will abolish the bedroom tax after independence. People should not hold their breath waiting for that day to come, but nor should they have to wait for a Labour Government to scrap the tax. The Government should have the decency to scrap it now, and they would do so if they had an ounce of decency.

We need action here and now, and if the coalition Government are not prepared to act others must do so. That is why Labour has introduced a Bill in the Scottish Parliament to ensure that any social tenant who is genuinely unable to pay the bedroom tax will not be evicted. The Church of Scotland said in support of the Bill:

“Whilst we recognise that local authority budgets are being continually squeezed, forcing those who cannot afford these additional payments to carry the burden for this flawed policy is not fair.”

It is for times like these that the Scottish Parliament was created. The bedroom tax is a perfect example of just how the Scottish Parliament could act to make a real difference to tenants across Scotland, when the UK Government refuses to listen, but that would mean making devolution work for vulnerable Scottish families, and the SNP cannot allow that to happen. When it comes to the bedroom tax, the SNP, like the Tories, has its own agenda and priorities. This Government see nothing wrong with the bedroom tax, as we have heard. In fact, some Government Members do not even think that it exists. The SNP see it as an opportunity for building resentment. Only Labour sees it for what it is—a social injustice which must be scrapped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I have a very simple message for the Government in today’s debate. Six months after its introduction, their bedroom tax is driving up rent arrears across Scotland; it has caused immeasurable distress to low-income families; and it has created financial problems for local authorities and housing associations. What it has manifestly not done is meet its objectives: it has not tackled overcrowding; it has not delivered better use of housing stock; and it has not saved taxpayers any money at all. In Scotland, 82,500 households are affected by this policy, and 80% of them are the home of a disabled adult.

The Government seem to think that it is okay to take money out of the pockets of some of the most disadvantaged people in our communities—but it is not okay. It symbolises just how out of touch the Government are with the values of decent people in Scotland and elsewhere who recognise that this is a profoundly unfair and iniquitous measure.

Most social housing tenants have a lot less choice about where they live than the rest of us, and they are already living in the cheapest housing available to them. Across Scotland, 60% of tenants need a one-bedroom house, but only 27% of the social housing stock is one-bedroom accommodation, so there is a fundamental structural mismatch that cannot be fixed by crude social engineering. There are simply not enough smaller houses to go round, and I do not believe that it is right to punish the poorest tenants for the structural problems of our housing stock supply.

We have seen significant hikes in arrears over the past six months. According to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, all but one of Scotland’s local authorities have reported increases in arrears that are attributable to the introduction of the bedroom tax, yet relatively few tenants have moved house. Given that eight out of 10 households are affected by disability, that really should not surprise us, because people do not want to move away from their family and their support networks. More than that, they do not want to leave their home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) eloquently put it.

We have heard that the Government’s idea of fairness is to bring housing benefit in line with the local housing allowance available to private sector tenants. I put it to the Government that that is a flawed premise and a false comparison. Social housing is allocated not on a market basis, but is prioritised on the basis of need. Most social landlords operate systems that take account of a range of factors when allocating tenancies, so that the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and low-paid people in our society have a stable place to live. I understand that the Government want to cut the housing benefit bill, but squeezing half a billion pounds out of disabled tenants is the wrong way to achieve that.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend, as usual, is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that Scotland has been hit particularly hard because of the sheer quantity of socially rented housing that we have in Scotland?

[Dr Whiteford]

That is true, and we also have a disproportionate number of disabled people in social housing. That suggests to me that social housing is going to the people who need it. Those are the people who find it hardest to access the labour market.

When we look closely at the increase in the housing benefit bill over the past decade, we see that 31% of it—almost a third of the whole UK increase—is attributable to the city of London alone. By contrast, in Scotland, the total housing benefit bill has increased by 22% in inflation-adjusted terms over the past 10 years, while in the social rented sector, the increase has been only 6%. A 6% increase in 10 years is hardly out of control, but we know that rents in London are out of control. Why should disabled tenants in Scotland pay for a rental system in the private sector here that is completely out of control and eye-watering for anybody who has to rent a home?

To illustrate the point, although Scotland and London are estimated to have about the same number of people affected by the bedroom tax—around 80,000 each—this year Scotland has received only £15.25 million in funding for discretionary housing payments. That includes the extra rural funding. I am glad that the Scottish Government have topped that up to the very peak of their allowance under the current terms of the Scotland Act 1998, by putting in £20 million this year and next year to mitigate some of the worst impacts; but fundamentally, we need to scrap the policy.

People in Scotland did not vote for the bedroom tax. It is a nasty policy from a nasty party that they did not elect. It has been propped up by Liberals, who should know better. The Scottish Government have made it clear that, with independence, the bedroom tax would be confined to history. I commend them not just for their efforts to mitigate this policy, but for the other aspects of welfare reform—the protection that they have given to my constituents and others from the effects of council tax benefit increases and the welfare fund that people can access to deal with the impact of the loss of crisis loans.

I urge the Government this evening to admit that they got it wrong, accept that this policy is not working and is not doing what they intended and do the decent thing by repealing this toxic piece of legislation.