Housing Benefit

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I am pleased to be able to contribute to the debate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for all that she has done to bring this issue to public attention.

The loophole in the regulations that we are discussing exposes just how poorly thought through the bedroom tax legislation has been from the start, and affords us a timely opportunity to take stock of how the legislation has been working in practice since its introduction last year. Today’s debate has revealed that the policy was, from the start, nothing more than a cash grab from those on the lowest incomes who were already living in the cheapest houses.

In Scotland, 80% of the homes affected by the bedroom tax are the homes of people with recognised disabilities, who already have the least choice about where and how they live. There is a broad political consensus in Scotland that the tax is proving to be unworkable, and that it is only harming disadvantaged tenants but damaging councils and local housing associations, undermining social cohesion in our communities, and harming the social fabric as a whole. Under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998 this area of policy is reserved to Westminster, so we have been stuck with Ministers whom we did not elect, imposing a policy for which we did not vote. Nevertheless, Scottish local authorities, the Scottish Government, and our housing associations and advice bureaux have had to mop up the mess over the last 10 months.

There is now clear evidence that the bedroom tax is costing taxpayers more than it is saving. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has analysed the cost of implementing the policy in relation to its projected savings, and concluded that a policy that was supposed to save about £50 million a year in Scotland is actually costing about £60 million a year to implement. Detailed research undertaken by COSLA with six councils also revealed disturbing trends in the patterns of arrears accruing in the social rented sector. In the first six months of the policy, an additional 31% of tenants affected by the tax were in rent arrears, and many of them had never been in debt before. Squeezing the bedroom tax from people on very low incomes who just cannot afford it is causing huge distress and worry to tenants, including those who are managing to pay, but it also has serious implications for social landlords and for the solvency of housing associations in particular.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case but does she agree that this is about a lack of affordable housing and, until we address that, the things that we are talking about will not get solved?

[Dr Whiteford]

I agree that the lack of affordable housing is a core issue, but there is also a chronic mismatch between the needs of prospective social tenants and the available housing stock. I have made the point many times in the House that, across Scotland, over 60% of tenants need a one-bedroom property, yet only 23% of the housing stock is one-bedroom size. Even if everyone were to be allocated a home of the requisite size, there are just not enough smaller houses to go around.

There has been a lot of talk today about the shortage of housing. The Scottish Government have managed to deliver more social housing than any other Administration in the UK, even on a fixed budget—a diminishing budget. It is a matter of political priority. If we understand there is a housing shortage, we need to fix it. There is no excuse.

Local authorities, housing associations and the Scottish Government have all had to take action to minimise the unwanted side effects of the bedroom tax, not least by topping up the budgets for discretionary housing payments by £20 million in the last year, which is the maximum amount allowed under section 70 of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000, and by this year making available £35 million for discretionary housing payments, which would, in effect, enable councils to mitigate the entire impact of the bedroom tax for everyone affected. However, as I have said, this remains a reserved matter, and the Scottish Government have had to request permission from UK Ministers to increase the DHP budget. As far as I am aware, the Deputy First Minister is still awaiting a reply to her letter of January to Lord Freud making that request, so can I press Ministers today to listen to the Scottish Parliament’s view on this matter—a view supported by four parties, including their own coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats—and impress upon their ministerial colleague in the other place to crack on and signal his consent? Frankly, it is a travesty in the 21st century that a democratically elected Parliament has to ask permission from an unelected peer to spend its own people’s money. I hope that that is one anachronism that we can put right this September.

The money we are having to find to do that in Scotland must be found from budgets for other devolved policy areas, but given the substantial knock-on costs the policy is having for devolved institutions and housing associations, the democratic consensus around the issue and the distress it is causing to disadvantaged people, I do not think standing aside is an option. Although today we are debating a technicality, it is a technicality that exposes deeper flaws in the housing benefit legislation and exposes the warped values and misconceptions that have informed it.

From the start, the bedroom tax was unfair and ill conceived. Now, nearly a year on, it is not only failing to meet its own policy objectives, but creating needless bureaucracy and displacing large costs on to other parts of the public sector. A policy that costs the public purse more than it saves is a bad policy. A policy that harms our most disadvantaged citizens is a bad policy. A policy with big technical loopholes is a bad policy. I urge the Government to do the right thing and abandon the policy today.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Sheila Gilmore. If you could end your speech at five minutes past 3 so the Minister may begin her response then, that will be helpful.