Housing Benefit

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I make no apologies for saying that as a Member of Parliament, before that as the leader of Camden council, before that as an individual councillor for Holborn ward, and before that as a human being, I suppose, campaigning locally, I have always been obsessed with trying to ensure that the beleaguered ordinary residents of the area be allowed to stay there. However, that does not mean that I believe that spending £20 billion on housing benefit is a sensible use of public funds. Not a penny of that £20 billion goes on building flats or homes, it is just used to subsidise rents that ordinary people cannot afford, and I remind Government Members from both parties that 100 years ago, Winston Churchill rightly said that rent is a preliminary tax on all economic activity. That was true 100 years ago, and it is true now.

In my constituency there is a gross shortage of housing for ordinary people at rents that they can afford.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

rose—

[Frank Dobson]

No, I shall not give way. I do not have time.

When I say ordinary people, I mean nurses, street cleaners, bus drivers, shop assistants, people who clean the hospital, ambulance drivers, kitchen staff, waiters who serve Government Members, butchers, bakers, plumbers, electricians and builders. Those are the ordinary people who I want to be able to stay in my constituency, in decent housing and at rents that they can afford. That is not the case at the moment, and the Government now propose not just to cap housing benefit, but to slash the funding to build decent homes and flats that people can afford.

The Government are cutting housing investment. In Camden, certainly, private rents are very high, and in the south of my constituency they are very, very high. However, the ordinary people living there did not set those extortionate rents; grasping landlords did, and then they gave some of it to fund the Tory party’s election campaigns, election in, election out—[Interruption.] It is no good Conservative Members jeering; they know that the landlords help to fund their party.

Those profiteering landlords have set the rents, yet the Government claim that if they cap housing benefit the landlords will cut the rents. In my area, nine out of 10 private lettings are nothing to do with housing benefit, so if there is to be a reduction in housing benefit for one flat in 10, it is clearly not going to have an impact on the rest of the sector. There is unlikely to be very much impact at all.

Let us look at the cap. All hon. Members who live outside London rightly receive an allowance for a one-bedroom flat so that they can live in London. The going rate, according to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, is £340 for a one-bedroom flat. According to this generous Government, the going rate for a three-bedroom flat if one is on housing benefit is also £340. Well, if it is the going rate for a one-bedroom flat, it cannot be the going rate for a three-bedroom flat, and that just shows how unfair the system is.

All the talk about the unemployed getting housing benefit is significantly misleading, because at least one third of the people on housing benefit in my constituency are in work. They struggle to make ends meet, they send their children to local schools, and they frequently rely on support, both financial and practical, from family and friends. Many were homeless, but then the Liberal Democrat-Tory coalition council in Camden urged them to rent in the private sector. They were told that that would be okay. It did not matter what the rents were, because housing benefit would cope with them—or, as the current Leader of the House of Commons said some years ago, housing benefit would “take the strain”. All those people were told that housing benefit would take the strain, but the Lib Dem-Tory coalition Government are now going to take away the money that would have helped them, and I believe that that is wrong.

Many people from my constituency will be pushed out to outer London where they do not want to be, and among neighbours who do not want them to be there, which does not seem a very good formula for establishing decent communities in outer London. It is also worth bearing in mind that some of those areas already have higher mortgage and landlord repossessions than inner London.

The situation will affect not just people in work, but those out of work. Three such cases were brought to my advice surgery last weekend, all by well-spoken middle-class people who had hit a bad patch. One had lost a well-paid job, another was suffering from a serious illness, and another was experiencing a family breakdown. They all faced being pushed out of their homes, because the housing benefit that helps out middle-class people going through a bad patch is to be taken away from them just to suit the Treasury. Money will be taken away from those in the greatest difficulty.

We have heard of the highland clearances. There are no highlands in my constituency, but what we face is the lowland clearances—a combination of grasping landlords and a malignant Government, as existed at the time of the highland clearances. We do not want those in London, and I hope that we never will have them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) on her clarification. I am very glad that she has made it.

I heard so much that I disagreed with from the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) that I do not quite know where to start. I should probably take the opportunity to point out to Opposition Members, as I always do, that last year, of the £700 billion that the Government spent in total, only £40 billion went on propping up the banks, which is 6%. They can hardly go around blaming the bankers for the £170 billion deficit that they left us.

[Frank Dobson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burley]

No, I want to make some progress.

I wish to take head-on the accusation made by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill that this is all about the cuts. Of course, a lot of the changes that we are making to housing benefit, and others matters that we are debating at the moment, are a result of having to make public spending reductions. It is broadly agreed by Members of all parties that we need to reduce public expenditure to pay off the deficit and start paying off the £1.4 trillion debt.