Finance Bill

Debate between Gavin Shuker and David Lammy

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman knows that this is robbing Peter to pay Paul—I am sure that his mother said that to him. One cannot give to people on the one hand and take a damn sight more in VAT on the other, and he knows it. I am talking about people such as the Uddin family, who live on the Broadwater Farm estate in my constituency. I am grateful to the TreeHouse charity for asking me to spend a Friday afternoon with a family in my constituency, dealing with the issue of autism. Because of the context of this Budget and the Finance Bill that flows from it, I was, of course, examining the wider issues that surround this family.

It was privilege to go to the Broadwater Farm estate, which I have known all my life, as I grew up and spent many years there. It was a privilege to go up the stairwell to the 15th floor to spend time with the Uddin family. In that two-bedroom flat was Mr Uddin and his wife, a family of five children and a niece. There were eight of them in this flat surviving on income support of £322 a week and struggling with a five-year-old autistic child. I was the bearer of bad news, because I had to explain to them that Mr Uddin, who cannot work as a result of an injury at work—he was a chef in an Indian restaurant and he had a serious back injury—would face a new medical test in order to get the disability living allowance that made up that £322. I had to explain to them that once again—I recalled this from my own background—their child benefit would be frozen. I had to explain to them that the price of living would go up because extra VAT would be whacked on their household goods and items such as school uniforms. I had to explain to them that the toddler element of the child tax credit and the element for their new five-week-old baby had been taken away. That was worth £1,000 to many families across the country. The Uddin family would be experiencing huge hardship as a consequence of this Budget.

It gets worse. What the Uddin family would dearly love of course is better housing. The prospect of better housing in London as a consequence of this Budget is dark indeed. That brings me on to the real test of what is progressive and what is fair. The cap on housing benefit will have the most pernicious effect in this city. Rents in London boroughs such as Islington, Camden and Westminster can run into the many hundreds of pounds, so there will inevitably be an exodus from zones 1 and 2 to zone 3. My constituency already has 20,000 on the housing list, more than 3,000 in temporary accommodation and, as I speak, more than 800 in emergency accommodation. It will become even more crowded. There will be no prospect of the Uddins moving anywhere, particularly when, as we would expect, Conservative local authorities in London continue to refuse to build. Guess what? Westminster council built just 200 affordable homes in the last year for which there are records. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea built just 100; Richmond built 127; Wandsworth just over 300. That is the record on affordable housing. It is very bleak indeed. The Mayor has made not one representation on the housing consequences of this Budget.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that beyond metropolitan areas such as London the Government’s decision to take away the regional spatial strategies that allowed councils to work together to deliver affordable housing will have a profound effect on the way in which we manage the problem of affordable housing?