Housing Benefit

Debate between Glenda Jackson and Andrew Bingham

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I am a firm believer—I always have been—that people should be rewarded for hard work. I am also a firm believer that we need housing and other benefits, but that they should be there as safety nets. The willingness of the Labour Government to pay more than £100,000 a year to someone on benefits is not, to me, a safety net. It has to be said that £100,000 is an enormous amount of money, which is sufficient to fund a lifestyle beyond the budget of many hard-working families in my constituency of High Peak. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but that has to be wrong; it cannot be right.

Labour Members claim that this is fair. Do they think it fair that, under current arrangements, someone paying rent below the local housing allowance level will be able to receive the local housing allowance and keep the change? People can make a profit on housing benefit. Does that seem fair? Is that fair to someone working hard to pay their way? Labour Members look askance, but it is true.

[Glenda Jackson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Bingham]

Briefly, yes.

[Glenda Jackson]

In my constituency, private landlords are increasingly reluctant to accept tenants who can pay only through housing benefit. For an increasing number of people, there is a shortfall between what the local rent office deems a property to be worth and what the landlord actually charges. Not one single claimant of housing benefit in my constituency—and they number thousands—has money to take home from the local housing allowance. In many instances, they have to make up the shortfall themselves.

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[Glenda Jackson]

My hon. Friend is wishing for the moon. Government Members are not interested in facts; they discount absolutely everything that emanates from this side of the House.

[Andrew Bingham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Glenda Jackson]

No.

Government Members also discount the briefings that we have all received, from organisations such as Shelter, Crisis, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Citizens Advice and the National Housing Federation, about the real danger and damage that these ill-thought-out plans are going to inflict on some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

We have been here before. We have seen all this before. An earlier submission by Crisis pointed out that it will cost £60 a day for a room in a bed and breakfast. Let us look back to the earlier history of bed and breakfasts. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) referred to the history of 1945; I was somewhat surprised that he did not take us back to the much more recent history of what happened to people in this country under the first Thatcherite regime. The hon. Gentleman was concerned about children then—