Capping Welfare Spending

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Elphicke]

Absolutely, and a lot of Government policy has been about that. The Work programme is a key part of giving people the tools, education and support to get back into the world of work and understand the rhythm of a working day.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for taking my intervention. The Government are trying to ensure that the whole welfare system is perceived as fair. In a very low-pay constituency such as mine, the vast majority of people believe that the welfare cap is crucial if the system is to be fair and seen to be fair.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Absolutely. The system needs to be fair, and I hope that in his response Minister will address the important issue my hon. Friend raises.

The average pay packet has not increased much in recent years. The recession was serious and the recovery has been long, hard and extremely choppy, so it is right that welfare benefits should not increase faster than pay packets. It is unfair that benefits have risen twice as fast as average earnings since the financial crisis, which is why the Government are right to introduce a 1% uprating limit. My constituents have told me that that is an important signal about fairness and the fact that work is good. The Government are also right to make work pay, with universal credit and by increasing the income tax personal allowance. At the same time, the Government have sought to be fair and protect the most vulnerable—the disabled, the elderly and the incapacitated.

Benefit capping is about not only fairness, but money. We should remember the country’s debt crisis. Savings of £4.4 billion by 2017 are not trivial, so it is small wonder that more than 60% of people have told pollsters that they support the Government’s measures to restore fairness on benefit uprating. The Government have been prepared to make the most difficult decisions—I will not shirk that issue. Capping housing benefit, so that it is most aligned to housing need, has not been easy. It was a difficult decision. People do want to be told that they will have to pay more for their spare room, but that cap is also about fairness, which is why a clear majority of people tell pollsters that they support the difficult decisions that the Government have taken. There are 1.8 million households on the housing waiting list and 249,000 households live in overcrowded social housing, yet 386,000 households in the social sector are under-occupied. It is important that we take measures to restore the balance, so capping housing benefit is right and fair.

I would like to press the Minister slightly. Will he consider extending the principle of tackling the spare room subsidy, so that the social housing provider takes the burden? I am concerned that too many social housing providers think that they can simply pass the buck when it comes to managing their housing stock fairly and appropriately and making fair allocations. The spare room does not affect them, so why should they care? Too often, they are content to do little or nothing about fair housing allocation. The best incentive to get them to clean up their acts would be for social housing providers to take some or all of the burden for their incompetence in the management of housing allocations over such a long time. I hope that the Minister will consider that proposal, because it is right to send a strong message to social housing providers that indolence in housing management is not an excuse.