Welfare Reform Bill

Guto Bebb Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I am going to be brief.

On the insurance principle, those on the Treasury Bench prayed in aid the public being behind them on the measure. Indeed, the public are behind them on that, but the public are against them on the first group of amendments, which we pushed through. Obviously, the Treasury gave a total that the Department for Work and Pensions had to save from the benefits bill. The truth is that we will never get past the stage of picking on weaker people until we are prepared also to look at stronger people. Why is it that, somehow, the benefits of people in my position—those who are part of the baby boom who have done really well out of this country over the years—are never looked at? Why are we frightened to look at the concessions that, for example, people over retirement age receive as universal benefits?

If we are not to go down this track again—the biggest growth in the budget over the past 20 years is in the transfer payments that we are, in effect, discussing today—we must be a little braver and much more open about those areas that we think should be questioned, rather than having a diet of the sort that has been served up to us today.

On the £26,000 a year cap, are there not lessons for Members on both sides of the House to learn? One is that the Government’s proposals are unbelievably crude. I hope that they will adopt our proposals before they go much further in this reform programme. To my own side, I say that I do not want people to think that it is only out in the sticks that people think £26,000 is a high cap. People in London who work think £26 k is high.

We should not make policy because odd people have talked to us in the street, but yesterday, a couple of blocks from here in Strutton Ground, a window cleaner said to me, “Frank, I start at 4 o’clock in the morning. I wish I could get a guaranteed £26,000 for my efforts.” There are lessons for both those on the Treasury Bench and the Opposition.

My final point has already been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who probably knew that I was going to make it and so has disappeared. We have had a nationwide housing benefit for more years than I can remember, and one lesson I have drawn is that landlords are very clever at turning whatever we think of as a cap into a floor. Obviously we want to meet people’s rents where possible, although they do not have a right in the long run to live somewhere irrespective of what the rent is, but can we run a housing benefit system while having a free market in rents? My suggestion, drawn from the decades I have been in this House, is that the two are incompatible if we are trying to protect taxpayers.

I hope that those three points have been useful. Given that in a year’s time those on the Treasury Bench will want some sympathy from us when they are operating these measures, it might be rather gracious if they looked more favourably on the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), which would make their reforms better rather than worse.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who always provides the House with a thoughtful contribution. It is important to state that the number of newly elected Government Members shows that we were elected on a promise to get to grips with the welfare state. I represent a constituency where the average wage is very low, yet the jobs created there over the past few years have been taken predominantly by hard-working people from eastern Europe. I think that there is something completely wrong with the system if I can meet people on the streets in Llandudno and Llanddulas who tell me that they are better off not taking employment. There is a passion for these changes on the Government Benches, a passion for change that will allow people to do the right thing with their lives and take a job.

I am intrigued and disappointed to see that not a single Labour Member from Wales is in the Chamber to discuss this issue, and I think that I know why. It is because time and again Government Members have asked the shadow Secretary of State to tell us whether his proposed regional cap is for an increase in London, with no change in the rest of the country, or for a reduction in other parts of the country. I do not know a single Labour Assembly Member, councillor or MP who has advocated a lower cap in Wales than in the rest of the country, so it is pretty clear to me that the concept of a regional variation is based on increases in expensive parts of the country but no reductions elsewhere. The Labour party has provided no financial information on its proposal.

I am all in favour of debate on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) made the point extremely well that there is an argument to be had about the regional variation in pay and benefits, but it is completely unacceptable for the Opposition to turn up with a proposal that is uncosted, untested and, in my view, intended to get the Labour party off the hook rather than contribute to any change. I do not consider myself to be a cynic on this matter, but I wonder why, when the Chancellor highlighted in the autumn statement the possibility of looking at regional pay, the Labour party attacked the proposal, yet it is now looking at proposals for a regional cap, as logically a regional benefit system must follow. I can only conclude that the difference is that benefit recipients are not union members, but public sector workers are.

[Mr Byrne]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman felt the need to add that rejoinder. There is already a very localised dimension to the benefits system: housing benefit. We have had a localised housing benefits system for about 70 years, and that is why the amendment states that, if we are to have a different solution for London, compared with the rest of the country, it is housing benefit differences that should be taken into account if an independent commission is appointed to set the cap levels. We already have that in place in this country.

[Guto Bebb]

That is an interesting comment. The right hon. Gentleman almost implies that there are no differences between housing costs in other parts of the country. In Wales there are certainly huge differences, for example between Cardiff and north Wales. In my constituency, there has been growth in the population of young people in villages such as Penmaenmawr and Penmachno, and it has been driven by young people who are working but cannot afford to live in the most prosperous areas. They have moved into areas where it is cheaper to buy because that is what they can afford. Why are people who do work and do take responsibility expected to commute to own a house, while that is not the case for somebody who is in receipt of housing benefit? That is another challenge to which we need to respond.

[Mr McCann]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question? Does he not get the fact that people who work are also in receipt of housing benefit? Instead, he is trying to put everybody into the same hole of being workshy and wanting to claim benefits?

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[Guto Bebb]

I reiterate the point that my Front Benchers have made: there are not many people in my constituency earning £35,000 a year before tax who are in receipt of housing benefit. That is the crucial difference. The average wage in my constituency is £23,000.

People say, “Are we in touch with the general public?” When I was appointed to the Bill Committee on this proposal, I held three public meetings in my constituency, and one message came through loud and clear: “Why on earth are you going to put in a cap of £26,000?” I think that the cap can be justified, because the Government are taking into account the needs of people throughout the country, not just those in my constituency and those in a low-wage economy such as Wales—a low-wage economy, dare I say it, that has suffered badly from continued Labour party rule for the past 80 years.

The big issue is that we are bringing forward a proposal. If the Opposition were serious, they would also bring forward costed proposals, but we do not have that. We have platitudes and excuses to try for tactical purposes to defend the party position. Ultimately, in this measure, we are proposing a benefits cap, trying to ensure that people see that work does pay and protecting the disabled and people who are in work, and this proposal, in the absence of anything else from the Opposition, is a proposal that we should support.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

May I just make it clear that I oppose a benefit cap in principle? This policy has been borne out of prejudice and political expediency, rather than reason. In every recession there are scapegoats, and it is usually the poor, who become a political football for political game-playing and advantage. I am not morally willing to involve myself in that debasing political game.

We all have to bring our own experiences of our constituents to this debate, which has exposed differences in their lifestyles, and at times it has been apparent that we do live in different worlds. I do not begrudge Members and their constituents who are in good, well-paid employment, a secure home that they can afford and a decent environment, but that is not the experience of many of my constituents, or of many constituents throughout the country.

I have lived in my constituency for about 35 years, and I live in statistically the most deprived ward in the borough. The vast majority of people whom I see around me desperately want to do what is needed to ensure that their families have a good quality of life. They pay back into the community in many ways, they work long hours often in insecure employment and their pay, in many instances, is low and often below the London living wage.

The risk is unemployment, which over recent years in my constituency has increased by 52%, and over the past year by 7%, so there will be times when many of my constituents will not be able to find work. They struggle, above all else, just to provide a decent roof over their family’s heads, and that is because we face the worst housing crisis since the second world war. Housing supply has not kept up with housing demand, council houses that were sold off in the 1980s and ’90s have not been replaced by successive Governments, and there has been an expansion in buy-to-let, higher-rent-charging landlords, who provide many of my constituents with squalid housing conditions and overcrowding—Rachmanite landlords, who are building up lucrative property empires.

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[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend and I have spoken about these matters and I understand the very individual problems that his constituency faces. It is because of those very individual situations that we have put in place significant support so that local authorities can consider different ways to support families living in rural areas some distance from other communities and make sure that they are not dislocated from their support networks.

[Guto Bebb]

This issue has been of real concern to me. In a recent letter that I received, Community Housing Wales argued that more than 40,000 individual tenants in Wales would be affected by the issue of under-occupancy. What it failed to say is that, according to Welsh Assembly statistics, more than 50,000 tenants in Wales are over-occupying. There is a need for social housing providers to look creatively at how they move tenants within housing stock.

[Maria Miller]

It is important that that part of the debate is recognised by the House. For every family in a situation of under-occupying, many have considerable problems with over-occupation.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) talked about her real concern for some of her constituents. I remind her, although she will know this already, that the measures that we are talking about are for working-age people only—not for pensioners. I encourage all hon. Members to ensure that the tone of our debate is based on fact and not fictional evidence.