Oral Answers to Questions

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

What the hon. Lady does not understand is that we inherited a network of half-empty buildings. I am sure she would agree that it makes no sense to fund, for example, two or three jobcentres within a mile of each other in a city centre. Rather than cutting back—the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned bus services—I would like to protect the services that we can possibly protect, and making our network of jobcentres and benefit delivery centres operate more efficiently and effectively seems a very good way of trying to ensure that we protect front-line services.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

20. What estimate he has made of the potential number of tenants who could accrue rent arrears as a result of implementation of his proposals to restrict housing benefit for social tenants in accordance with household size.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

We have made no estimates of the number of tenants who would get into rent arrears as a direct result of implementing our proposal, as it is not possible to predict exactly how people will respond to the change or what choices they might make in response to a potential shortfall.

[Heidi Alexander]

The Minister says he has made no such assessment, but the Housing Futures Network estimates that eight out of 10 tenants will struggle to make up the shortfall in lost benefits as a result of these proposed changes, with a third likely to go into rent arrears. That will increase the level of bad debt of housing providers and is likely to mean less investment in new affordable homes. Is the Minister concerned about that?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for drawing our attention to the Housing Futures Network research. What she did not quote was the fact that a quarter of respondents said that they were likely to downsize, which presumably means making better use of the housing stock, while 29% said that they would be either quite likely or very likely to move into work or increase their hours, which is a positive response. There are real issues about rent arrears; we are working closely with social landlords to assist, but there will be positive impacts from these policies, which also need to be borne in mind.