Oral Answers to Questions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

It is as if the shadow Minister has not noticed the almost £900 of cost of living payments made to pension credit recipients across the country over the last year. I know the Opposition have relied on last week’s Resolution Foundation report to criticise what we are doing, but this is what the report actually says:

“‘Pensioners used to be by far the most likely to be in poverty…now they are the least likely.’ This change in the relationship between old age and low income is one of the most profound social and economic changes this country has seen”.

We achieved that under this Government, not under our failed Labour predecessors.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

11. What steps he is taking through the benefits system to tackle poverty in rural areas.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

We are bearing down on poverty, not least by incentivising work within the benefit system. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we have reduced the universal credit taper, for example, which has led to a record level of payroll employment and near record low unemployment.

[Hywel Williams]

I commissioned a poverty report for the Arfon constituency from the highly respected Bevan Foundation—copies are available online in Welsh and English. One finding is that, of the people receiving both universal credit and housing benefit in Arfon, 35% are paying the bedroom tax, compared with 21% across Wales. This is cushioned to some extent by the Gwynedd local authority’s discretionary help, but will the Minister review the differential negative effects of the bedroom tax between communities, particularly those with a diminished housing stock because of, for example, high levels of holiday homes?

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for referring to that report, which I will look at with interest. Of course, there is no such thing as a bedroom tax, as it is not a tax at all; it is a spare room subsidy. It is there for very good reason: to free up additional space for those who need it. On the housing front, as I said earlier, local housing allowance has been improved such that 1.6 million people on low incomes in the private rented sector will be, on average, £800 a year better off come April.