Under-Occupancy Penalty

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I could not agree more.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a fantastic speech on this important issue. The Government admitted last week that they had wildly exaggerated the cost savings involved in the bedroom tax. Does that not show us what is really behind the policy? It is not about saving money; it is about a vicious attack on vulnerable people—400,000 out of 600,000 of them are disabled—who cannot speak up for themselves.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who has stolen some of my closing comments.

I was interested to hear that the Department for Work and Pensions has commissioned an independent review of the bedroom tax to analyse the impact on vulnerable individuals, foster carers and those caring for disabled children. However, why was the impact assessment not completed before the introduction of the tax? That is yet another example of ideology affecting policy and of this Government’s “let’s do away with facts and research” approach.

I also question why the policy’s impact on the housing market was not foreseen. The National Audit Office reported that the Government’s headline savings figure did not take into account the full range of impacts that the bedroom tax would have. Now that we have had time to assess the policy’s impact on rent arrears, we know that the NAO was correct. I hope that the Minister will say what discussions his Department has had with the Department for Work and Pensions about the effect of the policy on housing supply and why he believes the impact assessment falls so far short of reality.

Whatever the Government’s excuses, for my constituents in South Shields and thousands of others across the country, they will be scant consolation. Although an average of £12 a week may not seem like much to this Government, it is a lot of money to the rest of us who are paying the price. My constituents need a Government who listen to their concerns and who commit to overturning this cruel tax and addressing our housing shortage. What they need is a Labour Government.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Many people would find the concept of taking in a lodger extremely difficult, particularly given the nature of many properties. I visited a constituent whose kitchen was off the living room, and whose bedrooms were not particularly big. When someone has a lodger, they are sharing a house. They are not taking in a lodger who has a self-contained annexe of the house; they are taking someone into the bosom of their household. The 60-year-old woman in question felt that that was not somewhere she needed to be in her life.

[Ian Lavery]

I am totally perplexed by the Government’s advice to take in a lodger, which was given from day one of the bedroom tax. Some 400,000 of the 600,000 people affected by the bedroom tax are disabled. Would disabled people want to bring in a stranger, just so they could afford to pay the rent?

[Sheila Gilmore]

The reality is that people are not taking on lodgers. The rhetoric on lodgers has quietened down, presumably because the impracticality of that idea has revealed itself. If the measure was about making better use of property, it was not the best way of going about that. It would be far better to encourage people to move in some circumstances, but that is neither a quick nor an easy process. It has to be planned for, and that comes back to looking at the nature of the local housing market and how those moves can be dealt with.

Older tenants in larger homes might want to downsize—if they are over retirement age, they will not be affected by the bedroom tax—but the bedroom tax will not whip them into wanting to move. Over the years, I have had many constituents say to me, “Yes, I would move. The stairs are getting too much for me. The garden is getting too much for me”, but they want control over where they go, and want to keep some of the things they like about their present home. Often that means the area, and that does not necessarily only go for those who live in what is perceived as a “good area”. Their area is where they have their social circle, and their family might not be too far away. There will be many reciprocal family arrangements, whether that is daughters helping mothers, or mothers helping their grown-up children with child care and picking kids up from school. All those sorts of things cannot be done if they are moved to the other end of town. Okay, they are fussy, but they are fussy because they want the move to be one that will last them the rest of their lives. They do not want to rush into something that is unsuitable.

All authorities might want to build new build housing that is geared to older people. If authorities do their homework properly, they will know in advance that that will release larger houses. The homework, however, has to be done, and investment is needed. If the investment is not there, it becomes very difficult. New build numbers are dropping, not only in England and Wales, which the Minister is concerned with, but in Scotland, too. In the whole of Scotland, new starts have dropped from the high point in 2007-08 of 6,214 to just 2,781 in 2012-13. That is a substantial drop. We want to have new build available to help people move around, but it is just not there.

There are many things that we should be looking at. We should be considering building new homes. Councils might want to consider—I have suggested this to my local council—buying some properties at comparable prices. They should not pay more for a property than it would cost to build, but that would help deal with some of the biggest chronic housing shortages. When homeless families, even those with children, are waiting in temporary accommodation for up to a year to get anything, we have a crisis, not just a slight shortage.

There is a further win-win in all this, which perhaps brings us back to the stated purpose of the bedroom tax. If more affordable housing is built, we can reduce the total housing benefit spend. It is true that the spend has gone up in recent years—the Government are not wrong to point that out—but their predictions and forecasts for the next few years are that the spend will continue to rise until at least 2016-17, when it will reach £23.38 billion.

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[Kris Hopkins]

No, I will not give way. In fact, I will give way in a second or two, but not just at the moment.

I reiterate that we recognise that this is about reducing the burden on the Government and the amount of debt that we have in place. It is important that we do that. We cannot continue to subsidise a million spare rooms. It is important that people out there—the taxpayers out there—understand that everybody is absolutely making a contribution to this process.

I feel extremely uncomfortable that people are turning around and saying that this is an uncaring and—[Interruption.] What I can say is that I know my commitment to addressing the number of houses that we have out there and to ensuring people out there have access to affordable housing.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister is saying that the Government are not uncaring. If they are attacking 400,000 disabled people, by reducing their benefit when they have nowhere else to go, how is that caring?

[Kris Hopkins]

In any transition from one state to another, we need to take responsibility to ensure that there are sufficient resources to make that transition happen. That is why, despite the difficult financial circumstances that we find ourselves in, we have invested some £405 million, including £25 million of discretionary payments to disabled people, to make that transition right.

With the process that we have gone through, what is important is that we understand the issues involved—I particularly want to understand the issues about arrears—and make sure that we are building the supply of houses and continuing to grow it. When the opportunity comes to understand further, when the interim report is published in April next year, I hope that we will be able to address many of the issues that Members have raised in Westminster Hall today.