Housing Benefit

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very good point and he is right to say that moving house is one of the most stressful things in life.

In my constituency, a disabled lady who lived in a three-bedroom property had to sleep in the lounge and was not able to get upstairs. An appropriate home was found for her with one bedroom on the ground floor and she is very happy. Her old house is now filled by a young family with two children and one on the way. Moving house is very stressful, but sometimes it is the right thing to do.

The debate is a rare example of when I can use Karl Marx as a policy template. We can consider the social housing market using the phrase:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

That is to say, what people can afford is what they need. It is a simple enough concept to support low-income families but, in reality, housing policy has moved far away from it.

First, let us consider the ability to pay. Housing benefit payments almost doubled from £11.2 billion to £23 billion under the previous Government. That is a cost of £900 per household per year. If hon. Members ask my constituents whether paying £900 per year to pay for other people’s rent on top of their own is reasonable, they will get a short response. In fact, if the Government had not taken action—this Government are prepared to take the tough decisions when Opposition Members are intent on driving Britain to economic ruin—the cost of social housing would have risen to £25 billion in the next financial year.

Secondly, let us consider the need element. As I have set out, I understand the importance of social housing and why the country needs it. Let me be clear that the right type of housing should be available to those who need it. A quarter of a million families are in overcrowded accommodation, and 2 million households are on social housing waiting lists. In part, that is because of the lowest housing growth since the 1920s, and that was under a Labour leadership. Some who do not need social housing insist on remaining, blocking families who have urgent need.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman gave the House some statistics, but will he concede that, unfortunately, many of the vacant properties he describes are in the wrong places for the people who need them?

[Graham Evans]

There is an element of that in various communities. In my area, people like to live within their own communities. I accept that. The problem is not straightforward, but it is not insurmountable either. People can swap homes within local communities, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is a problem. The problem is not insurmountable for good local housing trusts or local authorities. It might not happen overnight, but with a little bit of creative thinking, moves can be accommodated—people can downsize and upsize.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend makes an obvious and clear point that illustrates one of the deeply unfair and cruel impacts of the policy.

The policy runs against basic human nature when teenage children are told that they cannot expect to have a bedroom of their own, particularly at a time when those in charge of education are emphasising the importance of children having a bedroom in which to do their homework, so that they can do well at school.

[Ian Mearns]

I have seen an estimate that 375,000 children could be affected by the bedroom tax. Is it the Government’s deliberate policy that up to 375,000 children might have to move school because of moving house as a result of the bedroom tax, so disrupting their hard-earned education?

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend, along with many other colleagues, has forcefully made the point about the destructive impact on communities and the impact on people who are unfairly forced to move because of the bedroom tax and other measures.

I have talked about the cruelty of the policy. I shall now show that it is unsound and in some respects based on a fraudulent premise. That premise is that the bedroom tax is about making better use of the social housing stock. This is simply wrong when the supply of smaller lettings available to those adversely impacted is hopelessly inadequate. It is wrong when, according to the Local Government Association, less than a quarter of those hit by the tax have the option of mitigating it by moving into smaller accommodation. It is clearly wrong when the largest single group of people known to be under-occupying social housing—notably those who are over retirement age—are exempt from the tax.

I can understand why, politically, the Government do not wish to be seen to be penalising elderly people, but they cannot on the one hand claim that these measures are about achieving better use of the social housing stock and then entirely ignore the largest group of people known to under-occupy accommodation. Recently visiting a 91-year-old pensioner living in a four-bedroom property brought that home very clearly to me. The council is giving priority for a move locally not to people like her, although that would be logical, but to people who are hit by the benefit cut of the bedroom tax, because it is only right that those people should be given priority, to protect them from the tax. We thus get these absurd and perverse consequences where the policy works against the very objective that it is supposed to achieve.

We have heard about the other perverse consequence—the extent to which the policy is leading not to better use of the housing stock, but to increased vacancies among larger properties in areas where people simply cannot afford to occupy and pay the bedroom tax, and to increases in rent arrears, which is not just bad for the affected tenants, putting their tenancy at risk, but bad for the landlords who require rental income to fund increased investment in social housing.

On all the bases, then, on which this policy is being promoted, it is not succeeding and it is having perverse and damaging consequences. The hard truth is that this is not a policy prompted by a desire to make better use of the country’s social housing stock. If that were the real intent, pensioners would not be exempt, and the Government would be increasing, not cutting, investment in new social housing. Indeed, if the impact of the bedroom tax were, miraculously for everyone affected, to find alternative smaller accommodation, the policy would fail because the Department for Work and Pensions would be left with a half a billion pound hole in its budget.

The whole wretched policy emerged not out of an evidence-based study of patterns of occupation, need and mobility in social housing, but out of a crude cost-cutting imperative that was introduced in total disregard of the human consequences. It is a deeply flawed and cruel policy, based on unsound premises, for which all those who are responsible in the Government should be ashamed. The sooner this wretched tax is abolished, the better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

In the lead up to the 2010 general election and in a desperate attempt to detoxify the brand, two words were bandied about to persuade the electorate that there would be a different kind of Tory if the Conservatives were elected. Those two words were “compassionate conservatism”, whatever that is. Wolves in sheep’s clothing—that is what I call it. No one standing on a Tory ticket in the next general election should be in any doubt whatsoever that once again it will be two words that will define their heartless brand of ideological politics—“bedroom tax”.

What happened to the Prime Minister’s mantra that we are all in this together? What happened to the Chancellor’s claim that he would not balance the Budget on the backs of ordinary people? Whatever happened to big society? Almost two thirds of those affected by the bedroom tax in my part of the world are disabled—that is 21,000 people hit the hardest while millionaires get tens of thousands of pounds every year in a Tory tax bung. Before the inevitable accusations of being feckless or unemployable are levelled against any of my constituents by Members such as the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), whose rant should be videoed and played to anyone who doubts that it is the same old Tories, let me point out that 6,000 people on Merseyside who are now in rental arrears had never missed a payment in their life until the coalition’s welfare changes. The majority of those clobbered by this Con-Dem con trick are ordinary working people on low wages. This is entirely a Tory and Lib Dem-manufactured hardship imposed on those who need help the most, driven not by fiscal constraints but by political dogma.

I want to concentrate on three consequential areas of this policy. First, the Government have not given sufficient regard to the impact that it has already had on housing associations.

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend is right that there is a significant impact on housing associations. The Home Group, a large housing association that has many properties in my borough of Gateshead and thousands of properties across the north of England, has seen a 53% increase in arrears in the past 12 months, mainly as a result of the bedroom tax.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I will not; I have only a short time in which to speak.

Labour Members talk about fairness, but is it fair that someone on a low income who is in privately rented accommodation should pay taxes in order to subsidise someone else’s spare room? Is it fair to raise taxation from low-paid workers to subsidise other people’s accommodation?

[Ian Mearns]

The hon. Gentleman has not recognised that people with disabilities often get priority when it comes to public housing. That is why there is a predominance of people with disabilities and greater levels of ill health in publicly provided housing.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

It is an issue of principle—equality between socially provided housing and private sector rents. At the moment, there is a discrepancy that the Government—perfectly fairly and perfectly wisely—are trying to equalise.

It is, I think, very irresponsible of Labour to persist in peddling these half-truths about the nature of what the Government are trying to do, and many people in this country think so, too. It is apparent that this Government measure enjoys a wide body of support. It is exactly on this issue where the Labour party is on the wrong side of public opinion. On welfare, the public are consistently behind the coalition parties in the polls—and this debate shows why.

Labour Members who are sitting rather lemming-like in their places have absolutely no idea about fiscal responsibility and no idea about trying to reform a system that cannot be sustained. The notion that Labour would be tough on welfare has been shown to be untrue. It is not the case that Labour is tough on welfare. On the basis of the bits of the debate that I have had the pleasure—or, rather, misfortune—to listen to, I felt I was back in 1974. We have gone back to an early-70s, socialist-style model, in which there is no sense of responsibility, no sense of any fiscal constraints under which Governments have to operate and not even any sense of fairness when, as I mentioned, the taxes of people on lower income are being used to subsidise the spare room.

What is particularly frustrating for Government Members is to have to listen to the same old debates, the same old primary-school name calling of “the bedroom tax” and all the rest of it, which are completely lacking any grounding in reality. We have said that we want fairness. Councils are able to use discretionary payments, and we hear anecdotally that councils are refraining from using them. These are the anecdotes that we hear. It is now time for the Labour party to wise up and get realistic about the nature of the challenges we face and the overcrowded nature of much of this country’s social housing.