Comprehensive Spending Review

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

If my hon. Friend has not yet had the opportunity to do so, he should look at chart 1.1 in the book produced by the Treasury, which shows that a structural deficit was emerging throughout the past decade and that that made Britain particularly ill-prepared for what happened in our banks. Of course, the poor regulation of our banking system meant that this country was probably affected more than any other, except for Iceland and perhaps Ireland. We are trying to sort that out, by addressing not only the public finances, but the regulation of the banks. As I say, if we had fixed the roof when the sun was shining, we would have been in a better condition to deal with the storms.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Chancellor will be aware that housing is the biggest and most serious problem facing people in my constituency, because of overcrowding and a shortage of social housing. His proposals in July to cap housing benefit render at risk the lives of many people living in private rented accommodation, where the rent is paid by housing benefit, and his proposals now to have two tiers of council tenure do not sit very well, because one tenant will be living in secure accommodation on a fixed rent of about £100 a week whereas their next-door neighbour, because of an accident of dates, will be paying at least twice that in rent and will have no security of tenure. How does that fit with the notion that we are all in it together?

[Mr Osborne]

There is a problem in social housing, but frankly the party that the hon. Gentleman supported in this House—on and off—for 13 years did absolutely nothing to address it. We are trying to reform social housing provision so that more homes are built and so that there is more availability of socially rented properties, unlike the fall that we have seen recently. He talks about his constituents and he must ask himself—I certainly confronted this—whether it was fair to ask the people of his constituency who go out to work to fund housing benefit bills of £50,000, £60,000 or £70,000 a year. That is totally unaffordable to the working people of Islington. We have introduced what I think is a perfectly reasonable rule that the average family out of work should not get more in benefits than the average family earns in work. I find it difficult to see how people could object to that.