"I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Select Committee. She raises a number of interesting points that were debated in the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), the Affordable Homes …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"I personally think that it would be harsh to go around evicting everybody who is under-occupying, although that happens when people try to succeed to a tenancy; they are told that they cannot do so because the property is too big. I do not think that overcrowding is taken sufficiently …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but my reading of all the documents, including those memoirs, is different from hers. It was not about an incentive to move, which I do not think anyone would criticise. I think that his proposals were very similar to those that have …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The scheme for working out how much space people need and paying them for it was introduced in the private sector many years ago. The Opposition will make the valid point that they did not make it retrospective, but the Government then say …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"From a sedentary position, the Minister says, “£1 million a day”, which is about the order of magnitude that we were talking about. A policy can have more than one objective. It can be designed to save money and also to deal with overcrowding. This year, I have not had …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"In my constituency, I was aware of a family of four living in a one-bedroom flat who wanted to transfer out of that into better accommodation...." John Hemming - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Social landlords have had a relatively simplistic approach to designing property to suit the demands of the market. That creates a difficulty, in as much as one should recognise that there are real difficulties in the financial costs of living alone, including paying …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"We have found in the west midlands that private landlords are often willing to take people on housing benefit if they have a 6 Towns type of account that reserves the funds. There is a solution in the system as it stands. Perhaps that needs to be investigated. Obviously, 6 …..." John Hemming - View Speech
"I refer the hon. Lady to the answer that the then housing Minister, the late Malcolm Wicks, gave to a question from the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown):
“We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the …..." John Hemming - View Speech