Housing Benefit

Debate between John Hemming and Sandra Osborne

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

I do not know quite how to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), but I will do my best. I will try to be brief because others wish to speak.

Apparently the bedroom tax is officially known as the social sector size criterion. That says it all about this Government’s attitude to tenants in socially rented housing: they do not have the same right to a stable home environment as everyone else. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has, or has ever had, a spare room in his home, or stayed in one place for a length of time, regarded it as home, and then felt that he was being forced to move. It is not a pleasant feeling.

[John Hemming]

I have had spare rooms, and I have taken in refugees from Croatia and a refugee from Jersey.

[Sandra Osborne]

I am sure that is very kind. However, I am a mother and a grandmother. I love my family dearly, but I do not want them to live with me all the time.

As if by magic, the plan was that thousands of tenants throughout the land would move to mythical smaller properties—they do not exist—freeing up larger properties for overcrowded families, or find an average of £720 a year, which they do not possess. Not a cunning plan, but a cruel, uncaring and illusory plan that has seen more than 4,500 of my constituents suffer. Within months of the bedroom tax being introduced, 62% of my constituents in East Ayrshire council were in arrears, and the figures continue to rise.