Housing Benefit

Debate between John Hemming and Steve Webb

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I will give way in a moment. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Leeds West, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) pointed out something that has not hitherto been flagged up—Labour’s intention to extend the principle of the local housing allowance to social tenants. Let me quote Hansard from January 2004 when the late Malcolm Wicks stated:

“We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the private rented sector…We aim to extend our reforms to the social rented sector as soon as rent restructuring and increased choice have created an improved market.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 1075W.]

Interestingly, the Labour party planned to do that, yet when this Government do it, suddenly it is somebody else’s problem.

[John Hemming]

From what the Minister has said, the Labour party was quite happy to have a bedroom tax, not just in the private sector but also in the social rented sector as soon as rents had gone up.

[Steve Webb]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on drawing the House’s attention to the Labour party’s plans. Not only did the Labour party invent the principle of paying for an extra bedroom, it intended to extend it.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between John Hemming and Steve Webb

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

Amendment 12 is simply a vacuum that could insert anything—

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Steve Webb]

I will not for the moment, because my hon. Friend has joined our proceedings relatively recently. I should like to respond to the amendments that my hon. Friends and others have tabled, and I hope he understands that.

Amendment 7, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and supported by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), is in fantasy land, I am afraid. It not only rejects the savings in the Bill but would add additional savings on top by linking benefits to RPI. I have to give credit to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, because she knows how ludicrously expensive her amendment is and I am grateful to her for being frank about that. In a single year, it would cost £2.6 billion more than the current plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the position of low-paid workers. People on the minimum wage were mentioned in the debate, and we will have halved the tax bill of someone on the minimum wage. That is a real contribution to their standard of living.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives that we cannot find the savings that we need by excluding the social security budget from them. The two biggest things that the Government spend money on are public sector pay, which has already been the subject of a separate measure, and social security benefits. The two together account for a vast swathe of public spending. When we need savings, we cannot ring-fence social security. What we can do, however, is try to do things gradually.

I want to explain why some of the figures for people’s losses that have been quoted are far greater than is truly the case. My hon. Friend mentioned someone who is in and out of work, and the typical time on jobseeker’s allowance is three months. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) asked me to give some examples of cash figures. We are talking about an uprating of perhaps 80p a week or so below inflation in one year, so maybe £2.50 a week below inflation over a three-year period. For a typical person who is out of work for three months, which is the median spell on JSA, the difference will therefore be a tenner a month, or £30 to £40 over that three-month period. That £40 is a lot of money to someone who is unemployed, but the typical experience is that someone has three months of unemployment and then finds a job. We are about to cut people’s income tax bills by £600 a year, so that person might have, say, £3 a week less while unemployed, but the typical experience is for them to be unemployed for a relatively short period and then get a job, so they will benefit from all our other measures.

[John Hemming]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition’s policy of not having a policy runs the risk of putting up the interest rate on our Government debt? We owe more than £1 trillion, and 1% more on that would be more than £10 billion extra to find through either extra cuts or extra taxes.

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is quite right. There is nothing progressive about vast borrowing, because then we are asking our children and grandchildren to pay for it.

There has been much discussion about percentages during the debate. Several Members have said that a small percentage of not very much is not very much—I think their argument was that the answer was a slightly bigger percentage of not very much. However, even a small percentage of a £200 billion bill for tax credits, pensions and benefits is a vast sum of money, which is why we have to take the difficult decisions we are talking about.