Housing Benefit

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

No, I am going to make some progress.

We have also heard from the Government that their plans will save money. However, if they do not think their policies through and consider their impact on people, they could end up costing more than they save. The Government say that the cap will save £65 million. Others say that its consequences—uprooting families, forcing them out of their homes and into temporary accommodation—could cost nearly twice that. We have heard that the Government intend to increase the amount for discretionary housing payments, but I seemed to hear them say that they would use that money to pay the people who they say should not be in those homes to stay in them. Instead of using housing benefit for that purpose, they are going to use discretionary housing payments. That is a smokescreen too far.

The Government like to say that these reforms will help people into work, but pricing hundreds of thousands of working people out of whole swaths of the country, often where most of the jobs are, will make it more difficult, not less, for people to find work and keep their jobs.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Flint]

The hon. Gentleman was not here for the debate, so I will not give way.

Reducing people’s housing benefit when they have been out of work for a year does not help them to get a job. It punishes them for not having one, and we reject that entirely. The Government say that reducing housing benefit will bring rents down. Landlords themselves tell us otherwise, however, with 90% saying that they will be less likely to take on people on housing benefit. That means that there will be more people chasing fewer homes, which will drive rents up, not bring them down.