Housing Benefit

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

In debating today’s motion, it is instructive to look back at the manifesto on which Labour Members stood at the last election. They talked about the need for “tough choices on welfare” and stated:

“No one fit for work should be abandoned to a life on benefit, so all those who can work will be required to do so.”

They also promised reforms to housing benefit so that the state does not subsidise people to live on rents that working families could not afford. As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), when they were in government they intended to introduce the very same measure. So what happened?

Labour has reverted to type, defending those who are getting more than their fair share out of the system, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of others who are worse off through no fault of their own. They include the 6,687 households on my local authority of Dudley’s housing waiting list. That is why Labour has opposed every single measure this Government have taken to reform the welfare state.

The public know that the catalyst for the reforms we have introduced was the ballooning deficit left to us by the previous Government. The overriding mission behind the reforms had a much wider moral purpose: to make work pay, to end the something for nothing culture, to ensure a strong safety net for those who cannot work and, in the case of the reforms to housing benefit, to reduce overcrowding and homelessness.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is talking as though the only people in social housing are those on benefit or not working. It is an in-work benefit. More importantly, many people in this country who work for the minimum wage and work very hard will never be able to afford to purchase a property. That is why we have social housing and why we have homes for life for those people.

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention and I agree with much of the principle behind it. Of course, some people will never be able to afford to buy their own homes—although this Government are intent on helping as many people as possible to own their own homes—and that is the purpose of social housing and housing benefit. There is no argument with that principle, but we must be cognisant of the number of people who, at the moment, cannot even get council housing or privately rented social housing. That is one of the driving purposes behind the reform.

The subsidy has become something of a totemic issue for the Opposition. They want to position the end of the subsidy and the creation of a level playing field between all recipients of social housing support as a modern day poll tax. Whatever the merits or otherwise of different systems of raising taxes locally, there is no doubt that the poll tax lacked public support. That is the difference, and it is worth exploring why the policy we are debating today enjoys public support.

The MORI poll that my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) mentioned found that 78% of respondents supported the need to reduce under-occupation and overcrowding in social housing, whereas 54% of them agreed that people of working age who live in social housing should receive less housing benefit if they have more bedrooms than they need. Some 60% of those polled believed that those affected should seek work or work longer hours if they could.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

In my two minutes on this policy it is very hard to decide where to start because there is so much wrong with it. There is the terrible situation of separated parents sharing child care while children are expected to sleep on camp beds or sofas or to share with their parents. There are people who are not choosing between heating and eating because they are having to go cold and hungry, disabled people whose health is deteriorating because of stress and distress, and people who have committed or are contemplating suicide.

Government Members have made the frankly ridiculous and desperate claim that this is Labour policy, but the local housing allowance was not applied retrospectively. Indeed, in Bolton there are still 1,000 tenants on the old scheme because their circumstances have not changed—the trigger for local housing allowance to be applied. This Government decided to introduce carnage, with no account taken of the nature of housing stock in each area, no account taken of the needs of disabled people or separated families, and no trialling, unlike the four years of trialling done before the local housing allowance was introduced. Instead, they have created chaos and heartache.

Like everybody, I have surgeries full of desperate people. I would like to talk about their cases, but unfortunately time is so limited because so many people are so angered by this Government’s policy that I cannot. I will finish by asking a few questions. Who in this place thinks it appropriate for a 15-year-old to share a bedroom with a toddler? Who thinks it right that boys and girls approaching puberty should have to share a room? Who thinks it right that two adults should be forced to share a bedroom irrespective of their health needs? Who thinks it makes sense to force families to move from a three-bedroom house with an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old and then force them to move back to a three-bedroom house a year later? It is a disgraceful policy that shows that this Government do not have a clue about the lives of ordinary people. They are out of touch and heartless. It is a cruel, senseless and stupid policy, and it should be repealed now.