Housing Benefit Entitlement

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing this most important debate. I, for one, am not surprised to see the Government Benches empty, because people cannot defend the indefensible.

I want to speak on behalf of the 2,400 tenants of Bolton at Home and more than 4,500 tenants of Wigan and Leigh Housing who will face unaffordable bills because the Government have decided that the poor should pay the price of the wrongs of the rich. The policy demonstrates an absolute lack of understanding of the nature of social housing and communities.

The majority of social housing in the north-west is three-bedroom, and families with two children have rightly been allocated three-bedroom houses so that each child can have their own room, and also, because that is the available housing stock. Please remember that many of those families have one or both parents in work, in low-paid jobs. Housing benefit is an in-work benefit.

What is going to happen now to constituents with a boy and a girl? They are currently nicely housed in a three-bedroom house. Is it the Minister’s expectation that they would move into a two-bedroom house until one of the children reaches the age of 10, when they would have to move into a three-bedroom house? What happens when one of the children moves out? Are they then expected to move back into a two-bedroom house, and then into a one-bedroom house when both the children move out? That is even if all the housing stock is available. Just imagine the monetary costs—how could people on low wages or benefits afford new carpets and curtains each time they have to move house, or does the Minister expect them to have bare floorboards and newspaper at the windows? What about the children’s schooling? Will they have to keep moving schools, or will the family have to find additional money for transport to school? Fundamentally, what about the community? Social housing is not only somewhere that you sleep; it is where you live and become part of a community—a community that will be fractured by this ridiculous, ignorant policy. The policy will also have a perverse effect. Already in Bolton, groups of three young men are applying for three-bedroom family houses, so that they can each claim shared-room rate.

Hon. Members have talked about many other aspects of this policy, so I will finish by talking about Isobel, who came to see me about her situation—I have changed her name. Isobel lives in a three-bedroom house. She has a daughter who has just moved out, into a fairly insecure relationship, and she has a 17-year old son with Down’s syndrome. Isobel is a full-time carer and she herself understandably suffers from stress and depression. Isobel’s son—I shall call him Carl—is severely affected by Down’s syndrome. He has what I can best describe as autism-like symptoms. He cannot cope with change to his routine or environment. He needs everything to be in its place and everything to be done in the same way at the same time every day. Indeed, while Isobel was visiting me in the surgery, she received two phone calls to come home as quickly as possible because Carl was becoming extremely agitated by her absence.

Isobel has told me that Carl could not cope with a move. Moreover, Isobel gets support from her community. Neighbours understand Carl’s behaviour and support her both physically and morally. What is she supposed to do? She cannot work; she cannot move. What is the Minister’s answer to that question? I hope he will not say that she could get a discretionary housing payment. Bolton at Home does not yet know how much it will get, but it has already worked out that it will not have enough money to support everyone in need.

The Government do not seem to understand that social housing is a positive choice for low-paid workers, for carers and for a number of others. It is not something that is transient. It is the home in which someone wants to live their life and to bring up their children until they move into their bungalow or sheltered housing. Surely the Minister cannot continue with this mean, ignorant and, frankly, incompetent policy.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

We have made up a minute, so the Front Benchers now have nine and a half minutes each.