Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)
Let me assure my hon. Friend that we have recently undertaken a review of housing standards, not least to try to reduce the plethora of different standards, which are burdensome and expensive. Space and room size have been considered. We will be consulting on the outcome of the review in the near future.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
T8. The Department’s affordable rents policy is putting housing benefit expenditure up. Over at the Department for Work and Pensions, Ministers are trying, unsuccessfully, to cut housing benefit. Meanwhile, the cuts in housing benefit that they are making have resulted in an 86% increase in homelessness applications in my borough of Westminster. Does the Department ever speak to the Department for Work and Pensions, and if so, could they not possibly agree on a single policy, rather than two contradictory ones?
The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)
We have a clear policy, which is to ensure that we reverse the loss of social housing that we saw under the last Labour Government and that the social housing sector is managed better than it was in the past. Labour needs to realise that there are a million spare bedrooms in the social housing sector and a quarter of a million families in overcrowded accommodation. They would love the luxury of a spare bedroom. We are prepared to make those reforms; the hon. Lady’s party is not.