Housing Costs

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg]

We mentioned that in the report, because obviously the situation is different in Scotland and needs a solution there. Anything that will help to ensure that the Scottish Government are in a position to implement their policies is welcome, but I also know that there are discussions going on in Scotland about how else the situation can be mitigated for the people who live there.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I was just reflecting, in the context of the report, on the question of the evidence we have, if we have any, about people who suffer from disabilities and live in crowded accommodation who now have the opportunity to move to less crowded accommodation as a consequence of the Government’s policy. Would the hon. Lady like to comment on that?

[Dame Anne Begg]

Part of the problem, as we mention in the report, is that there are not enough houses for the people in houses that are deemed to be under-occupied to move into to release the larger houses, which is the Government’s policy intention. Unfortunately, the report was already agreed and printed by the time the BBC published the results of its investigation last week into the number of people who had moved, which discovered that the figure was only 6%. Although the intention of the policy was to free up larger houses, it seems that that has not really happened simply because there are not the smaller houses for people to move to. We found evidence that people who were desperate to move could not do so because there was no house for them, and they had no option but to absorb the extra costs. They were having to find what would have been paid in housing benefit from a very limited budget.