Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. However, one cannot on the one hand say that people are being driven from the social sector to the private sector, and on the other argue the opposite case by saying that the number of people moving to the private sector is falling because rental prices are going up. Those are contradictory points. Members have to choose one line of attack.

[Dame Anne Begg]

The only choice that a person has is to stay where they are and pay the bedroom tax. That is the problem.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am glad that that has completely cleared up how Members can argue two entirely different things.

Let us put the matter in context. There is a lot of scaremongering, wild words and passion from Opposition Members, but very little attention to the facts. The Government removed the spare room subsidy simply to equalise the situation with what was going on in the private sector. I find it absolutely extraordinary that Labour Members are saying that it is all very well to have a discrepancy between social housing and private rented housing. Let us look at some more facts. Currently, 1.4 million households are on social housing waiting lists in England alone, and nearly 250,000 families are living in overcrowded accommodation. On what planet does it make sense not to have some degree of equity or fairness between people who rent in the private sector and those in social housing?

[Mr Slaughter]

I am so sick and tired of listening to Tories crying crocodile tears about this. Some 822 people pay the bedroom tax in Hammersmith, and the last Conservative council sold off or demolished 500 council houses. How does the hon. Gentleman think that that possibly helped with overcrowding?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am not aware of the details of the hon. Gentleman’s borough council, but Members across the House have widely acknowledged that there is a problem with housing supply. However, I am confused when the Labour party says that those in private rented accommodation should pay an extra amount, but that social housing should be exempt from that—and all in the context of people living in overcrowded accommodation and not having enough rooms. People come to our surgeries who are living in cramped conditions, and Labour thinks it is all very well to carry on as before.

The wider point is that even if we were running a balanced budget, this would be a legitimate subject for debate. When we add in the context of a country that is borrowing £100 billion a year—largely thanks to the efforts of the Labour party when it was in government—and when both sides of the House are trying to reduce Government expenditure, it is the financial management of the mad house not to look at welfare expenditure and try to reduce it. Again, there are facts to back this up. Without reform, the overall housing benefit bill would have risen to more than £25 billion in 2014-15, and as the Minister established, we have saved £2 billion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Forgive me. Each and every one of those reforms and attempts to reduce expenditure have been opposed by the Labour party. It is well and truly said that Labour is the party of welfare: by my estimate, it has opposed £83 billion of welfare spending savings this Parliament. Under the previous Government it was notorious and a scandal that the maximum housing benefit award was £104,000 a year—[Interruption.] These are well-established facts; for exactly that reason, when the Government introduced the £26,000 welfare cap, it was the most popular Government policy since the second world war and since polling began. There is wide acknowledgement among the public that those reforms, although difficult, are crucial in trying to reduce the deficit and get the country back to some form of sanity in the conduct of its economy.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I have listened with great attention to the hon. Gentleman’s compelling rhetoric. He spoke about the management of the mad house. Is it the management of the mad house to try to force families in houses that allegedly have too many bedrooms out of that accommodation in a borough such as Hackney, where there simply are not enough one or two-bedroom flats for them to move in to?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We have established that there is a supply problem, but what we must agree on—and the general public agree—is that reform in this crucial area was needed. Neither of the interventions that I have taken addressed the fact that there is massive overcrowding, and that a quarter of a million families are living in accommodation that is physically too small for them.

In such a situation, surely it is common sense to try to equalise and rationalise the supply. [Interruption.] It is all very well for Labour Members to shake their heads and deny there is a problem, but at least the Government have had the courage to try to address the issue. They are doing so not by applying radical new ideas, but by doing what Labour did in government when they introduced a change to private sector rental agreements. It is time for the Labour party to wise up and get real—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This afternoon’s debate is following a sort of pattern where the Opposition shout at the Government, the Government shout at the Opposition, and then both sides complain that there has not been a proper debate. I hope that Members who continue to shout across the Chamber will resist the urge to do so and listen to the debate.