Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

At the beginning of this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) quoted an article in The Wall Street Journal today that reported

“panic stations in the Treasury”

at finding out that the reduction in child benefit for higher earners was “unenforceable”. It continued:

“At root is a problem that should have been apparent to those designing the policy, if detailed advice had been sought from civil servants before it was announced at Conservative party conference.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) referred to himself—in all humility, I am sure—asking Sir Andrew Turnbull from the Treasury Committee this morning:

“Do you think it’s accurate to describe the UK as being on the brink of bankruptcy?”

The response was: “No I don’t.” Both those bits of hot-off-the-press news—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Slaughter]

No, I have not got time—actually I will, because it gives me more time.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I thought I was attending one of those rallies in North Korea, so reluctant are Labour Members to engage in debate. However, I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. My question is very straightforward: does he acknowledge that the deficit was a problem that had to be dealt with?

[Mr Slaughter]

What a stupid question, although I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for the extra time that he has given me. Anybody else? No? Okay, let us move on.

What I have described shows that it is politics rather than economics that has driven the CSR. Far from fairness driving the CSR, it is a particular type of Tory ideology that has driven it. Nowhere is that more true than in housing, to which I shall confine my remarks and which some of my hon. Friends have also addressed.

The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) apologised to the House earlier today—and rightly so—for inappropriate remarks that he made in the debate in Westminster Hall on the CSR and housing yesterday, when he said that Opposition Members had spread “lies and deceit”. I am glad that he apologised—it was good of him to do that—but the irony is that he made those comments in the context of the most selective quoting from the National Housing Federation’s brief. He managed to find two sentences in an excoriating brief that he thought supported the Government’s case. Let me read the bits either side of the bit that he quoted:

“This is a 60% cut in cash terms in comparison with the 2008-11 programme and in real terms a 63% cut. We are extremely disappointed that the Government has chosen to impose such significant cuts in capital funding…In an attempt to fill the gap caused by these significant capital cuts the Government is proposing to allow housing associations…to set rents on new lettings at levels between the current social rent up to a maximum of 80% of market rent.”

The briefing continued:

“However, we understand that any funds generated under this new ‘intermediate rent’…will only be allowed to be used to build more homes at this new intermediate rent and…across the four year spending period no homes will be built for social rent using these funds…there will be no further construction of social homes until at least 2015.”

That is the housing situation that we face, and for hon. Members who want to know what “intermediate rent” means, I looked at my Conservative council’s planning policies, which were announced last month. I found that the term excludes anybody on under £20,000 a year, which is 40% of my constituents and most of the people in housing need, but includes those on earnings of up to £79,400 a year—people in the top 2% of earnings. It is the Government’s policy that only intermediate housing will be built over the next 10 years.

Where does that leave my constituents? Where does it leave constituents such as the one whose case I was dealing with in my office this morning? That constituent is living with three teenage children in a highly damp one-bedroom flat, but has received the usual response from the local authority, which says:

“The average expected waiting time for a three bedroomed accommodation…is projected between 8-10 years. This is however only a projection but reflects the reality of…Social Housing waiting time as dictated by demand against availability.”

What tenants such as my constituent are being told is, “Give up your secured or assured tenancy, and take an insecure tenancy in the private sector. Then you may get some more space.” Up until now, people have not been told—they are being told now—that such accommodation is likely to be outside the borough, because of the restrictions on housing benefit. The situation now is that my constituents are being told that if they want decent accommodation, they should go into the private sector and be re-housed a significant distant outside the borough.

That is the reality of housing policy under the CSR. It is the reality for a constituent who came to see me this week, a teaching assistant taking £900 a week net and living in a shared room in a flat in Shepherd’s Bush, for which she pays £650 a month. She gets some housing benefit, but she can hardly make ends meet. Next year, she will not be able to, because of the cuts in housing benefit, and she will have to leave her job and move out of the area. That is the reality for people in my constituency.

While we are talking about apologies, perhaps someone else ought to apologise. The first interview that the Prime Minister gave after the election was to The Daily Telegraph. The article says:

“He was still angry over ‘appalling’ Labour lies that he blamed for preventing celebrated candidates such as Shaun Bailey winning in marginal seats”,

and quotes the Prime Minister as saying:

“‘They were telling people in Hammersmith they were going to have their council house taken away by the Tories.’”

Well, they are, and I will tell the House why. That candidate is at least honest, because he said at the Tory party conference:

“Inner city seats are so hard to win because Labour has filled them with poor people who are desperate and dependant on the state, so they vote for a party that they think is of the state.”

That is why those people are being punished. They vote Labour, and they want to live and work in the inner city, but that is not good enough for the Conservatives. That is what my constituents are facing, for ideological reasons of gerrymandering and social engineering.