Housing Benefit
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
Let us see where Bradford is by the end of the financial year, not just six months into it.
Many of those who are moving because of the bedroom tax are ending up in private rented accommodation which, though smaller, is more expensive. Analysis by the university of York suggests that this could mean the Government paying out £160 million more in housing benefit than had been budgeted for.
Ministers have also been forced to admit that 35,000 of the disabled people affected have had their homes specially adapted for them with, for example, wheelchair ramps, wider doors, stair lifts and accessible bathrooms. If they are forced to move, it has been estimated that the costs of repeating those adaptations in new properties could be as much as £234 million.
According to the latest numbers from the National Housing Federation, two thirds of the households hit by the bedroom tax have already fallen into arrears, hitting the finances of the very housing providers we need to be building more homes to deal with overcrowding, and a staggering one in seven of the tenants affected have already received eviction warning letters.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that in Nottingham more than 2,000 City Homes tenants are falling into arrears totalling more than £286,000—money that should be spent on refurbishing existing homes and building new ones? The fact that they are in arrears means that even if there were somewhere for them to downsize to, tenancy restrictions would prevent them from doing so.
Rachel Reeves
In my hon. Friend’s local authority area—Nottingham city council—200 people have been wrongly paying the bedroom tax because of this Government’s mistakes. She is absolutely right to mention the number of people in her area who are in arrears and the difficulties they will have in moving.
The eviction warning letters that have gone to so many people raise the threat of millions more being wasted in eviction proceedings and the emergency accommodation that will be needed for those who are made homeless. What a shambles.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Today we are hearing Government Members defend a bad policy that just gets worse: a policy that is hitting thousands of disabled people, causing arrears and debt, and leaving vulnerable families in despair.
Nearly 5,000 households in Nottingham are affected by the bedroom tax, and the vast majority are tenants of the city’s arm’s length management organisation, Nottingham City Homes. Since the introduction of the tax in April 2013, over 2,000 of those tenants have fallen into arrears totalling more than £250,000, and our ALMO has been forced to spend an additional £300,000 on staff and resources to deal with the extra demands on rent arrears teams. That adds up to more than £500,000 that could and should have been spent on refurbishing or building new homes.
As we have heard, two thirds of the households affected by the bedroom tax simply cannot find the money to pay their rent, and are accumulating ever-increasing arrears. We have heard heartbreaking stories about how the policy is wrecking lives, contributing to a growing affordable housing crisis, and wasting millions. It must be scrapped.
The Government pretend that people can downsize, but in reality that is nonsense. People who are in arrears often face tenancy restrictions that bar them from applying for new, smaller properties, and in any case there simply are not the homes for them to move to. In my constituency there are just 16 one-bedroom social homes available, and not a single two-bedroom home—in a city where 1,161 tenants are waiting to move to one-bedroom properties, and 1,083 are waiting for two-bedroom properties.
Most tenants are loth to give up secure social tenancies and downsize to smaller properties in the private sector, and the Government’s projected savings rely on their not doing so. The average social rent for a two-bedroom property in Nottingham is £64.02, but the average private rent for a one-bedroom property is £88.85. Do the maths! If tenants did move, the housing benefit bill would rise substantially.
The truth is that the Government know that most people cannot afford to pay the bedroom tax. Trapped with nowhere to go and facing an increasing cost of living, more and more poor and vulnerable families in Nottingham are turning to food banks and payday lenders simply to pay for basic essentials such as food, children’s clothing and fuel bills.
My local homelessness charity, Framework, has been recording the experiences of some of its service users who are affected by the Government’s policy. One of them, who lives in a two-bedroom property, has become disabled and cannot use the stairs, but she cannot move to a one-bedroom, single-floor property because she has rent arrears as a result of the bedroom tax. Another is a 60-year-old man who suffers from agoraphobia and panic attacks and finds new places and changes stressful. He is lucky enough to have a support network of family and friends in his neighbourhood, and, understandably, he does not want to move. Now he has arrears of hundreds of pounds, and could not move even if he wanted to.
Do Ministers really think that this is the way to treat vulnerable people with complex needs? It is clearly not the best way to tackle the shortage of larger council homes, or the problem of overcrowding. The latest loophole will add to the burden borne by hard-pressed local authorities, and it could affect as many as 40,000 households, but Ministers continue to claim that it will affect only a few. Ministers ignored social housing providers when they warned that the bedroom tax would be a disaster. How bad do things have to become before they actually start to listen?
The Government are in utter denial about the impact of their cruel and iniquitous policy. Tory and Liberal Democrat Members arrogantly dismiss those who dare to highlight the damage that it is doing to the lives of our constituents. Well, if they will not do the right thing and scrap it, the next Labour Government will.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mike Penning
As we bed down the new benefit and the new policies, there will be issues within the Department, issues with the contractors and issues not only with people giving advice to claimants, but with claimants themselves. I am not blaming claimants. What we are saying is that there are delays in the forms coming back and delays because they are not filled in correctly. That is something that we need to work on. We need to be more informative about how those forms are to be filled in, and we are working on that. On the terminal illness side, we are working with Macmillan so that it works closely with those claimants.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My constituent Pamela Brown applied for her personal independence payment in July last year, but the persistent failures by Capita meant that she faced a delay of more than three months just to get an assessment. She had numerous appointments that were cancelled and Capita did not even tell her. It was only after she put in numerous formal complaints that Capita addressed the matter. Pamela’s case is clearly far from unique, so can the Minister say a little more about what he is doing to sort out the mess at Capita’s end?
Oral Answers to Questions
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Maria Miller
My hon. Friend, who speaks with passion about this subject, will know that we have already committed ourselves to spending an additional £250 million on starting to address that last 10%, and to an additional £10 million budget for the hardest-to-reach areas. We must of course ensure that the money is used wisely, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to use it to fill the gaps that the commercial providers simply cannot reach.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The outstanding Nottingham Playhouse faces threats, if not to its whole future, to its ability to commission and stage new work as a result of the Government’s local authority cuts. What is the Secretary of State doing to support councils such as mine which want to promote new work and new talent in our region?
Food Banks
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Neil Carmichael
Absolutely. Fuel poverty is an issue, and I fully accept that, but I think the greatest issue is the need for people to recognise that there are opportunities in the work force—opportunities to seek employment and opportunities to fulfil their lives. That is where we need to go.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Of course, finding a job should be the way out of poverty. Is that not why it is so shocking that the majority of working-age people living below the poverty line are now in working households and that two thirds of all children living in poverty are living in working families? What should the hon. Gentleman’s Government be doing about that?
Neil Carmichael
The Government are ensuring that more people are in work and we have discovered today just how that policy is working. The opportunity we must give all people, including young people, is the ability to engage in a working life.
Housing Benefit
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Jessica Morden
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. That is not the only process they have to go through, either. The cumulative effect of the Government’s different benefit changes, particularly on disabled people, makes things all the more arduous for them.
The warning from Opposition Members was that far from saving money, this policy could end up costing money. The warning was that the very notion of tenants moving to smaller homes was clearly absurd, as there were nowhere near enough smaller properties for them to move into.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend recall the Government’s 2012 impact assessment, which said:
“Estimates of Housing Benefit savings are based upon the current profile of tenants in the social rented sector, with little tenant mobility assumed. If a significant number of tenants wished to move, this would reduce direct savings and place extra demands on social landlords.”
Does she agree that this confirms that the Government’s real intention was to balance the books on the backs of the poor and vulnerable?
Jessica Morden
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is clear that the Government will save money only if people stay put and pay up, which is the fundamental point.
The shortage of housing is no more acute than in Wales, where traditional three-bedroom properties predominate and there is a huge shortage of smaller social properties. Again, the warning back then was that discretionary housing payments were not enough to help the disabled and that housing associations would be left with a burden of debt, and unenviable choices.
All those warnings were ignored by the Government coalition parties. Government Members said that debates such as this one were characterised by exaggeration, that we were painting too bleak a picture and that our predictions were inaccurate. Tragically, those predictions were not wrong.
All Members have constituency cases to quote, so here are just a few of mine from the last couple of weeks. The mother of a disabled child who up to now used the third bedroom as a sensory room for her autistic son, as recommended by a paediatrician, is now struggling to find the extra rent. A divorced father whose two sons normally stay with him during the summer months has had to move because he cannot afford to keep his current home and will no longer have that access to his children. The largest group is the numerous families with disability adaptations to their properties who have no prospect of being moved to smaller accommodation that fits their needs because it would cost far too much to adapt the new properties. It is now clear that the financial “assistance” provided to already cash-strapped local authorities is not enough, as I see every day in my case work.
Jeremy Lefroy
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will come to that later in my speech. Discretionary housing payments are extremely important because they provide flexibility; indeed, I would wish for a bit more flexibility.
My authority is working very hard to assist people who are in difficulties as a result of this policy. I want to draw out a number of things from its experience. First, it is vital, as the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said, that local authorities work with social housing providers to help all those affected.
Jeremy Lefroy
This will be my third intervention, but as it is the hon. Lady, I will.
Lilian Greenwood
I wonder how it will be possible for local authorities to help all those who are affected. Nottingham was allocated £696,000, and over 6,000 tenants in the city are affected. Its total missing housing benefit amounts to over £4 million. It is no surprise when Nottingham City Homes tells me that over half its tenants are in arrears. There is simply not the money to assist all those who are affected.
Jeremy Lefroy
I am sure that the Minister has heard that. He mentioned the extra £20 million, which I should hope that Nottingham would bid for. Perhaps that sum could be increased; in fact, that is something I would ask for.
Discretionary housing payments are extremely important, as shown by the experience of my local council. As the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), said, the system needs to be administered more flexibly so that, perhaps, hard cases that are currently excluded are included. Again, I am sure that the Minister is listening.
We have heard about tenants getting into debt and therefore being unable to move. That Catch-22 situation has to be dealt with. People who are in arrears must be able to move if they are in arrears as a result of this policy and not of historical arrears. The Government could consider the rates that are charged, which are set at 14% and 25% for one-bedroom and two-bedroom properties. Perhaps there could be a lower rate that was increased gradually over the years as additional appropriate housing was provided. This must not result in evictions. Some councils have no-eviction policies, and that is a very commendable approach. I would look for all possible measures to be taken prior to eviction being enforced.
Many unintended consequences of the policy were mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and, particularly in respect of rural areas, by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). Those need to be looked at very carefully, and am sure that the Minister will do so.
The Government could also look at the costs of administering social housing. Let me put this in perspective. In South Staffordshire, the discretionary housing payment pot is £90,000, and people are working very hard to make the system work. I was therefore a little surprised to read that the salaries and benefits of the directors of one of the local social housing providers were £223,000, £160,000, £149,000, £136,000 and £139,000. Given that those salaries are paid from the earnings and taxes of hard-working people, perhaps the Minister will look at how housing associations that pay such salaries could themselves contribute to discretionary housing payments.
The Government have committed to monitor the effects of the policy. This debate is a good chance for the Government to listen to reasonable suggestions for changes to the policy in the interests of all our constituents.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the Chancellor on getting something right. For months Nottingham beer drinkers, local pubs and our excellent local breweries have been pressing for a review of the tax on beer, and I have raised it with Treasury Ministers on numerous occasions. I am delighted that the Chancellor has taken the decision to cut the price of a pint. I know that the Prime Minister has promised to take action to tackle multi-buy offers on alcoholic drinks. It is not at all clear how he intends to do that, now that his Home Secretary has turned him over on minimum unit pricing, but he has allowed the Chancellor to offer this buy-300-pints-get-one-free deal.
Unfortunately there was not much else to cheer in the Chancellor’s drown-your-sorrows Budget, because he did nothing to address the real challenges facing our economy. He seems oblivious to the need for bold action to kick-start the economy and so create the jobs that we badly need in Nottingham. Yesterday on Radio 4 the Chancellor blamed his dismal economic failure on the difficult conditions he has faced as has tried to plot a course towards the peak of growth. But, as any mountaineer knows, there is no such thing as the wrong weather, only the wrong clothes. The Chancellor should have looked at the forecasts and planned for what was coming, rather than adopting a disastrous austerity programme which left the UK to slow down, turn around and start heading back downhill—not once, but twice, with the threat of a triple dip looming.
As the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), who is no longer in his place, said earlier, the country is awash with misery. Forecast growth has been halved for 2013 and downgraded for next year too. Borrowing is £245 billion higher than planned. The deficit has barely shifted from last year and will not shift in the 12 months ahead. It has stayed where it is thanks only to some last-minute manipulations which the IFS said “wasted Whitehall time and created real economic costs”.
Unemployment is heading back up, with an extra 99 people in my constituency back on the dole in the past month. Inflation is running well above wage rises, and even those in Nottingham South who do have a job are struggling to make ends meet. For those unable to find work or who are sick or disabled, things are even worse, as they face cuts to services, cuts to council tax support, and the unfair and unworkable bedroom tax, which will leave more than 1,500 of my constituents with nowhere to go. Families are turning to food banks as they struggle to cope with the impact of higher VAT, cuts to tax credits and the freeze on child benefit. The Chancellor promises help with child care, not now when it is needed, but in two and a half years’ time. Families in Nottingham cannot wait for a Labour Government to sort out the economic mess that he has created; they need real help now, not more of the same failing policies.
My constituents are particularly worried by the Chancellor’s shocking complacency when it comes to tackling unemployment. They understand that when young people are out of work, without opportunities, it leaves scars that can last the whole of their working lives. That is why we are calling on the Government to act. We support measures to help small businesses take on extra workers. The employment allowance is welcome, but it will not even begin for another 12 months. Young people in my constituency should not have to spend another year on the dole waiting for the Chancellor to act. They need jobs and opportunities now. It cannot possibly be right to cut taxes for the highest earners in the country, but do nothing for young people trapped on benefits. That is why Labour is calling for a tax on bankers’ bonuses, to fund more than 100,000 jobs for young people—jobs on proper wages with proper training opportunities.
My constituents expect someone to take a job when they are offered one, but they know that under this Government there just are not the jobs that we need, and that is why the benefits bill is going up. Now we have shocking evidence of what we suspected previously: the Government plan to cut that benefit spending and massage the unemployment figures by applying a disgraceful sanctions regime. That is exactly why we need an independent review.
Nottingham needed a plan for jobs and growth on Wednesday. What we got was a “more of the same” Budget from a downgraded Chancellor. We needed real help for families on middle and low incomes: we got more of the same failing policies and a huge tax cut for millionaires. The plan has failed completely. Families, pensioners and businesses are paying the price. Nottingham and the country deserve better.
Mr Jones
Following that logic, the hon. Gentleman cannot argue, as his party has continually done since the last election, that a mess was left by the last Labour Government. The situation was due to the economic downturn.
We are now three years into plan A, and who is to blame now? We have slightly moved away from the Labour party—now it is all Europe’s fault.
Lilian Greenwood
Does my hon. Friend remember that when the Chancellor was in opposition, he specifically said in September 2007:
“The result of adopting these spending totals is that under a Conservative government there will be real increases in spending on public services, year after year”?
He and his party agreed with our plans.
Mr Jones
I totally agree. In defence, for example, the Conservatives called for a larger Navy and larger Army and more expenditure. What have we seen? Cuts, cuts and more cuts.
This morning we again had the nonsense from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that somehow if the austerity plan does not continue we will end up like Cyprus—it used to be Greece. The right hon. Gentleman conveniently ignores the fact that the wonderful triple A rating, so coveted as the great prize, has now been lost. We need to lay the blame for the country’s problems with this Government.
We used to hear the nonsense about Labour being irresponsible, and not having mended the roof while the sun was shining, but the house has no roof now. All we have seen in the Budget is tinkering at the edges. It is a little like suggesting to someone who has lost the roof that new double glazing should be put in. The important point, which has been made by several colleagues, is about demand in the economy. The way to get the economy going is to stimulate demand, and capital expenditure is one way of doing so. I welcome the announcement of £3 billion of additional capital expenditure, but it is only from 2015, and we need it now.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) rightly referred to the effects of the downturn for housing on other sectors. The emergency Budget slashed housing spending and capital expenditure on schools and so on, and that meant that demand went out of the economy. We are now spending £7.7 billion less than the Labour Government would have spent in the same period. There is an idea that this is somebody else’s fault, but it is not. Deflating the economy and taking demand out of it, while telling everybody that it is in dire straits, will depress demand not only for housing but in other sectors.
The housing proposals in this Budget are very ideological. Am I opposed to encouraging people to buy their own homes? No, I am not. However, it is nonsense to think that someone living in my constituency who has a low-paid job in local government, and is having their pay cut in real terms because of the cap, is going to save up the deposit for a mortgage. It would have been better if the Budget had provided a massive injection of resources into affordable housing and housing for rent. If my local housing provider, Derwentside Homes, was given the ability to borrow money to build new houses, it could do it now. That would provide the housing that we need.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
We have had a well-attended and at times lively debate on the Budget, and I will begin by thanking my hon. Friends for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) spoke about the steps taken in the Budget to help businesses and ensure growth, and he rightly highlighted measures relating to stamp duty for shares on the alternative investment market. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) highlighted the extension of capital gains tax policy for seed enterprise investment schemes, and I thank him for his excellent work in promoting those schemes. They are an excellent opportunity to enable start-up businesses to expand, and for investors to find good investment opportunities to help grow jobs in this country.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), who I know had to depart early. He highlighted the further substantial progress that the Government have made on the personal allowance, benefiting millions of taxpayers and taking many others out of income tax altogether—a contrast to the record that we inherited. He also highlighted the work on social care reform that the Government have progressed, again in contrast with our predecessors. I know that my right hon. Friend was heavily involved in that process.
My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) highlighted specific matters relating to community investment tax relief. I know that he has had discussions with the Treasury about his ideas, and we welcome his engagement. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) dealt with monetary policy—an issue in which he takes a close interest—and we are grateful for his views. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) highlighted the progress that the Government have already made in dealing with the mess that we inherited, and particularly the fact that we have reduced borrowing by a third since we have been in office.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) highlighted to the House the expression, “There is no money left”, although I have forgotten for the moment who coined that phrase—[Interruption.] I am told that it was Winston Churchill. I was thinking of someone else, although there are certain physical similarities. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) for highlighting some of the long-standing housing issues in Hendon that he is seeking to address.
Lilian Greenwood
The Minister mentioned housing. Is he as shocked as I am by figures that the Government have released today that show a 12% increase in the number of households with children accepted as homeless in the last year; an 11% increase in those living in temporary accommodation; and a 29% increase in the number of families living in bed and breakfasts? Is that not a disgraceful indictment of this Government?
Mr Gauke
If the hon. Lady is concerned about people on waiting lists or living in overcrowded conditions, she might want to think about what we could do about too many people who have got spare rooms.
We heard a number of speeches from the Labour party, and two points about the fiscal situation were consistently raised. First was the concern that borrowing is higher than we had wanted and expected it to be—borrowing is too high and debt is increasing too fast. We then had a number of speeches that called for more spending and said that we should not worry quite so much about borrowing and should be prepared to borrow more. Remarkably, a number of speeches made both points at the same time, but the reality is that the Labour party believes that the right approach to our current difficulties in the economy is to borrow more. The proposals from the shadow Chancellor involved £33 billion more spending.
The most interesting point in the entire debate was when the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) called for more spending in a particular area, and my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) intervened to ask how he would do that in a fiscally neutral way. At that point the hon. Gentleman paused and said, “Well, we are on a different path.” He is an articulate and eloquent speaker, but rather than say what that path was, he refused to answer. Labour Members are on the path that dare not speak its name. Their path is simply more borrowing.
Under-occupancy Penalty (Nottingham)
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
“Nowhere to go”—that is how today’s Nottingham Post describes the crisis facing thousands of social tenants in our city. Why? Because two weeks today the Government are set to play the cruellest joke on more than 6,000 of our city’s poorest households. On the same day as they deliver a huge tax cut to the UK’s highest earners, they plan to take £4.23 million from the pockets of those people in our city who are least able to afford it. Whether we call it the bedroom tax, the under-occupancy penalty or the spare-room subsidy, it is a heartless policy that, the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research concluded, will create “severe hardship” for affected households.
Let us look at the households affected. Two thirds of them include someone who is disabled, one third are families with children, more than a fifth are working households on low wages, and many of them do not have a spare room at all. They include families whose children have their own rooms. Let us face it, some bedrooms are so small that they are barely big enough for one child, let alone two. Many families do not think it is fair to expect their teenage son or daughter to share with a toddler, even if they are the same sex, and children’s education can suffer if they do not have somewhere quiet to study.
So-called spare bedrooms are also needed where couples sleep separately, especially where a husband or wife cares for their disabled partner and desperately needs a decent night’s sleep. Some are used to store disability-related equipment. Where parents are separated, these bedrooms are needed for when their children visit at weekends. Are the Government really saying that people who live in a council or housing association home cannot have a spare room for their children or grandchildren to sleep in when they come to visit? It seems so. People who have lived in the same house for decades and spent time and money making it their home all face the same impossible situation: move out or find the extra money.
For people in Nottingham, that means on average an extra £11 a week if they have one room more than they are allowed, or £22 a week if they have two rooms. That may not sound like very much to the Minister, but for someone on jobseeker’s allowance of £71 a week, it is the difference between eating or going hungry, turning on the heating or sitting in the cold, borrowing money to pay your rent or going into arrears. This morning on Radio Nottingham, a local Tory Member of Parliament did not know what the fuss was about. She had explained to her constituent that she should simply move house. But of course, it is not that easy.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The bedroom tax and the under-occupancy terminology will affect people throughout the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, we will be £10 million shy in the money available, and 32,000 households will be affected. Is not one of the greatest discrepancies of the whole process that there are not the smaller occupancy houses to move to, so all these people will have to find the extra money?
Lilian Greenwood
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I shall come to that point.
In Nottingham, 6,103 people face the bedroom tax in two weeks’ time. The key website is Homelink, which advertises properties for the arm’s length management organisation, Nottingham City Homes, and most of the local housing associations. This week, 21 one-bedroom properties and 14 two-bedroom properties are available. So even if they were all allocated to households that are currently under-occupying, that would help only 35 households—fewer than 1% of those affected. That is before one considers the 2,269 families in Nottingham waiting for a two-bedroom property, or the 7,333 individuals or couples waiting for a one-bedroom property.
In my constituency, 1,423 households are affected by the bedroom tax. In the whole of the last 12 months only 175 of Nottingham City Homes’ one or two-bedroom properties became available to let in Nottingham South, and on average people had waited 78 weeks on the list. Worse still, evidence from the local homelessness charity, Framework, reveals particular problems for tenants who are in arrears. They have been told that even if they have repayment plans in place, they cannot be considered for a move. As Jon Leighton, who helps co-ordinate the crisis team for Framework, says:
“Essentially they are stuck. Pay the additional charge or get into more arrears. And given this is the choice, the likely outcome is eviction proceedings.”
The Minister may argue that social tenants should move into the private sector. How will that cut the housing benefit bill when, according to figures produced by the National Housing Federation, the average social rent for a two-bedroom property in Nottingham is £64.02, but the average private rent for a one-bedroom property, into which a household occupying a two-bedroom social home might be expected to downsize, is £88.85? There is also a question about whether landlords in the private sector will be willing to take on tenants on housing benefit, given their significant concerns about the risks posed by the introduction of direct payments under universal credit.
The truth is that most people cannot avoid paying the bedroom tax, and the Government know it. Their 2012 impact assessment is clear:
“Estimates of Housing Benefit savings are based on the current profile of tenants in the social rented sector, with little tenant mobility assumed. If a significant number of tenants wished to move, this would reduce direct savings and place extra demands on social landlords”.
It is clear that the burden of cutting public spending on housing benefit relies specifically on the inability of tenants to move; balancing the books on the backs of poor and vulnerable people.
Of course, the Minister might claim that this is not about saving money, but about making better use of our social housing stock. Action to tackle overcrowding is important, which is why the Labour Government published good practice guidance on managing under-occupation and, in 2007, allocated funding to 38 pathfinder areas to devise solutions to address overcrowding and focus on under-occupation.
Last year Nottingham city council received a grant of £75,000 to help tackle overcrowding and under-occupation through its “Right Size” project, a modest amount that it used to good effect. It worked with people to look at their options, provided intensive support to help them overcome the hurdles to moving home and effectively held tenants’ hands through the process, in some cases covering removal costs. The project was effective, and between 1 April 2012 and 28 April 2013, 81 properties were freed up for families. However, last Friday, after a prolonged period of uncertainty, the council finally received an e-mail from the Department for Communities and Local Government confirming that:
“Ministers have now decided not to make any further special grants to councils specifically to tackle under-occupation”
Now we know that this is not about addressing under-occupation or overcrowding; it is about cutting public spending, taking money from the very households that are least able to bear the burden. It is not just unfair; it is immoral.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making her case exceptionally well. In my constituency, which neighbours hers, the cases that really pull at the heart strings bring the issue most to life, particularly when they involve a disabled person in the household. The majority of cases seem to be like that. I think of the young man who had serious problems with schizophrenia. He was just getting into independent living and needed an extra bedroom so that his father could occasionally stay overnight in order to reassure him when things got particularly difficult. Now, because of the bedroom tax, his whole quest for independent living has been thwarted, and he will have to move back in with his parents. It is the individual cases that illustrate just how heartless and callous the policy is.
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is exactly right. I wonder how Government Members sleep at night after what they have done.
The Minister might claim that the Government are protecting the most vulnerable, such as the individual my hon. Friend has just mentioned. Ministers have been saying that for months. It was only continued pressure from the Opposition Benches that forced them to concede that the Prime Minister’s assurances about protection for disabled children, foster parents and members of the armed forces were completely hollow and that exemptions needed to be put in place.
Unfortunately, to suggest that discretionary housing payment will provide the answer is disingenuous. Nationally, the DHP allocated for 2014-15 makes up less than 6% of the £2.2 billion in planned housing benefit cuts for the same year, and the Government have failed to provide any assurances on the level of DHP funding as part of the next spending review. The National Audit Office is critical of how the level of DHP funding has been determined, stating that
“it is not clear how the overall level of funding has been determined or whether it is likely to be sufficient to tackle the effects of reforms.”
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Has her council, like mine, considered trying to top up the DHP fund so that it can help people? Is this not simply a central Government cut being imposed on the shoulders of local government, because topping up the fund means a cut for councils? Also, the administration involved in the whole process is huge, and that is another cost for local government.
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course, this comes on top of huge cuts to local government.
Nottingham city council was allocated £696,000 to support tenants affected by the bedroom tax in the coming year. That amount will be reduced to take account of the U-turn on foster carers and armed forces personnel, and tenants in Nottingham face a shortfall of £4.23 million. I do not know whether it will be enough to protect the disabled tenants whose homes have had significant adaptations, but it certainly will not be enough to help all those with disabilities, for whom the prospect of finding an extra £11 or £22 a week is simply terrifying. Of course, when local authorities target DHP they will have to make impossible choices on whether to protect disabled people or the tenants most at risk of homelessness. The Government do not know how many people will be left short, either. When I asked the Minister how many households in Nottingham would be affected, including households with children, the answer was stark: he did not hold the information. So how can he possibly come to this House and offer assurances that the vulnerable will be protected?
As a responsible landlord, Nottingham City Homes is taking action to help its tenants to cope with benefit changes. It has a welfare reform action plan and has undertaken a range of activities to support tenants, but as chief executive Nick Murphy acknowledges,
“The combined effect of the bedroom tax, reductions in council tax benefit, changes to disability benefits and direct payment under Universal Credit are creating confusion and uncertainty. At Nottingham City Homes we are doing what we can to help with information, advice and support but many of the poorest people in Nottingham are going to get poorer as a result of these changes.”
Of course, we should never forget that behind the statistics and the numbers are real people: people whose voices and stories deserve to be heard; people such as my constituent Paulette Williams, who lives in Radford. She has rented her three-bedroom house from Nottingham Community Housing Association for the past 21 years. She had offered to downsize some years ago when her youngest daughter left home but was told that she did not qualify for a transfer. Last year, Paulette had to take ill-health retirement. She has not been offered a suitable small property and does not know how she is going to make up the shortfall from her benefits. I am interested to know how the Minister thinks a 57-year-old woman with serious health problems, including a permanent incapacity, should try to do so.
According to the Government, pensioners are not affected by these changes. Try telling that to my constituent Pat Lister and her husband, who live in Wilford. Pat’s son has serious mental health problems and has battled heroin addiction and homelessness. He has achieved some stability since he got a two-bedroom council flat. He has been in the same flat since 1996. Now all that is at risk. Pat and her husband want to support their son but cannot afford to pay the bedroom tax from their pension. Pat told me:
“We have reached the end of the line. We are retired and support him wherever we can, but this additional burden will place his social housing home out of reach and he must leave…And the wretched cycle of homelessness will begin again. For our vulnerable son, and nameless others like him.”
I called for this debate after I had sat in my surgery facing Paulette, Pat, and many others whom this Government are abandoning to a life below the breadline.
I have focused on the impact of the bedroom tax, but the situation is even bleaker. On the same day that tenants face a shortfall in their housing benefit, they, along with low-income households in the private rented sector, face a cut in the help that they get with their council tax. According to Nottingham city council, the shortfall for the scheme is £6.2 million in 2013-14—a reduction of nearly 18% in funding as a result of central Government cuts. This year 19,000 people in Nottingham will have to pay at least 8.5% of their council tax bill. In 2014-15, when transitional protection expires, that could rise to 20% or more. The situation is set to get worse, not better. Rents and prices are currently rising by more than 2.5%. With benefits capped at 1%, the poorest households will find their incomes squeezed even further over the coming months.
This chaotic policy is wreaking havoc on the lives of many of my constituents. I hope that I have convinced the Minister of the disastrous effect that it is having in Nottingham, as it is in cities across the country. He should take this opportunity to do the right thing and scrap this wretched bedroom tax.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this debate. She made no reference whatsoever to the context in 2010 in which an incoming Government had to make decisions or to the fact that the previous Government spent £150 billion more in their final year in office than they had coming in. She knows perfectly well—she did not mention this, but she knows it—that any incoming Government, including an incoming Labour Government, would have sought to take tens of billions of pounds out of public spending. She also knows that out of public spending there are two big things on which Governments spend money. The first is public sector pay, on which the Opposition were very slow to agree with us—they have now finally agreed—that restraint was required. The second is what is loosely called welfare—benefits, tax credits and pensions. It is completely implausible that an incoming Labour Government would not have cut social security spending. This is not a debate about whether social security spending has to be cut back; it is about how.
Lilian Greenwood
Will the Minister explain why his Government will deliver a tax cut at the beginning of April for the highest earners in the UK? Individual millionaires will get more than £100,000 each. Why is he choosing to balance the books on the backs of poor people in my city?
Steve Webb
I would be happy to respond to the hon. Lady’s question, although I was trying to keep to the subject of her debate. The higher rate of income tax in April will be 45%. For 13 years under the previous Labour Government the highest rate of income tax was not 45% but 40%. If she thinks that a 45% rate of income tax is immoral, why was a 40% rate acceptable for 13 years under the previous Labour Government? In addition, higher earners will pay a bigger share of tax as a result of a combination of measures. The hon. Lady has chosen to mention one, but if she takes the capital gains tax increases and the cuts in pension tax relief into consideration, she will see that overall we are taking more from higher earners than the previous Government did.
Let me focus on the specific issues that the hon. Lady raised. A number of voices were silent in her remarks. She used the word “fairness” and seemed to think that the suggestion that benefits should, broadly speaking, support a household size that a family needs rather than spare rooms was immoral, but that had been the case for private sector tenants for a long time under Labour party policy. The local housing allowance scheme introduced by the previous Government was, broadly speaking, for benefits to cover the household size needed. Why is it immoral to ask social tenants to pay the cost of a spare room, but not private sector tenants?
Steve Webb
I hope that the House will forgive me, but I want to respond to the points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham South and have limited time to do so.
There is an issue of fairness as between private sector tenants on a low income and social tenants on a low income, but there is also a second issue of fairness. Our estimates for Nottingham are ballpark figures—the hon. Lady is right to say that we do not have exact figures for her constituency, but we do have regional figures and we can estimate overcrowding—but we estimate that of the order of 2,000 or so households there are overcrowded.
Lilian Greenwood
I thank the Minister for giving way. I specifically asked Nottingham to provide me with the figure for the number of people who face overcrowding and it is just short of 630 households, compared with 6,103 households that face the bedroom tax.
Steve Webb
One figure over which there is no dispute is the number of people on the housing waiting list in Nottingham, which is 12,000. They are desperate for a family home or for family accommodation, whereas 6,000 households have spare bedrooms.
Steve Webb
No. There is an issue about fairness between social and private tenants and between those who face overcrowding and are desperate for a home and those who have spare rooms, and about fairness for those on the waiting list.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South raised a number of specific issues to which I want to respond. She asked whether people who will find themselves in the private sector will be able to rent if they are on housing benefit. The number of people in the private sector on local housing allowance recently passed the million mark, so more than a million people in the private sector are getting housing benefit. The suggestion that landlords will not rent to people on housing benefit is therefore demonstrably false.
Lilian Greenwood
I would be interested to hear whether the Minister ever speaks to anybody in Nottingham, because the experience of social tenants who are finding it difficult to move into the private sector was provided to me by the local homelessness charity, Framework, which has a pretty good idea of what is happening in our city.
Steve Webb
All I can say to the hon. Lady is that there are more than 1 million people on housing benefit in the private rented sector. There is not a little island called Nottingham where those people do not exist. Across the United Kingdom, private sector landlords are renting to people on housing benefit.
The hon. Lady mentioned Nottingham City Homes. I welcome some of the measures that it is taking to assist people who are affected by this measure. For example, it has produced a lodger guide so that any tenant who wishes to take in a lodger has information about how to do so. That will not be the answer for everyone, but it will be the answer for some. It will mean that there is better use of the scarce resource that is the empty or unused bedroom in social housing.
The hon. Lady mentioned HomeSwapper, a mutual exchange website that Nottingham City Homes is encouraging people to refer to. That is very welcome because it tries to make better use of the valuable social housing that we have. Nottingham City Homes ran what I think it called a speed-dating event to help match people who want to move to smaller properties with those who want to move to larger homes. It is true that this measure saves money, but it also leads us to make better use of the very underutilised resource of our social housing stock. As these initiatives demonstrate, there are some people living in overcrowded accommodation, whose voice was silent in the hon. Lady’s speech, and some people who are living in accommodation with spare rooms.
There is an issue with what one might loosely call “hard cases”. Those include people for whom a spare bedroom is not spare, but is very important. The hon. Lady dismissed in a very new Labour sort of way the £700,000 that is being given to Nottingham next year in discretionary housing payments, as if it is a drop in the ocean or a trivial sum of money. That money is being given to local authorities so that they can assist people on a case-by-case basis who approach them and say that there is a particular reason why the measure would be unfair or adverse in their case.
Steve Webb
No.
We are asking private renters in Nottingham and elsewhere to pay just under £2 a day for a spare room. Obviously, if somebody is on benefit, that it not easy. However, for those who want to retain their spare room, that is the contribution that we are asking. Many people on a low income who are renting in the private sector pay that money.
There were scare stories about mass evictions and homelessness before the limits came in for the private rented sector, but those things have not happened. Just the sort of alarmist language that the hon. Lady used about mass evictions and the rest of it was used before the caps came in for the private rented sector. In some cases, people have traded down. In other cases, people have made a contribution towards retaining the spare room.
The hon. Lady mentioned the Department for Communities and Local Government and ring-fenced funding for under-occupation. She will know that the strategy of the DCLG has been to let local authorities decide their own priorities and not to have ring-fenced funding.
The hon. Lady mentioned the combination of this measure and other measures. She mentioned the reduction in support for council tax benefit. Nottingham city council has taken the decision to charge some of its working-age benefit recipients a contribution to the council tax. Not all local authorities have done that.
Steve Webb
Well, other local authorities have avoided doing that. It is noticeable that many Labour-led local authorities have decided to pass the cost on to their tenants. For example, my local authority of South Gloucestershire has not passed on the cut to tenants, so they will receive full council tax benefit. Nottingham city council, however, has decided to expect its low-income tenants to make a contribution. The hon. Lady said that Governments have to make choices, but so do local authorities. Nottingham council has decided to charge low-income working age households a contribution towards their council tax. That was its decision.
Looking forward to the changes we have made, foster families were mentioned and the Government have been clear throughout that we want to protect such families. Our original strategy was to put the £5 million that we think it will cost to protect those families into local government budgets through discretionary payments, but, partly because of the alarmist scaremongering about foster families, we decided it was far better to avoid any anxiety on that point and simply to entitle foster families to an extra bedroom at the same cost. We have not had to find extra money for that measure because it was there already. We always said that we would protect those families, and we will. However, we will do so directly because when we relied on discretionary payments, Opposition Members claimed that we were not going to support foster families, which caused concern among those families. Giving foster families a right to a room seemed a more direct way of providing that support. Likewise, we have made it clear, as the Prime Minister did—
Oral Answers to Questions
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend should not be surprised at that level of tourism in his area, given the fantastic international festivals, the wonderful Georgian architecture of Buxton and the way that it has inspired so much creativity over the generations. All Members of the House should be looking at the way that tourism can help to support their own local economies because it has such potential for growth.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
What discussions has the Secretary of State held with Ministers in the Department for Transport regarding the needs of coach operators and the vital role that they can play in promoting tourism?
Maria Miller
As I said earlier, the role of domestic tourism is more important at present than even international tourism so connectivity through trains, coaches and our road network is a vital part of making sure that we maximise that. I will take a particular look at any issues that the hon. Lady wants to raise with me with regard to coach travel because it is clearly an important part of the domestic market.
Esther McVey
We are doing a lot about this. Again, unemployment for that group is under a third—the figures the hon. Lady presents do not include people who are in education.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
2. What steps she is taking to support women and minority groups in the workplace.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Jo Swinson)
In the current economic circumstances, we need more than ever to maximise the full potential of the diverse talents in our work force. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed last week that we will legislate to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees, ensuring that the benefits of flexibility are available as widely as possible. In addition, more than 50 leading employers are signed up to our “Think, Act, Report” initiative, covering more than 1 million employees.
Lilian Greenwood
The Government state that the new employment tribunal fees for claims relating to the national minimum wage will attract the lowest level of fee—£390—yet the average payout to workers who make a claim enforcing the minimum wage is just £165, which is less than half the cost of pursuing a claim under the new fee structure. Does the Minister agree that the new system of employment tribunal fees will unfairly punish women, disabled people, and black and ethnic minority workers, who are disproportionately represented among the low paid?
Jo Swinson
The hon. Lady raises the issue of access to justice, which I agree is important. That is why, in addition to the fee regime, there will be a remissions regime, which will mean that the people on the lowest incomes will not have to pay. The key point to remember about employment tribunals, highlighted by the figure she gave on the average payout in those minimum wage cases, is that they are often not the best route to resolving disputes. That is why the Government are legislating to make sure that there is more early conciliation, so that for employers and employees alike the stress, time and money involved in employment tribunals can be avoided in all but the most necessary circumstances.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
As I said previously, we are looking at all this. Anyway, entitlement would never be removed from those who are already on housing benefit. The review is about flow and about re-establishing fairness in a system which many think has become unfair and does not help those who are not eligible for such benefits. I accept that there would be people who would be ineligible. That is the point of examining the system and figuring out how the policy would go, but like all policy reports, it is worth looking at. It deals with an element of unfairness and the thing about the benefits system is that if it is unfair, people who should support it will not support it, such as taxpayers.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
We have been rolling out the innovation fund, which has so far been very successful, as I said in answer to an earlier question. About 11 social impact bonds have now been launched. The successful bidders in the second round, Prevista, Social Finance and 3SC, will deliver support for our most disadvantaged 14 and 15-year-olds, restoring hope and aspiration to young people in care who are disengaged from school and involved in gangs, crime and drugs. It is a very, very good project.
Lilian Greenwood
Dr Sue Atkinson, a mental health professional in my constituency, recently told me about the appalling misjudgments that she and her colleagues have witnessed, when their clients’ needs and capabilities have been completely ignored in the work capability assessment process. Why will the Secretary of State not act now to review and revise a system which is clearly failing?
Mr Duncan Smith
There is an awful lot of lost memory among Opposition Members. It was they, when they were in government, who set the process up. It is this Government who have made all the alterations, thanks to Professor Harrington, that have improved the situation. We are doing exactly what the hon. Lady requests. I wish she would speak to members of her Front-Bench team and avail them of that information.
Unemployment
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Chris Grayling
I agree. The second part of the support that we are providing to young people—and, indeed, to older workers, for whom apprenticeships are also available—is a substantial increase in the number of apprenticeships. More than 100,000 new apprenticeships have been announced since the general election—the total across the Parliament will take apprenticeship provision far beyond where it has been previously. We believe that an apprenticeship that combines training and a real job for many young people is a better vehicle for delivering a long-term career option for them than simply putting them into a temporary six-month work experience placement at significant cost to the taxpayer, as we experienced with the future jobs fund. I accept that we do not agree on that: Labour Members believe that their approach was better. However, we believe that sustained employment in the private sector with an apprenticeship for a substantial proportion of young people is the best option. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, who is responsible for that, has put in so much effort and won so many extra resources for apprenticeships.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I heard what the Minister said about the programmes that he has put in place, but how can he claim that they are successful when there has been an increase in long-term youth unemployment of 88.6% and in long-term unemployment for people over 50 of 59% in my constituency in the past six months?
Chris Grayling
I make the same point to the hon. Lady that I made to the shadow Minister: I wish they would stop producing figures that are not statistically valid. The previous Government had something called the training allowance. Somebody who had been out of work for 12 months and entered the new deal programmes went for a short time on to a training allowance. That meant that their JSA claim was moved back to day one. As a result, the previous Government claimed to have abolished youth unemployment. We have stopped doing that—we do not hide the unemployed. We accept the scale of the problem and try to tackle it properly. The civil service statisticians in the Department for Work and Pensions carried out a like-for-like comparison, which shows that there is virtually no difference in youth unemployment for more than six months between today and two years ago. Opposition figures are therefore simply not accurate.
The third element of the support is through the Work programme, which began at the start of July. It has been going for five months and is the most ambitious welfare-to-work programme that the country has seen. The first signs from providers are encouraging. We will not have official statistics till next year, but there are many examples of people who have been out of work for a long time getting into work. It is a payment-by-results scheme, so providers have every incentive to use the right approach to working with people in a personalised way to deliver the right support to them individually and to match them to the right job; otherwise they will not stay there. Given that the full payment is not made until a conventional jobseeker has been in work for 18 months, there is a real incentive to ensure that it is about not just placing someone in a short-term job but building a long-term career for them.