amendment of the law

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend is right on the first point, although I am not entirely sure that the occupants are claiming housing benefit. We wait to be informed.

People with disabilities will be forced to move and the new home will have to be adapted all over again. Divorced dads who are trying to keep in contact with their children will be told that they have to pay the bedroom tax on the spare bedroom where they stay at the weekend, but as we know, some people will have no choice but to move. The final absurdity—the Chief Secretary should be interested in this—is that if people do move to the right sized property in the private rented sector, because of higher rents the housing benefit bill is likely to be bigger than that paid on the social home from which the family was forced out.

[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hilary Benn]

I will conclude now, because many other Members want to speak. I have been generous in giving way but I want to finish on this point.

Last Friday a constituent came to see me in my surgery. He is a man in his late 50s who has worked for the past 42 years, until last December when he became unwell. He currently has to live on £71 a week and has just received a council tax bill for £108.25. He is not sure how he is going to pay it and he asked me—it is quite something when someone says this to a Member of Parliament, because we had not met before—“Can I tell you that I can no longer keep the heating on in my flat because it costs me £25 a week and I do not have the money to pay it?”

The Chancellor, the Secretary of State and other Ministers are fond of telling us that we have to make really tough decisions, but I wonder how difficult it was to decide to give those on highest incomes a tax reduction at the beginning of next month, while imposing a reduction in council tax benefit and the bedroom tax on people. They are taking money from those who are poor—that is what we are talking about—and giving it to those who are rich. That is why they should scrap the cut to council tax benefit and get rid of the bedroom tax.

The Secretary of State was full of his usual bravado and occasional bluster in what he had to say, but the cold hard reality of the collision of his policies with people’s lives shows that those policies are not well thought out and are incapable of being delivered. Because of that record, we have a promise of growth that has not materialised, a promise of localism that is not what it seems, and a promise of homes that have not been built. This Chancellor, this Secretary of State, and this Budget have nothing to offer the people of Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I am delighted to take part in this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling). Some of his remarks would have had more bite if he had not left us borrowing £428 million every day of 2010. It is a credit to this coalition Government that that figure has been substantially reduced.

As the first Liberal Democrat speaking in this debate, I would not be doing my duty if I did not praise the Chancellor for the decision to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000. This is a long sought-after victory, which I very much welcome, which will see 2.5 million taxpayers—many of them low-paid women—taken out of tax and 20 million taxpayers getting a £700 smaller tax bill than they did under Labour.

I want to use my time primarily to talk about two measures that appear on page 40 of the Red Book. The first is the major step forward announced on zero-carbon homes and the achievement of the target in 2016, which appears in paragraph 1.109. I am delighted to see that. I am delighted, too, to see that the intention is now to increase the standard of energy efficiency of new buildings from October this year. I very much look forward to the announcement by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which is prefigured in the Red Book. I also very much welcome the statement that a decision on allowable solutions will be taken by the summer; the construction industry is certainly ready for this measure. The Zero Carbon Hub has done the preparatory work and the Green Building Council has been pressing for it. I would like to think that the decision reported in the Red Book is at least in part a response to what they have said and to early-day motion 1004, which covers the same ground.

I asked the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time last November whether the Government still intended to be the greenest Government ever. I was pleased that he replied emphatically, “Yes”. I was even more pleased when, in a speech to the Royal Society on 4 February, he reiterated the Government’s commitment. I want to say to the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government that, given the Prime Minister’s support, there can be no excuse for delay. We need an urgent decision on the carbon price for offsite generation for zero-carbon homes. The Red Book says that the decision will be taken by the Department for Communities and Local Government. I am sure that the DCLG and Her Majesty’s Treasury can sort out their respective responsibilities, but can we ensure that there is no delay in taking that decision?

The second point I want to bring to the House’s attention is the excellent news of more investment in homes for rent, with £225 million and 15,000 starts planned before 2015. That comes on top of 170,000 new homes planned for rent and 150,000 decent homes brought up to standard. There are many positive features to our housing programme. Like everybody else in the Chamber, I wish it was going further and faster, but I do not believe we should listen for a moment to the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and his complaints, when his Administration reduced the stock of affordable homes by 420,000 and sold so many homes without having a replacement policy—a policy that Labour itself now admits was a failure. I welcome these housing measures in the Budget, but there is still much more to do to improve the quality of our 20 million existing homes and to build the many more we need to the highest environmental standards. I look forward to the coalition making yet more progress in the remaining two and a half years before the general election.