Finance Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right, because some of the nastiest, meanest cuts in the Budget are to housing benefit and mortgage support. Mortgage interest support will be limited to the average mortgage rate, meaning many families will no longer be able to meet their payments. If someone is unlucky enough to lose their job and be out of work for 12 months, even if they have done their level best to find a job and applied for everything going, and even if there are no jobs, their housing benefit will be cut by 10%. That is not a work incentive, as the Government seem to think; it will lead to a spiral of repossessions, homelessness, family stress and breakdown, which will simply increase the cycle of worklessness.

Is that really what the Prime Minister meant when he said that this Government were going to be the most family-friendly Government on record? They will not be for families in my constituency.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not cost-effective to split up families and treat them in that way? The very circumstances that she describes actually cost the state more money.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. If families have to be split up, put into emergency accommodation or are trapped in the cycle of worklessness and poverty, because not having a home makes it much harder to get a job, that not only inflicts appalling circumstances on them, but costs the taxpayer far more money in the long run.