Social Housing: Furniture Affordability

Mims Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of furniture affordability and social housing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I am surprised to be starting the debate early—I was taken unawares, but strike while the iron is hot, I always say. I am delighted to be here, partly because this has been a very tricky debate to secure. Every time I go to the Table Office, they rewrite the topic. To get pulled out of the hat, I re-submit it with that same title and it gets rejected, so I have to rewrite the title again. That causes confusion.

Then we had no idea which Department should reply to the debate. Was it the Department for Work and Pensions? Was it the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? Even the Minister did not know, but I am delighted that she has made it here today. Maybe she will enjoy the experience—who knows?

On hearing mention of the term “furniture poverty”, many people say, “What do you mean?” Some Members did so when I walked in the door. Many take it for granted that they have a chair to sit on, a fridge or freezer in which to keep food and a cooker with which to cook it. Far too many people in this country lack such basics. Some 26% of those in social housing lack one or more of the major pieces of furniture in the average household, compared with just 3% of homeowners.

Take something as basic as flooring. In social housing, more than 700,000 people—9% of those in social housing —do not have any flooring. The situation is worsening because of the cost of living crisis. Furniture inflation is running at 35%, which is even higher than food inflation. Appliance inflation is running at 21%. The answer is not to just go down to IKEA to get something cheap, because inflation at IKEA is at 80%.

The problem is not just the cost of furniture. There are some underlying problems. The first is the lack of a savings culture in this country. The average savings of people in my constituency are just £95, and most people in my constituency could not cope with an unexpected bill of even £500. That puts them in a very vulnerable position in the first place. We could have a whole debate just on the lack of a savings culture.

The second reason is the disappearance of cheap and readily available credit for the most deprived in my constituency. The usual financial service providers have withdrawn from that market entirely, leaving people with nowhere to go for credit other than to those who charge very high costs. That causes further financial problems for them.

The final reason is the lack of microinsurance products. The insurance sector has pulled out of allowing people to pay a very small amount to insure a fridge, cooker or any other piece of furniture. People are therefore flooded with large unexpected bills to replace significant items. When faced with that financial impact, they are often tipped over to the more dangerous forms of lending. I can spare the Minister a debate on illegal moneylending, but only because I recently had an Adjournment debate on the subject. Those unexpected bills push many in my constituency into risky doorstep lending. Often they borrow from illegal moneylenders, but sometimes they borrow from friends or family members. That is a type of illegal moneylending that is quite disguised, and it is a real problem.

Furniture poverty is not just about lacking items, but about the associated costs. The charity Turn2us calculates that not having a cooker can add more than £2,000 to the annual expenses that an average family of four face, because it means that they must rely on takeaways, which are becoming increasingly expensive. People who do not have a fridge cannot buy in bulk, store food for the future or plan meals. That leads to further costs, as they must rely on local convenience stores—again, we could have a separate debate on the difference between food prices in convenience stores and in supermarkets. Lacking a washing machine adds about £1,000 to the average bills of a family of four, because they have to go to the launderette to wash their clothes, which they often require for work. Launderettes are a rapidly disappearing phenomenon anyway, and significant energy costs mean that the prices they charge are going up.

There is a vicious, vicious cycle here. Let us take two examples. People may think that a dining table is almost luxury item and not necessary for a household at all—that it is something someone might go to John Lewis for, perhaps. I would argue that if we are talking about social mobility and life chances in my constituency, nothing is more important than the dining table. In smaller houses, that is where children do homework. If they have nowhere to do their homework, their educational performance will decline. There are 2.4 million people in this country who do not have a dining table, so when I hear about social mobility and everyone fretting over how to get more working-class people into Oxford and Cambridge, that is not “life chances” to my constituents. To my constituents, “life chances” means having a dining table as a space to do homework—something as simple as that.

I mentioned flooring earlier. I would love to have an hour-and-a-half debate on flooring. I put the Minister on warning: that is on the way.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

Flooring?

[Paul Maynard]

Flooring, yes—I am about to talk about it. You will learn something. End Furniture Poverty, the charity that has helped me on this topic, is doing a separate piece of work on the issue of flooring, which I will come on to.

Let me share a quote from one individual in social housing. He says:

“It’s cement downstairs and upstairs it’s wood with a lot of nails sticking out. It is a hazard…I have a young child.”

The lack of flooring is perhaps one of the great unknown scandals of 21st-century Britain. When someone enters into a new social housing tenancy and moves into a new flat or property, in all likelihood the social housing provider has ripped out the flooring in advance, often when it is in perfectly good condition. They do so because they believe that that is what they should do with void tenancies, and it means the person moving in is faced with a great bill to replace the flooring. Often it is simply beyond their means and capacity to afford it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for his tenacity in securing this debate. I also thank you, Ms Elliott; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is a pleasure, too, to respond to my hon. Friend. I thank him for his typical care and great regard for the most vulnerable in his community and our society, and for his focus on basic life chances, which are incredibly important. I hope to provide a multitude of responses for him this afternoon.

I am keen to touch on launderettes. The cost of those small businesses—particularly for those in work, those caring, those who need suitable drying facilities and small businesses that want to support people in the community—has been a great concern to me as a constituency MP. We should all be very mindful of that. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about domestic abuse, and I am keen to pick up on that point shortly.

I reassure the House that we are committed to a strong welfare system that, most importantly, supports those who are most in need, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys pointed out. In 2023-24, we are spending around £276 billion through the welfare system of Great Britain and around £124 billion on people of working age and their children. For 2023-24, we have increased benefit rates and state pensions by 10.1%.

The decisive action that we have taken over the past year and during the pandemic reflects our commitment to protecting the most vulnerable in these changing economic conditions. I am proud to be the Minister who is taking forward the next stage of the cost of living payments, made up of £650 to more than 8 million low-income households. This year, a similar number of eligible households are receiving their first payments of up to £900. I am pleased to confirm that we have made 8.3 million payments of £301—the first cost of living payment this year—to people on means-tested benefits. I was also pleased to sign the regulations that will provide more than 6 million people across the UK on eligible “extra costs” disability benefits with a further £150 disability cost of living payment this summer, to help with additional costs. Included in our cost of living support package is the energy price guarantee, which continues at the same rate until the end of June.

My hon. Friend mentioned the household support fund, which is on top of everything that I have just described. We have extended the fund by another year until March 2024. That enables local authorities in England to continue to provide discretionary support to those most in need. The fund can help with the cost of energy, food and, as my hon. Friend said, other household essentials, including furniture and white goods. I reassure him that in drawing up the fund, I looked at the particular issues, families and circumstances that he talked about. In fact, I recently visited Wolverhampton to see this being put into action in relation to bed poverty, whether that means the type of beds, sheets or bed clothes needed to keep people warm and snug at night.

I am empowering local authorities to do the right thing, look at their need and ensure that their household support fund supports their communities. I have been grateful for the feedback, engagement and consistent conversation with local authorities. We are empowering them to spend as they see fit in their communities. Devolved Administrations will receive those consequential funding pots as usual, also to spend at their discretion. Blackpool’s allocation of the extended household support fund comes to almost £3.5 million. That will make a difference.

Before I deal with some of my hon. Friend’s points, let me turn to the point that the hon. Member for Strangford made about domestic abuse. On the need to provide support on the basics, I assure him and the House that we are working with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and with the employers domestic abuse covenant at DWP to make sure that we support people to stay in and get into work and through any changes in their household situation. Indeed, I was working on that with my team yesterday. The Home Office is also working with Women’s Aid to provide £300,000 for one-off payments to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The funding will provide payments of £250 and £500 to support families in exactly that situation. I am keeping a keen eye on that sort of thing.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for that; it is helpful and encouraging. My understanding is that, during covid, there was a phenomenal number of relationship breakdowns and that domestic abuse was part of the reason in many of those cases. That means that a wife or partner and the children move out and they have nothing. When it comes to the large number of people who need that service, is there enough and adequate money to assist them when they need it?

[Mims Davies]

I reassure the hon. Member that I am looking at every area—including policy, universal credit, work across Government, work with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and work across the violence against women and girls piece with the Home Office—to make sure that that is exactly the case. There is work to support people to get, stay and declare in work, as well as the Ask for ANI and J9 programmes in our jobcentres, so that nobody coming forward feels that their finances need to keep them in an unsafe place. I remind the House: this is criminality in the home and it needs to be stopped and declared, and those who are impacted should be roundly supported. I hope that helps the hon. Member.

On the local welfare funding assistance, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys mentioned part of the unringfenced local government finance settlement. Councils do not have to provide local welfare assistance, but HSF is a form of that, and I understand his points. Many councils provide upstream support to stop people falling into destitution, and some of the things that he said about that are concerning. I am concerned about how this works and interacts with the household support fund, so I undertake to look closely at what he said. Blackpool Council, for example, provides its own discretionary support scheme, which can provide the essentials that he mentioned. Some local authorities operate local welfare schemes beyond the household support fund for essential costs. However, his point was incredibly well made.

On helping people with funding to manage the cost of living challenges, I point the House to the work of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which recently announced a new allocation of £76 million of dormant assets funding. That includes £45 million for financial inclusion programmes delivered by Fair4All Finance. Beneficiaries include 69,000 individuals struggling with their personal finance, who will have access to a no-interest loan to help them to get out of problem debt. As my hon. Friend said, it is so important that we unlock every way of helping people to make good choices.

The latest allocation is part of nearly £900 million unlocked through the UK dormant assets scheme. This is about financial inclusion initiatives to support people in vulnerable financial circumstances, particularly in the country’s most deprived areas. Through my previous ministerial role, I know that sometimes people come forward with problems because perhaps behavioural or SEND issues mean that furniture has not been looked after or is not safe—bunk beds are a particular issue—and needs to be replaced regularly. That puts a huge strain on those with the least resources.

Through the Fair4All Finance scale-up programme, £5 million of dormant assets funding has been invested in support of the Coventry-based company Fair for You, which creates affordable loans to tackle furniture poverty. I will undertake to write to my hon. Friend and other Members on this subject.

Let me turn to the issue of adequate flooring and the basic needs of housing tenants. I continue to listen with interest to the recent discussions on the letting of social housing without adequate flooring. I understand that the practice varies across the sector. Some landlords will remove flooring in between tenancies because of the poor condition, and in most cases, that is done for health and safety reasons. Floor coverings are not currently covered in the decent homes standard. It is vital, however, that adequate flooring is seen as an integral part of the physical condition of the property. We will undertake to look at that as part of the decent homes standard review.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, the DWP has a big say in this issue. We support social housing and we support those providers, and it is absolutely right that we make sure that people in need have the basics and can be supported when it comes to decent homes. I will take away and look at that point. I thank End Furniture Poverty for its report. It has highlighted, along with my hon. Friend, the points around social landlords and the issue of redistributing furniture between incoming tenants. The report shines a light on that issue and the experience that people have.

While we are tackling poverty by ensuring that people are working and supported through really tough economic times, it continues to be our firm belief that the financial circumstances of all households improve through work, hence our in-work progression focus and our focus on matching people with vacancies that could be just down their road. It is vital that we understand the issues that hold people back—the barriers and extra worries that keep people awake at night.

It is important to reiterate that the Government are fully committed to providing opportunities for people across the UK to succeed, and to understanding what their barriers may be and what may be holding them back. As my hon. Friend said, it is important to have a cross-Government focus on tackling poverty—I point out our focus on food security; the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is another area I am looking at, as well as housing costs and needs—so that we can be clear, as every constituency MP would want, that we are targeting our support to the most vulnerable families, and ensuring that they have additional support in changing times.

I say to anybody worried: there is a benefits calculator on gov.uk and a household support fund link. If you feel as though you should have had a cost of living payment, there is a link there to make sure that you let people know about it. Please tell us, and remember that in a Jobcentre Plus, we can do very much more for you than perhaps you realise.

Question put and agreed to.