Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Neil Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

As I will set out in more detail later, we will make sure that the most vulnerable people are protected. That is what the welfare system is all about.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

The Minister talks about women’s refuges. The manager of Monklands Women’s Aid, Sharon Aitchison, has just emailed me. She says:

“There is no doubt that our current set-up with housing benefit is already stretched to the max, so the refuge provisions viability would most certainly be in question and the reality is we would be unable to fund refuge provision if the cap went ahead for us.”

What does the Minister say to Sharon Aitchison, the manager of my local women’s refuge, which provides a brilliant service for women and children in desperate situations?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I have just outlined, this Government announced an extra £40 million for domestic abuse services.

Funding for supported housing is part of the Government’s wider financial settlement to councils, which includes £5.3 billion in the better care fund in 2015-16 to deliver faster and deeper integration of health and social care. That will result in councils being better able to work together and invest in early action to help people live safely in their own homes for longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I want to put on the record my support for the one-year moratorium that has been announced, which demonstrates that being in government is about listening to a wide-ranging debate and taking on board the views of the key stakeholders. It is very welcome. Government is about matching policy principles, such as fairness and social equity, with practical policy implementation.

We have seen the usual hysterical shroud waving from the Labour party. It is working with people in the housing sector to scaremonger and to frighten the most vulnerable tenants.

[Neil Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not.

The question has to be, where is the Labour party’s policy? Where is the coherence? Where is the comprehensive costing? Where is the alternative? It is not there. And this from the party that voted against every single welfare change that we made in the last Parliament. What would it have done? It allowed housing benefit claims to reach £104,000 for a single year. They are the people who saw a 46% rise in the housing benefit bill. They are the people who consigned millions of families to welfare dependency, with a record number of children in workless households. This Government are doing something about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this important debate and congratulate Labour on bringing it before the House today. I also commend the excellent contributions by my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day). I also support the pertinent points and questions posed by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and I hope the Minister was taking note and will respond to them. I also recommend that the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) and some others on the Government Benches look at the Library briefing on this subject and the Chancellor’s autumn statement, as I do not believe their speeches bore any resemblance to either of them.

A secure, warm and fit-for-purpose home is a right we should all enjoy; it should never be threatened, least of all by the state. Yet I am afraid that this Government are doing just that. We have already seen what they are capable of through the expansion of the bedroom tax, and we are again seeing it here in the proposals to cut housing benefit.

On the subject of the bedroom tax, we hear today that the Court of Appeal has ruled in two cases that the policy is discriminatory. In the light of this ruling—and the overwhelming evidence of how detrimental this policy has been—the UK Government must now think again on the bedroom tax, and indeed on this proposal to cut housing benefit, and not just think about it for a year, but do so for good. They should get back to the drawing board and start again from a basis of supporting people in their homes, not threatening to evict them.

In Scotland, the SNP Scottish Government have committed to building 50,000 affordable homes over the course of the next Scottish Parliament should the SNP be returned. Those homes will provide much-needed capacity in the social rented sector, because we recognise the need to build houses, not cut support to housing benefit recipients. The Scottish Government have also taken the necessary steps to mitigate the draconian bedroom tax by providing funding of £90 million to more than 70,000 households, which have escaped rental arrears and the threat of eviction. The Scottish Government have done this despite the overall budget being cut by 12.5%—by one eighth—since the SNP came to power in 2007. In Scotland we realise that a house is a home, and it would serve the UK Government well to bear that in mind as well.

This cut threatens the very roofs over the heads of housing benefit claimants. The House of Commons Library briefing for this debate estimates that over 800,000 families across the UK will be affected by these cuts, costing them on average £1,300 a year. Where will this shortfall in annual rent bills be found? It cannot come from discretionary housing payments as this type of discretionary funding for the social sector is far too insecure and uncertain a funding mechanism to allow such providers to continue to provide specialised accommodation such as refuge accommodation. The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has estimated that a single person under the age of 35 who is in receipt of housing benefit will face a weekly shortfall of £6.22, which equates to an annual loss of £323.44 and a total loss to the housing associations of £2.8 million a year.

The area in which this cut is of greatest concern is women’s refuges. Scottish Women’s Aid wrote to Lord Freud last week about the impact these cuts will have on its ability to provide a refuge service for women and children fleeing domestic violence. In its letter to the Minister, Scottish Women’s Aid highlighted information that, frankly, the Government should have been aware of. Had they carried out an impact assessment, it would have been as clear as day to them. There is a range of additional costs involved in providing and managing refuge accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West and Scottish Women’s Aid have eloquently outlined, local housing allowance rates bear no resemblance to the actual costs incurred by women’s aid groups, such as Monklands Women’s Aid in my constituency, or to the way in which they provide refuge facilities. I have been working closely with Sharon Aitchison, who manages Monklands Women’s Aid. It operates on very fine margins to provide a brilliant service for incredibly vulnerable women and children in their time of desperate need. It has already had its funding challenges, but this cut to housing benefit will put it out of the game. That will be the consequence of the Government’s latest cut. While I am on this subject, I hope that the Chancellor will reply to my letter of 26 November last year regarding his announcement on the tampon tax fund. To date, I have not had so much as an acknowledgment.

Brilliant work has been done in recent years to highlight and tackle domestic violence and to provide better support for women and children fleeing from abusive relationships. All that work will be undone at a stroke as a result of this cut, because Monklands Women’s Aid will not be the only refuge that is forced to close. This is a cut that will once again hit those who need our support the most, and it is time that it was scrapped.