Housing Benefit

Debate between Nick Smith and Nick Raynsford

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, including the chairmanship of a social housing provider.

This is a cruel policy, based on an unsound and in some respects fraudulent premise. It is cruel because it is causing anxiety, fear and misery to large numbers of people who have done nothing wrong. It is cruel because it is deepening poverty and deprivation in an arbitrary and unfair way, and because the large majority of those who are adversely affected by it can do nothing to mitigate its impact.

The policy is also cruel because it conflicts with basic human instincts, such as the instinct of a parent to have their children to come to stay at the weekend if they normally live with a former partner elsewhere. There is also a basic human instinct for a disabled person to have a carer stay overnight from time to time, or to have a spare bedroom for medical needs such as dialysis.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine is unable to share a bed with his wife due to his painful disability. The bedroom tax will leave his family £9.52 a week worse off. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the bedroom tax pays scant regard to the pain that it causes?

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend makes an obvious and clear point that illustrates one of the deeply unfair and cruel impacts of the policy.

The policy runs against basic human nature when teenage children are told that they cannot expect to have a bedroom of their own, particularly at a time when those in charge of education are emphasising the importance of children having a bedroom in which to do their homework, so that they can do well at school.