Oral Answers to Questions

Owen Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

We have seen the comments by Redrow Homes and Persimmon Homes. These are important Welsh builders who need to be building new homes in Wales, but who are not building as many as they should be. The Welsh Government are responsible for the supply of new housing in Wales, and I think that serious questions need to be put to Welsh Ministers in Cardiff about that.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is truly extraordinary that the Minister continues to defend the bedroom tax. Will he confirm for the record whether, according to the Government’s own figures, Wales is hit harder than anywhere else in the UK? As he mentioned the disabled, will he tell us how many disabled households in Wales are hit by the bedroom tax?

[Stephen Crabb]

We have had this question before. Wales is not hit harder—to use the hon. Gentleman’s terminology—than other parts of the United Kingdom. What is remarkable is that he still clings to the mythical economics of plan B. More than anybody else in the Opposition, he argues for more spending, more borrowing and more debt, all of which is a road to poverty for people in Wales.

[Owen Smith]

The Government’s own impact assessment states that 46% of households in social housing in Wales have been hit by the bedroom tax, which is a higher proportion than anywhere else in Britain. Those are the Government’s own numbers. The bedroom tax will also hit 25,000 disabled families. The Minister should confer with his colleague the Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who said only yesterday that the bedroom tax was not working in Wales. It is not working for those 25,000 people—25,000 reasons why we need a Labour Government to scrap the bedroom tax and deliver justice for those people in Wales.

[Stephen Crabb]

I did not see the specific remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), but we are making available to Wales more than £7 million in extra money for discretionary housing payments. On top of that, we are making money available for rural borough councils in Wales to assist with the transition. We recognise that it is a challenge and a difficult period for people going through our changes to housing benefit, but we are supporting local authorities in Wales to help Welsh people through that transition.