Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Owen Smith and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

Is not that just shroud waving? We have heard for the past few years—not just months or today—that we are shroud waving about the bedroom tax and its effects on the vulnerable. Indeed, we have been told that it is shroud waving to suggest that the bedroom tax might be unlawful, but it turns out that it is illegal, so the Government must come back to the House to address the situation—[Interruption.] The Minister for Housing and Planning is chuntering, but this afternoon there was a welcome yet extraordinary turn of events in the House. Despite Labour Members and others interested in the social rented sector asking him on hundreds of occasions in recent months to make the change, the Minister has only now said that he agrees with us.

We should address the deeply unfair 1% cut to social housing rents which is but part of the problem that the social supported housing sector faces. I welcome the fact that the Minister, without much good grace, conceded that there should be a delay. It is extraordinary that his Government have been looking at the policy not, I have to tell my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), since 2014 but since 2011, which is when they first suggested that they ought to address the question of, in their view, high social rented costs versus local housing allowance. Five years later, they still have not reached a conclusion on what they are going to do. It is incompetence on a gross scale.

In the Welfare Reform and Work Bill Committee, we lost count of the number of occasions on which we were offered excuses as to why the change could not possibly be made, and why the moratorium—or, as we asked for, a full exemption—was not affordable or allowable. In Committee, I believe that the words, “shroud waving” were used on a number of occasions. We were accused of jumping the gun, and told that the measures would not be introduced for a while, so there was plenty of time for the Government to get their papers in order and get the policy right.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent case. Can he explain to the House why, in benign economic times, his own Government failed to deliver tax breaks to encourage the development of extra care facilities and specialist housing facilities? Why did they stand still when there was plenty of money coming in and they had the opportunity to do so?

[Owen Smith]

The National Audit Office concluded that under the Tory and Liberal Government there was a 45% reduction in the amount of funding for the supported housing sector. That is the reality.

[Mr Jackson]

What about your Government?

[Owen Smith]

We have not been in power for six years, and there is only so long that the hon. Gentleman can keeping waving that shroud at me. The key point is that under the hon. Gentleman’s Government there was a 40% cut, and we face the prospect of the end of supported housing in this country unless there is a change of course from his Government.

There is a lot of misunderstanding among Government Members about what we are talking about. I do not know whether they do not read the briefing from the Whips or the Whips do not tell them the truth, but there are two measures that we are debating. On the first measure—a 1% cut in social housing rents—there is now a one-year stay of execution. The second and more important measure, which the Minister did not address despite the questions raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne, is the equalising of the amount of housing benefit available to people in social rented accommodation with the local housing allowance. That is the biggest, most substantive change that the Government propose to make.

The hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) said that the measure had not been introduced and is not happening yet. She really ought to read the Government’s statements. I shall read from the autumn statement, which said at paragraph 1.125:

“The Government will cap the amount of rent that Housing Benefit will cover in the social sector to the relevant local housing allowance. This will apply to tenancies signed after 1 April 2016”.

According to my maths, that is in a couple of months, with housing benefit entitlements changing across the board from April 2018. This is not shroud waving, nor is it jumping the gun: it is the Opposition drawing to the attention of the House and, it would seem, Government Members, a measure that will impact on their constituents in just a few months’ time.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Owen Smith and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that the 4.7 million pensioners who will be impacted by the age-related allowances policy will not be pleased to learn that the House of Commons Library note on the Budget concludes that they will be between £80 and £280 worse off in real terms as a result of its provisions?

[Mr Jackson]

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies disagrees profoundly with the hon. Gentleman, and believes that the proposals are both morally and financially right and progressive. The hon. Gentleman will therefore have to try again later.

I support the planning regime reforms and the liberalisation of the national planning policy framework. I was delighted to hear about the regional policy and the expansion of airports in the south-east as well. We are currently losing our competitive advantage to Schiphol, Frankfurt and Charles de Gaulle. I am delighted, too, that the Chancellor resisted the temptation to limit further tax relief on higher-rate pension contributions. That would have been an attack on thrift and prudence. We in Cambridgeshire are very pleased with the news about the A14 and the Get Britain Building and Growing Places funding. Moreover, I have been campaigning for quite some time for residential estate investment trusts for social housing, and the previous Government did nothing about that in 13 years.

It would be wrong to say that I am happy with every measure in the Budget. There were some missed opportunities and missed steps. Fuel duty is an issue that will return—as it would do for any Chancellor and Government. I understand why changes were not made this time, but my constituents’ petrol bills are hurting, and using a car is a necessity, not a luxury. Air passenger duty must be looked at again, too. It has increased 360% in the last seven years. Because of the major impact on transportation and tourism, I hope that the Chancellor will revisit that issue. I should declare an interest: Thomas Cook has a headquarters in my constituency.

The House will know that I had very serious concerns about the child benefit policy, but the Chancellor has listened and taken them on board. We have addressed the cliff-edge issue, although there is still the anomaly of the two earners as opposed to the one earner; we should regard that as a work in progress. My constituents are also asking why our European Union contribution has increased between the pre-Budget report and this Budget. It may be a function of reduced co-payment of funds for EU projects. If we are all in this together, however, that should include the European Union, so we must look at that issue.

I was very disappointed that, once again, the Budget did not contain a policy to recognise marriage in the tax system. For probably as little as £800 million—less than a third of the £3 billion we spent on taking people out of lower rate tax, in order to appease, as it were, our Liberal Democrat friends—we could have given a tax break to married couples with children under 3. I am sorry that that did not happen.

Things will be tough over the next few years. Restoring economic health after the 13 years of the last Labour Government—years of waste, profligacy and creating a client state—was never going to be easy. Once again, the job of getting the finances of this country straight and of building a great Britain and a strong economy falls to a Conservative Government, and I believe that this Chancellor has proved he is up to the task.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Owen Smith and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting debate, although we have not heard too much about transport, despite that being the theme for today. I suppose that that is a feature of Budget debates, but I suspect that it is also down to the fact that the Budget did not contain that much about transport. I am therefore not going to delay the House too much by talking about transport but will talk about the broader measures and about the Chancellor in the broader context.

People say that the Chancellor is a man who already worries a lot about his legacy, despite it being very early in his Chancellorship. I suspect that explains the volume of leaks, which reported that he wanted this to be remembered very much as a watershed Budget. The word used in the press quite a bit was “Lawsonian”, which I understand is a compliment where he comes from. Well, it was a watershed Budget and it will be remembered—there is no doubt about that—but perhaps not for the reasons he wanted and not in the manner he anticipated.

It was a watershed Budget for two key reasons. First, it shattered, once and for all, the illusion that this Chancellor is a master of political tactics or economic strategy. The only masters are the masters of the universe, down the road in the City, who will be thanking him for this Budget. They might be the people who think he is still smart about economic theory. I hate to tell him, but the only vanity that is burning right now is his own, on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and all the other newspapers in which I read this morning that one Tory Back Bencher, who remained nameless—I cannot think why he wanted to remain anonymous—said:

“Everybody was saying George is a great economic strategist and political strategist and how unique he is to have both skills: that is going to be questioned. In fact, colleagues already are.”

More important, this Budget was a watershed because it gave the lie, once and for all—[Laughter.] The laughter indicates that Government Members are not worried about this in any way, shape or form. However, the Budget gave the lie to the notion that we are all in it together in this country in a period of austerity, because after this Budget we clearly are not. Clearly after this Budget, the old Tory order is restored and some people in our society are, in their view, more equal than others.

The themes the Chancellor sought to pursue in his speech were that his Budget would be simple, predictable and fair—that was how he described it just a couple of days ago. This morning, the Institute for Fiscal Studies described it as a “hotch-potch” of reforms that

“may turn out to be less fiscally neutral than intended”.

It is hard to disagree with that conclusion from the independent IFS, because everywhere one looks in the Budget one finds measures that are mis-described, such as the tax increase on pensioners that is described as a simplification, and outcomes that are overstated. We have heard a lot today about this being a Budget for business, but according to the OBR, it is resulting in a 0.7% reduction in business investment this year, which is down 7% on the anticipated volume of business investment over the past year.

Crucially, numbers have been massaged throughout the Budget or just plain made up—guessed at—on the basis of Arthur Laffer’s famous cocktail napkin curve. I am afraid that the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) will find that numbers in the Budget will fall apart.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

In a moment.

Those numbers are absolutely crucial to the debate because they are crucial to the claims of fairness and fiscal neutrality. The key number is that relating to the 50p rate costing only £100 million, because the OBR endorses HMRC’s findings. That is what the Government estimate will be the long-run annual cost to the Treasury of cutting the 50p rate. The Chancellor swept the number aside the other day as though it were nothing, just as he swept aside with an imperious flourish of his hand the £1 billion that we actually saw going into the Exchequer in the first year of the 50p rate.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Owen Smith and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

That might be a good idea.

I wanted to speak tonight because the Bill is such an important piece of legislation. It is one of the real key, signature pieces of legislation from this rather less progressive coalition Government at Westminster, and I feel that all Members, wherever they hail from, should address these issues.

It has been interesting to watch Government Members throughout today’s debate, because on the faces of some there has been surprise at the volume of opposition from Labour Members and at the passion that we have brought to the debate. That is because we feel that there are fundamental issues at hand, including not just the way in which the Bill is being railroaded through with unseemly haste, but its content, and I shall address two levels of that concern.

First, we are concerned about the legislation’s immediate and practical impact. Our abiding concern is about the type of autonomy, the free-for-all, for academy schools, which will be cut free—“liberated”, I gather, is the phrase du jour from Government Members.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Having been the chairman of the board of governors at a grant-maintained primary school in the 1990s, I feel all the same arguments coming back from the Labour party. Is it not the case that the boot is on the other foot—that Labour Members’ opposition to the Bill is deeply ideological, as it was to grant-maintained schools and to the autonomy and power of parents? Essentially, the Labour party has never trusted, and does not today trust, people with the education of their own children.

[Owen Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and completely agree. This is a very familiar and, indeed, old debate, because from Government Members we have heard the warmed-up arguments of Thatcherism: effectively, the privatisation by stealth of our schools and education, and, coming up later in the year no doubt, a wholesale attack on welfare. The debate is familiar and ideological, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: my opposition is ideological, too, because I sincerely believe that we need local authorities—the state, in its benign form—to offer some control over our schools, so that we have equitable provision as opposed to the free-for-all that Government Members clearly think would be of benefit.