Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Debate between Pete Wishart and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Obviously, young people who lack skills and qualifications are more likely to struggle in the labour market, but our black and minority ethnic young people are also experiencing disproportionately high rates of unemployment. Our looked-after young people have the poorest job prospects of all. Just one in three care leavers is likely to be employed nine months after leaving school.

The point is that many of the young people furthest from the labour market, and certainly those at greatest risk of long-term unemployment, face complex barriers. It is not just a case of, “Here’s a job, get on with it.” The compulsory jobs guarantee does not address these complexities at all. Indeed, it would make unemployed young people wait a year before they get an offer of a work opportunity, and that offer would be made with the threat of benefit sanctions held over their heads like the sword of Damocles. I do not think anyone objects to sanctions that are proportionate and fair—everyone who is fit for work should be willing to take a job if it is offered—but that is not going to overcome the challenges facing many of the people at the greatest risk of long-term unemployment.

We have seen the impact of poorly applied sanctions in the food banks in all our communities. The young people I have met in my constituency—kids with learning disabilities, literacy problems, impaired speech or movement or chronic health issues, or kids who have just had wretched early lives—all want to work, but it is not always straightforward to help them to find work, to make themselves attractive to employers or even to understand that they have something valuable to offer. In that regard, I pay tribute to the teachers in our schools and to voluntary organisations such as the Prince’s Trust and Theatre Modo, which are working in my constituency to help vulnerable young people.

We were talking earlier about the failure of the Work programme in Scotland and the need for that responsibility to be devolved as soon as possible. The same applies to other aspects of employment support, as was recommended by the Smith commission.

[Pete Wishart]

Is it the case that the more powers the Scottish Parliament has, the more we can do for the people of Scotland?

[Dr Whiteford]

That is right. The commission has shown that the opportunity for joined-up working between public, private and voluntary sector employers—our schools, colleges and local authorities working in partnership with the Government and being empowered by Government initiatives—is there already and has been shown to work in providing opportunities for all. We need the powers to tackle youth unemployment, and we need them now. The sooner they are devolved, the better.

Housing Benefit

Debate between Pete Wishart and Eilidh Whiteford

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I have a very simple message for the Government in today’s debate. Six months after its introduction, their bedroom tax is driving up rent arrears across Scotland; it has caused immeasurable distress to low-income families; and it has created financial problems for local authorities and housing associations. What it has manifestly not done is meet its objectives: it has not tackled overcrowding; it has not delivered better use of housing stock; and it has not saved taxpayers any money at all. In Scotland, 82,500 households are affected by this policy, and 80% of them are the home of a disabled adult.

The Government seem to think that it is okay to take money out of the pockets of some of the most disadvantaged people in our communities—but it is not okay. It symbolises just how out of touch the Government are with the values of decent people in Scotland and elsewhere who recognise that this is a profoundly unfair and iniquitous measure.

Most social housing tenants have a lot less choice about where they live than the rest of us, and they are already living in the cheapest housing available to them. Across Scotland, 60% of tenants need a one-bedroom house, but only 27% of the social housing stock is one-bedroom accommodation, so there is a fundamental structural mismatch that cannot be fixed by crude social engineering. There are simply not enough smaller houses to go round, and I do not believe that it is right to punish the poorest tenants for the structural problems of our housing stock supply.

We have seen significant hikes in arrears over the past six months. According to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, all but one of Scotland’s local authorities have reported increases in arrears that are attributable to the introduction of the bedroom tax, yet relatively few tenants have moved house. Given that eight out of 10 households are affected by disability, that really should not surprise us, because people do not want to move away from their family and their support networks. More than that, they do not want to leave their home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) eloquently put it.

We have heard that the Government’s idea of fairness is to bring housing benefit in line with the local housing allowance available to private sector tenants. I put it to the Government that that is a flawed premise and a false comparison. Social housing is allocated not on a market basis, but is prioritised on the basis of need. Most social landlords operate systems that take account of a range of factors when allocating tenancies, so that the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and low-paid people in our society have a stable place to live. I understand that the Government want to cut the housing benefit bill, but squeezing half a billion pounds out of disabled tenants is the wrong way to achieve that.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend, as usual, is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that Scotland has been hit particularly hard because of the sheer quantity of socially rented housing that we have in Scotland?

[Dr Whiteford]

That is true, and we also have a disproportionate number of disabled people in social housing. That suggests to me that social housing is going to the people who need it. Those are the people who find it hardest to access the labour market.

When we look closely at the increase in the housing benefit bill over the past decade, we see that 31% of it—almost a third of the whole UK increase—is attributable to the city of London alone. By contrast, in Scotland, the total housing benefit bill has increased by 22% in inflation-adjusted terms over the past 10 years, while in the social rented sector, the increase has been only 6%. A 6% increase in 10 years is hardly out of control, but we know that rents in London are out of control. Why should disabled tenants in Scotland pay for a rental system in the private sector here that is completely out of control and eye-watering for anybody who has to rent a home?

To illustrate the point, although Scotland and London are estimated to have about the same number of people affected by the bedroom tax—around 80,000 each—this year Scotland has received only £15.25 million in funding for discretionary housing payments. That includes the extra rural funding. I am glad that the Scottish Government have topped that up to the very peak of their allowance under the current terms of the Scotland Act 1998, by putting in £20 million this year and next year to mitigate some of the worst impacts; but fundamentally, we need to scrap the policy.

People in Scotland did not vote for the bedroom tax. It is a nasty policy from a nasty party that they did not elect. It has been propped up by Liberals, who should know better. The Scottish Government have made it clear that, with independence, the bedroom tax would be confined to history. I commend them not just for their efforts to mitigate this policy, but for the other aspects of welfare reform—the protection that they have given to my constituents and others from the effects of council tax benefit increases and the welfare fund that people can access to deal with the impact of the loss of crisis loans.

I urge the Government this evening to admit that they got it wrong, accept that this policy is not working and is not doing what they intended and do the decent thing by repealing this toxic piece of legislation.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Debate between Pete Wishart and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

It is helpful to return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr Weir) about homes that have been adapted. We estimate that at least 16,000 homes in Scotland that are affected by the bedroom tax have been adapted. We are told by the Government repeatedly that an extra £50 million in discretionary housing payment has been allocated to local authorities to plug the shortfall in rent so that those in adapted homes do not have to move.

Let us do the sums. The additional discretionary housing payment amounts to only 6% of the total shortfall across the UK. In Scotland, it amounts to a paltry 4% of the shortfall. That means that even if Scotland’s entire discretionary housing allocation—not just the extra bit, but the entire allocation—was focused solely on those disabled people living in adapted homes, it would not cover the gap in tenants’ incomes left by the bedroom tax. This is a shameless attempt to penalise physically disabled people. They are being asked to carry the can for this dog’s breakfast of a policy.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does she not think that it is appalling that the architect of this pernicious tax, this equivalent of the poll tax, the Secretary of State, is not replying to this debate, but is leaving it to his Liberal apparatchik? The Secretary of State should get to his feet in this debate to defend this ridiculous tax. Why is he not doing so?

[Dr Whiteford]

I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment that the Government have not listened to the pleas of disabled people and carers’ organisations. The problem is that the policy has not been properly costed or thought through and will cause chaos, hardship and distress.