Housing Benefit

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Stephen Mosley

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

It is an anti-family policy as well as an anti-disabled people policy.

The average hit per household is £14 a week, or £720 a year. It might not sound much to members of the Cabinet, but it is more than the cost of a daily school meal. It is almost the entire cost of feeding a growing child for a year, or equivalent to someone losing all their child benefit for a second child.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady honestly think that the founders of the welfare state intended it to be used by single people to live in two, three or four-bedroom houses while families are living in overcrowded flats?

[Rachel Reeves]

When a Labour Government introduced the welfare state it was a safety net for some of the most vulnerable people. The 400,000 disabled people who are going to be hit by the bedroom tax are exactly the people who Beveridge’s and Clement Attlee’s welfare state were designed to protect—and shame on you for taking that safety net away.

Many of the people affected by the bedroom tax have nowhere else to go and no choice but to take the financial hit, making impossible choices between feeding their children, paying the gas and electricity bills, and paying the rent.