Housing Benefit

Debate between Richard Graham and Laura Sandys

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Laura Sandys]

My hon. Friend mentioned £21,000, but the average wage in the south-east is £17,000. The inflationary impact of housing benefit on those families has been huge.

My second point is that these rates have not seen an improvement in the housing stock. Some landlords are interested in the rental value rather than the capital appreciation because that gives them such a high return on their investment. Investing in the properties and in the fabric of them is therefore not a priority.

The third issue is the extreme concentration of housing benefit claimants in pockets in my constituency. That problem was brought up by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) and for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott). We create micro-economies that attract a significant amount of housing benefit because property prices are so low and the return from housing benefit is proportionally high.

The current situation has fundamentally distorted housing in my area. The average wage in Thanet is £17,000 and housing benefits for the unemployed stand at more than £8,000 a year. Most working families cannot compete in that market.

[Richard Graham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the bizarre uses of the word “fair” during the whole debate has been the assumption that it is somehow unfair to people who are not working for them not to have better housing than those who are working? The whole point of this reform is to enable a level playing field in which people can live in the houses that they can afford from their work.