Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Robin Walker and David Nuttall

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that point, which I will deal with in more detail later. We do not want to get bogged down in arguments about this, that or the other. The fundamental point is that the coalition Government had to make savings in the welfare budget, and this policy has reduced the welfare budget, as I will explain. I think that deals with my hon. Friend’s point.

The widespread view before the last election was that the previous Labour Government had allowed the welfare budget to spiral out of control. The housing benefit budget typified this, as its cost had increased from £11.2 billion in 1997-98 to £20 billion in 2009-10. This meant that every household in my constituency, where hard-working taxpayers were themselves struggling to make ends meet, were paying £900 a year towards a benefit that, in some cases, was enabling others to live in accommodation that they could not afford to live in. That is the key point.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has talked about the importance of the availability of affordable housing and the fact that this Bill does very little to address that. Does he agree that one of the greatest problems with the failure of the Labour Government to deliver affordable housing was that so many working people were squeezed out of the socially rented sector? Council housing was originally designed for working people, but there are now very few areas of council housing that are available to them. Constituents come to see me about this in Worcester and say they think it is appalling that as working people they cannot access the social rented estate. Does he agree that Labour’s failure to deliver housing left us with a real problem in this country?

[Mr Nuttall]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes the right point. Many people who are priced out of the private rented sector would like to get into the social rented sector but are unable to do so. That boils down to the supply of affordable housing—there is no doubt about that.

To be fair, even the Labour Government realised that something had to be done about this increase in the cost of housing benefit. They introduced rules, which we have heard a little about this morning, that restricted the amount of housing benefit depending on the number of bedrooms a claimant needed. What is more, as the Minister said earlier, they also knew that it would be necessary to extend the plans to the social rented sector. When my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the previous Labour Government

“for what reasons the local housing allowance applies only to the de-regulated private sector”,

the Secretary of State replied:

“We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the private rented sector to enable people in that sector to benefit from the choice and flexibility that the reforms can provide. We aim to extend our reforms to the social rented sector as soon as rent restructuring and increased choice have created an improved market.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 1075W.]

Thousands of my constituents regard it as perfectly reasonable for tenants in the social rented sector to be treated in the same way as those in the private rented sector. It cannot be right for taxpayers in my constituency, who might love to live in accommodation with a spare bedroom, to be required to pay tax so that others in receipt of housing benefit can live in a property that they could not afford to live in.