Housing Benefit Entitlement

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing the debate, which gives Members the opportunity to highlight the abject failure and inherent contradictions that lie at the heart of the Government’s housing benefit reforms. Lord Freud, in response to hon. Members’ letters, suggests that the reforms are aimed at encouraging mobility within the social rented sector, at strengthening work incentives and at making better use of social housing. My response is clear: they don’t, they won’t and they can’t.

I will highlight, through constituents’ cases, how the policy is nothing more than a crude and naked attempt to place an ever greater burden on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities by slashing budgets. I get the sense that, as an abstract idea, reducing the welfare bill by cutting housing benefit to all the supposed scroungers living in houses far bigger than they need is a policy that will press all the Government’s public relations buttons. The problem is that we are not talking about abstractions; we are talking about families, people’s homes and perhaps forcing people to choose between food, heating and paying the rent.

I have 103 families affected, and I wish to race through three examples. One such constituent is accepted by the council as unintentionally homeless. She has a five-year-old child, is pregnant and is in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance. She could be a perfect example of the type of person whom the Government are seeking to characterise, stigmatise and castigate. Yet, when the local authority comes back to her, it is with an offer of a four-bedroom property, so her housing benefit will be reduced by 25%. That constituent and her young family will go from being homeless to facing extra financial burdens. In the long term, that means increasing her debt, so she faces possible eviction by the very people who gave her the house, because she cannot pay the 25% contribution required as a result of being given a property that was too big in the first place.

West Lancashire borough council, as the housing body, is, by its allocation policy, complicit in the inappropriate letting of properties. That allocation policy perpetuates the exact problem that the Government claim that they intend to solve by reforming housing benefit. If I were being kind, I could suggest that the case highlights the fact that social landlords and councils do not have the range of housing stock to meet the challenges that the Government are setting. People are making short-term decisions to put a roof over their heads and neglecting the long-term consequences of under-occupancy. Why is my constituent left to face the consequences of a decision that will be forced on her?

My second example is that of a disabled man living in a two-bedroom property—it was a three-bedroom property, but it was adapted. His daughter is in the armed forces, so he technically has two bedrooms empty. If he moves to a smaller flat—there are none available, by the way—the council will have to pay for adaptations to be made to the new flat, while removing the adaptations from the original flat to make it available for re-letting.

Another case involves a constituent who is separated. He has his children to stay on alternate weekends and midweek. The Government say they defend families and put them at the core of what they do, but this policy does not show that at all. The February 2012 impact assessment says:

“savings in Housing Benefit expenditure will only be realised in full if social tenants do not seek to move from the homes they are under-occupying”.

Rather than wanting people to move, the Government would prefer them, ideally, to stay where they are and pay the increased costs, even if they do not have the money.

This policy is absolutely unfair, and that has been shown by the contributions made so far. The Government are abjectly failing to offer people the range of accommodation or the jobs that would enable them to alter their situations. I do not call it fair when the Government place greater burdens on the most vulnerable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We need two things to solve the problem of youth unemployment. We need a strategy for growth, which was at the heart of the Budget put forward by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few weeks ago. We will continue to seek measures that will encourage business to grow, develop and create jobs in this country. Alongside that, we will continue to pursue measures, through work experience, the Work programme and other arrangements to support young people to make sure that they are as well equipped as possible to take advantage of those vacancies wherever in the United Kingdom they arise and wherever in the United Kingdom they live.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Last week, we launched the Work programme—the biggest single such programme that the UK has ever had. It contrasts with the number of confusing and sometimes prescriptive provisions offered previously. We are adopting a personalised and flexible approach, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) spoke about earlier. It will involve paying providers by results, which we have explained, and will give them the freedom to innovate. The Work programme will deliver, we believe, effective and cost-effective support to help claimants into sustainable employment.

[Rosie Cooper]

Rising fuel costs, 20% VAT, high inflation and cuts to the winter fuel allowance and local government budgets will all hit vital front-line services used by pensioners. I should be grateful if the Minister would explain to the pensioners of West Lancashire why the Government need a new material deprivation indicator to tell them what they already know—that the policies of this Conservative-led Government are hitting them over and over again?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

The hon. Lady is right that we did not reverse Labour’s planned cut in the winter fuel payment. What we did is reverse Labour’s planned cut to the cold weather payment, which pays £25 a week every time the temperature falls below zero—and we ended up paying more than £400 million to cold, vulnerable pensioners, which is money that the Labour party would not have spent.

Housing Benefit

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The housing associations throughout this country seek changes of tenure, changes of regime and an encouragement to develop the housing that this country desperately needs in every local authority area. I trust that that is what will happen. The coalition Government have set out their stall: we will build 150,000 new homes during the life of this Government. We agree that that is not enough, and we would like to see more. What we want to see is young people getting a foot on the housing ladder, moving out of rented accommodation and purchasing their own property. What has to change is that the applicable lending regimes of the banks, building societies and suchlike must enable people to get on the property ladder.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman comment on my local authority, West Lancashire borough council? It wanted to build a new civic centre, and in so doing said that it would build affordable houses and in the process knock down four good homes. While he is speaking about that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call Bob Blackman, who has four seconds left.