Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Russell Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we have the opportunity for this debate. I would actually have preferred another debate, though; on 2 April, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions published a report entitled “Support for housing costs in the reformed welfare system”. As yet, however, we have not had the Government response.

It was interesting to hear the Minister say that various things had recently been published, given that we are still waiting for that response. You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Government are normally given two months to respond to a Select Committee report, and it has been a lot more than two months in this case. Every time the Government’s response has been chased up, we have been told that it is lost somewhere in government—I am not quite sure where. Of course, a Select Committee cannot apply to the Liaison Committee for a debate if it does not have the Government response. However, today’s debate gives me an opportunity to raise some of the points that the Work and Pensions Committee made.

The Committee did not call for the scrapping of the bedroom tax, although personally I would like it to be scrapped as soon as possible, and we called it the “social sector size criteria” to try to depoliticise the matter. However, we made important recommendations about how the worst effects of that pernicious policy could be mitigated. A lot of them were about exempting particular groups that have already been mentioned in the debate—such as carers, disabled people who need extra room and anyone living in a property that has had adjustments made to it, who would probably find it impossible to move.

The Minister gave the game away when he talked about discretionary housing payments. Groups of people such as I have mentioned were clearly not meant to be included in the bedroom tax when the policy was designed; the fact that they were to get discretionary housing payments indicates that they were not meant to be caught by it. However, discretionary housing payments are what they say they are—discretionary. They are not long-term.

In reply to my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, the Minister said that they had been extended to give families time to adjust, but the family that my hon. Friend mentioned cannot adjust—they need a house the size of the one they are in. A woman who has had a refuge built cannot adjust and move, because it has been specifically built for her. I cannot see why the Government persist in turning their face against sensible proposals for exemptions. They keep arguing that it is all right because people get discretionary housing payments, but those payments are not permanent. People need permanent provision for their adjustment.

The number of people across the country caught by the bedroom tax is quite staggering. In my constituency, where unemployment is really low, there are still 419 people affected by the bedroom tax. Across Aberdeen, where most people are in work—there is almost full employment —more than 1,600 are affected. The irony in such a place is that people are being forced out of a two or three-bedroom council house because of the bedroom tax, but the Government seem willing to pay even more through housing benefit in the private rented sector, because the rent on a one-bedroom house in that sector is higher than that on a three-bedroom council house.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I am sure that all Members will recognise that people are being driven out of the social rented sector into the arms of private landlords. I trust the figures given by my hon. Friend and her Committee more than the ones that the Government give. Has she seen a figure for the number of people who have been driven from the public rented sector into the private rented sector?

[Dame Anne Begg]

I am afraid I do not have that figure.