Housing Benefit

Sajid Javid Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend was right to point out that I was shocked to learn in the Select Committee that I had been homeless as a child. I believe, however, that the question is not so much one of the definition of homelessness as one of whether people living on housing benefit should be forced to make the same choices that other low-income working families are forced to make. Those low-income working families typically pay rent to the 30th percentile and their children are forced to share bedrooms, as they would be in any ordinary family. It should be no different for anyone on housing benefit.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend’s exchange was the most interesting one to come out of that Committee sitting, and he is right about this. I do not think that the previous Government intended these consequences; they simply failed to recognise that their change was going to fuel this growth. If they are honest with themselves, they would say that they know that. The ex-Chancellor actually said that he thought that this was out of control. These are the sort of choices that ordinary people have to make when they cut their budgets in accordance with what housing they can afford, and that is what we are trying to do here. It is not about punishing people; it is about trying to get the rents in the social area of private renting back into line with what people are paying who are working and earning marginal incomes and are therefore unable to make ends meet.