Autumn Statement

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some excellent housing associations have used private money and sold off some of the most expensive social homes in order to provide more resource for building more homes, which is precisely what we want to encourage. On the additional money in the housing revenue grant, which I know has been of particular interest to his party, we have said that that money should be available on a competitive basis to those councils that are going to work with housing associations, for example, to deliver the sort of innovative schemes that he champions.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Some of the predictions in the OBR report have not been mentioned today. One is an upgraded prediction on how much is going to be spent on certain benefits, such as employment support allowance, which by 2017-18 is going to be £2.1 billion higher than in the last prediction, and housing benefit, which is going up by £1.8 billion—again, higher than the previous estimate. Quite apart from the misery caused by things like the bedroom tax, these welfare reforms are simply not working. When is the Chancellor going to ensure that his Government get a grip on that problem, rather than let those bills spiral? Given these predicted rises in spending, it is going to be very difficult to put a cap on welfare.

[Mr Osborne]

Although the hon. Lady put her question in quite a partisan way, she hits on a very good point. There are sometimes big increases in welfare spending that are not subject to the kind of control that we in this House exercise on much smaller sums in Government Departments. Precisely because of the forecast increases in employment support allowance and housing benefit, it is right for us to bring those issues to the House and discuss them. It is a bit wrong-headed to complain on the one hand that housing benefit is going up too much while on the other hand campaigning to increase housing benefit. No doubt we will be able to have a fuller debate when we introduce the welfare cap.