Housing Benefit Entitlement

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) for this debate. We could be here for much longer, as is increasingly the case with our debates on these so-called reforms. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will not waste time pretending that the aim of the measure is to re-allocate social housing. There are other ways of doing that, and building more houses is one of the more important ones. However, the measure does not do that. If every local authority successfully reshuffled people in houses, almost certainly the same proportion would be on housing benefit, so there would be no saving. The Government have the saving in their budget, so it is not about that and they should not bother to pretend that it is.

A constituent who is in her 50s lives in a two-bedroom housing association house near the city centre, and has been there for six years. She has received a letter suggesting that she could take in a lodger. Her second bedroom is very much a single bedroom and very small. I do not know whether most people who support the measure ever go into the sort of houses that are being built. The kitchen is off the living room, which is fine for a family, but how does that work with a lodger who may be a stranger? Not only would she be sharing a bathroom, perhaps with a younger person whom she had never previously met, she would be sharing a kitchen off the living room. That is not even semi-practical, and my constituent was outraged at the prospect, but £50 from her benefit is very steep.

Many local authorities will do their best to help people, as will housing associations. They will look at the allocation policy to see whether they can make things easier, although they will merely be moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. They may manage to move some people, but the majority of homeless applicants are single people who will have to be housed in one-bedroom houses if they need housing benefit. Local authorities will be juggling one group of people with another. Even if some tenants in two-bedroom houses are moved into one-bedroom houses, homeless people who are waiting for one-bedroom houses but cannot be moved into those two-bedroom houses will wait even longer.

This week, I looked at what was available not just in my constituency, but throughout my city. Some 36 one-bedroom properties are advertised. The council and all the housing associations, bar two very small ones, advertise together. Ten of those properties are sheltered housing, and people who are not eligible cannot be housed in those houses, so that is 10 out of the way already. Another 11 properties are ground-floor flats, which are mostly allocated to people with what is called gold priority—top medical priority—for housing, because they are on the ground floor and if a ramp is necessary it can be put in.

Some people with gold priority may also be affected by the bedroom tax, which might be convenient, but the chances are that they will not. If we give those ground-floor flats to able-bodied people who do not need them, people who are waiting to get out of a third or fourth-floor flat for medical reasons will become angry. People frequently bend my ear about that if they think it is happening. People who must be moved because of the bedroom tax cannot be prioritised.

That leaves 15 houses available for let this week. A one-bedroom third-floor flat has attracted 110 online bids—that is not the total because paper bids can also be made—since last Friday. A one-bedroom first-floor flat in the city centre attracted 303 bids. Even a one-bedroom flat in a multi-storey building has attracted 35 bids. Those are active bidders, not people on a waiting list that might be described as not real. Those people are probably not yet affected by the bedroom tax, but the houses are simply not available. The real reason for the spiralling housing benefit bill is not under-occupancy of social housing; it is the huge expansion of the private rented sector and its high rents. That is what the Government should be addressing to bring down the housing benefit bill.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing the debate. This is indeed an important issue. This is the second debate on it this week to which I have responded. It is good to have the opportunity to put on record the response to a number of the issues that have been raised and to deal with the myths that are growing up around service personnel, but it is worth briefly setting this debate in context. Most of my remarks will be about the specific matter in hand, but it is almost being implied that the Government woke up one morning and thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could take some housing benefit off people?” It is important to understand why this is being done.

In the final year of the last Labour Government, every time the Government raised £3, they spent £4. The word “morality” has been used extensively in this debate. Borrowing money that we expect our children to pay back is not a progressive thing to do. Parents who go out and blow money on their credit card and say to the kids, “When you grow up, you can pay it off” would be regarded as irresponsible. That is what we have to deal with now. Whichever party had taken control in 2010—

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

No, I will not give way. Both parties set out deficit reduction plans, which involved spending cuts worth tens of billions of pounds. Public spending consists fundamentally of public sector pay and social security and tax credits—those are the two big areas. Both sides agree that public sector pay has to be held back, but benefits and tax credits also have to be part of the mix. Within the benefits budget, where could we have looked? Where is the low-hanging fruit? Where are the easy things to cut? Of course there is precious little of that. Housing benefit is a large part of the benefits budget and it has been rising fast, so is there an area in the housing benefit budget—

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

No, I will not give way. Is there an area in the housing benefit budget where we can save money and tackle some of our housing problems?

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Steve Webb]

I have said that I am not giving way. This is an area of the housing benefit budget where we can better manage the housing stock. Let me give a specific example. It has been said in this debate that for housing benefit not to cover a spare room is immoral; that is the tenor of what has been said. When Labour introduced the local housing allowance, private sector tenants did not get housing benefit for a spare bedroom. Where is the morality in saying to private tenants that they cannot have a spare room, when social tenants, who are paying a subsidised rent, can? They could be living next door to each other, and we are favouring the social tenant over the private tenant. Why should housing benefit not cover spare rooms for private tenants when it does for social tenants? It is simply not fair.

The second unfairness that we have to tackle is overcrowding. A quarter of a million households in England are overcrowded, and they have had no voice in this debate. They are trying to get family homes, and homes that they need. They are living in overcrowded accommodation—