Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend characteristically puts in a couple of sentences the main point that I am making, and he does so extremely well.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman rightly says that we all have constituents in accommodation such as sheltered housing, and he knows that all Members, irrespective of their party, care about our constituents. Will he dissociate himself from the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) that Conservative Members, in seeking to bring forward changes, do not care, because we do?

[John Healey]

It is down to the hon. Gentleman and his Front-Bench colleagues to demonstrate that case to those who are watching the debate, and especially to the people whose homes and lives are at risk.

As I said, every Member of the House has constituents who are threatened by the Chancellor’s crude housing benefit cut. In the Minister for Housing and Planning’s local authority area of Great Yarmouth, there are some 258 people in supported housing and at least 139 in sheltered housing. The numbers are even higher for Swindon and Tunbridge Wells. What do we say to these residents and their families? What do we say to the committed charities, churches, housing associations and other groups that provide such specialist housing and are so concerned?

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day).

I hope all Members agree that housing and homes are important. The security of a roof over one’s head—be it owned, or rented privately or socially—or of a place of succour and sanctuary, temporary or permanent, at a time of emergency, is important. For that reason, Labour’s position should be condemned. We have heard precisely what we are used to hearing from Labour. I have found this debate slightly annoying. I am annoyed not that the motion has been tabled—[Laughter.] If hon. Members would listen, they might hear a view that sheds some light on their prejudice. I am annoyed not that this important issue is being debated, but by the odour of smug hand wringing and crocodile tears from Labour Members.

Labour Members always purport to have a monopoly on caring. They believe that we are the nasty bunch—that we could not give a damn about anything. But we are not. As I said in an intervention on the shadow Minister, we all have constituents in sheltered housing and we all want to ensure the best provision for them. There is nothing kind or caring about trying to prop up an inflated and unsustainable welfare system.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is the ridiculous rents in many urban centres that are inflated? That is the private system. That is why housing benefit is out of control. It is not the social sector.

[Simon Hoare]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making the kernel of the argument for why a cap on housing benefit is important. The absence of a cap—of any control on housing benefit—has been the fuel to the fire of those who have sought to ramp up rents. A bottomless purse—a pit that always delivers the funding—provides the dynamic for higher rents. We believe that a cap will act as a brake on this runaway train.

Whenever a welfare reform is proposed, the default position of many Opposition Members is to say no. It is their eternal cry, the golden thread running through their political approach. As we have heard from my hon. Friends, Labour has not supported a single welfare reform. It has learned no lessons from last May’s general election.

[Marie Rimmer]

These schemes have demonstrated clear success in providing a better quality of life for residents and delivering better social care and health outcomes. Failure to provide these schemes in the future will put greater pressures on health and social care services, as housing providers will not be able to deliver good quality independent living places. That means people going back to residential settings, old folks’ homes, languishing in hospital beds—

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. The hon. Lady’s interventions are very long, and this is a time-limited debate.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady speaks with enormous passion, and I understand that. Of course, service providers want some certainty, and the pressing of the pause button announced by the Government today will be welcomed, but what has added precious little certainty to providers seeking to make short, medium and longer-term financial commitments has been Labour Members’ panic-stricken shroud waving. They have been trotting round the country desperately trying to stoke this up for party political advantage.

[Jess Phillips]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

I can never resist the hon. Lady. The hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) is passionate about this issue, but the hon. Lady exceeds her.

[Jess Phillips]

Will the hon. Gentleman recognise that it is not shroud waving? In this term and the last one, the Government exempted this group from every single one of their welfare reforms, having been forced to do so by alleged shroud waving. We are not saying no to the reform; we seek only an exemption for this group.

[Simon Hoare]

As the hon. Lady will have heard, as did we all, that was the point made by my hon. Friend the Minister when he referred to gathering the evidence, talking to experts and then producing a policy in due course. In all seriousness, I would hope that the hon. Lady could draw some comfort and satisfaction from that. She can put her shroud away, contain herself for a few moments and the debate can go on.

On the subject of service providers, I have spoken to all the housing associations covering my constituency. I hope I will not be misquoting them if I characterise their response as follows—things change; systems and procedures change from time to time. New policies usually present new challenges, but my housing associations are saying, “We will meet them. We will reform, change and recast what we do—but the central core of our ethos, and why we are in business, will remain intact.” I think that is an important point to make.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), as shadow Minister—he is no longer in his place—had the absolute brass neck to accuse my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of putting politics before policy. If his speech did anything, it was precisely that. We heard the crocodile tears of, “We care for these people who need these sorts of homes.” We all recognise that, but it is shameful to drape the issue with the flag of party politics.

At the heart of what Her Majesty’s Government are doing is an attempt to provide fairness, equity and equality. In my judgment, it is absolutely right that social sector housing benefit should be capped to mirror that of the local authority level—the same rates as those in the private sector. The reforms seek to align those two sectors and, as I said to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), to prevent private social landlords from artificial rent inflation. On the Conservative side, we care about getting this right, about fairness for taxpayers and about quality provision of housing. What we do not care for is the shroud waving, the hand wringing and the crocodile tears of Labour Members.

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[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I have listened to all the speeches that have been made by Conservative Members today, and have found myself wondering whether some of them are attending the right debate. If they consult the Order Paper, they will see that this debate is about supported housing. It is not about housing bills or taxation; it is about a very specific, vulnerable group of people.

We keep being told to wait and see what the proposals are. Would it not have been sensible for the Government to work out the costs of their proposals and establish the issues involved at the outset, and then conduct a review before making their announcement? If they had conducted the review properly, they might have established that the proposals were counter-productive in both economic and moral terms. If they had done their homework first, we might not be having this debate.

To suggest that mine are crocodile tears are very unfair. I rarely cry, but when I do, my tears are real. I assure the House that Labour Members care about people, and we care about people because it is what the Labour party was founded for. As for the suggestion made by some Conservative Members that social housing organisations have pots of money and spend millions of pounds on campaigning, that is absolute rubbish. I have been contacted by a number of housing associations and charities that look after vulnerable people in my constituency, and I assure Members that they do not have money to waste on campaigning. I have visited those places and I know what happens there.

Let me enlighten the House. At least three organisations in my constituency are doing valuable work. The main provider of social housing is Bolton at Home, whose representatives have contacted me—and I speak to them regularly in any event—to say that thousands of children will be made homeless, as well as hundreds of adults. Bolton at Home also provides supported housing, and it is important to remember what “supported housing” means. It means support for the vulnerable, the disabled, the elderly, those with mental health issues, and the young. The suggestion that turfing them out of their supported housing will enable the Government to economise and cut costs is absolute rubbish, because the state will then have to pick up an even bigger tab.

Another organisation in my constituency, St Vincent’s Housing Association, is a charity which runs a secure unit for about six adults. It relies on housing benefit to look after those people, who have mental health and drug problems. They are extremely vulnerable. If they are put on the streets, they will probably commit crimes and end up in the courts or in prison, and that will cost the state even more money.

Emmaus runs a “companions” system. It, too, looks after vulnerable people, using housing benefit to support them. I do not understand why the Government seem to think that their proposed cuts will save money. In fact, they are counter-productive.

[Simon Hoare]

In the words of the late Ronald Reagan, “There you go again.” The hon. Lady seems to be suggesting that she has a monopoly on understanding. Does she not accept that Conservative Members also talk to service providers in our constituencies, and also know what is going on?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Sometimes I genuinely struggle with the question whether some Conservative Members either care or are bothered. If you were really concerned about disabled and vulnerable people, you would have spent your five-minute speech talking about them, rather than criticising Labour Members for raising this issue and accusing us of shedding crocodile tears. I do not know how many times you used that phrase.