Cost of Living

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Over the past few months, we have seen the spectre of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister on repeated occasions suggesting that everything is rosy and that hundreds of thousands of jobs are sloshing around. It is the old attitude of, “Crisis, what crisis?” Unfortunately, such a view is completely out of touch with the daily, lived experience of many of my constituents and thousands of others across Wales, who have seen one of the greatest falls in real average earnings—a staggering drop of £1,669, or 8%, since the general election, when this Government came to power. They see this Government as out of touch, patronising and complacent; they see a Government on the side of the rich, of millionaires and of banking and energy bosses, as we heard aptly demonstrated by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). It is Labour Members who are on the side of the British people, with solutions such as capping the cost of credit and payday loans, and freezing energy prices. These real measures would help the real lives that many on the Treasury Bench seem to have little understanding of.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does my hon. Friend share my incredulity that the price rises that the energy companies started to announce are being blamed on us because we announced our policy on an energy freeze?

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the energy price scandal has been going on for some time, and that the Government have done nothing to deal with it.

I welcome any growth and any new jobs in the economy, and I hope that any positive movement in the economy will help people in my area address the massive drop in earnings since this Government came to power. However, I caution that illusions are simply not good enough. The Government repeatedly fail to answer questions about how many new jobs are part-time and, of those, how many are on zero-hours contracts. They also do not say in what sectors those jobs are being created. The truth is that half the new jobs are in low-paid sectors, and that the minimum wage is not always being enforced.

When I hear the Chancellor crowing about recovery, I am always tempted to ask, whose recovery and what sort of recovery. Is it a recovery benefiting my constituents who are struggling to find well-paid jobs, to pay those soaring energy bills and to put food on the table for their children? Is it helping those who are struggling to cope with the bedroom tax? One well-known local Liberal Democrat member in Cardiff recently said in a tweet that she knew that it was difficult for some people, yet many Liberal Democrats proudly voted for the bedroom tax in this House the other night. It is not just difficult but increasingly impossible for many families across my constituency.

Let me share with the House three stories that I have come across recently. First—I hope that the hon. Member for Redcar is listening—one of my constituents came to me saying that his monthly direct debit to npower had been increased from £197 to £254 just after he had been reimbursed an overpayment. I contacted npower and found that that was on top of the price rise of 10.4%. For him, the rise is 28.9%, which is extraordinary. That is the sort of issue that is affecting people in the country. How will that man make ends meet over the next few months? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Redcar is chuntering from a sedentary position. As he does not seem to be interested, perhaps he would like to intervene and respond to that sort of example.

Under-Occupancy Penalty

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore]

Yes, indeed. Landlords will have quite limited choices. If they are not going to do anything about their modernisation programme, they will certainly be looking at their new build programme or at raising rents, which, again, affects all tenants. It is not true to say therefore that these issues affect only those who are directly affected by the bedroom tax.

If the bedroom tax means that less income is coming in and that there is less ability to start and fund new build programmes, it will not increase supply; it will do precisely the opposite of what Ministers have tried to claim that they want it to do. We really need to move away from this approach and to realise that it is not working. We have not only the arrears, but a whole administrative apparatus to help people who have run into arrears and to process discretionary housing payments and appeals for discretionary housing payments, which may have to be reprocessed every year or six months. That involves a cost that people did not have to meet before.

The glib answer is that discretionary housing payments are the solution, but they reduce savings, which is yet another reason for thinking this whole thing has been a bit pointless. Furthermore, people who have, by definition, been means-tested are now being given a further means test—that is what this comes down to—on their already low income to see whether they qualify for discretionary housing payments. The forms ask them about their expenditure and about whether they have Sky television or whether they smoke.

Things such as disability living allowance, which is specifically given to meet the costs of disability and illness are being taken into account in declaring that people can afford to pay the bedroom tax. People were never given DLA to pay their rent, and if they are using it to do so because they have been deemed to have enough income to meet the gap between their rent and the housing benefit that they receive, they are not spending their DLA on their disability. Having a second tier of means tests is quite unacceptable. I talked about outside toilets, and we are back in the 1930s again with this issue; we are back with the means-test officer telling people that they really did not need the sideboard or the record player they had had for some years, because they were too poor.

[Stephen Doughty]

Or we have the Minister, Lord Freud, telling split-up families that the kids should share a sofa bed—that is the type of perversity being suggested by Ministers, and that is the means-testing culture that we are getting into. That is a sad message for a Minister to send out.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend.

We must never forget the personal picture and the difficulties involved. One constituent is a cancer patient, although he is, fortunately, recovering. He has a two-bedroom house—nothing terribly big—and his three children come to him every weekend. One suffers from autism, which creates difficulties if the children have to share a room. My constituent wrote to the Prime Minister asking what he should do, and the Prime Minister said, “Apply for a discretionary housing payment.” Well, my constituent has, of course, applied for a discretionary housing payment, and he has been refused. He appealed, and he has been refused. I am not quite sure what he is expected to do next, other than to fall into rent arrears, which is what is happening. He is worrying about that, which probably is not helping his recovery. Alternatively, he could move, which will make it virtually impossible for him to have his boys to stay, which cannot be right.

I hope that we all agree that we want to increase the housing supply and particularly the affordable housing supply, so we have to agree that the bedroom tax is simply the wrong way to do that. It starts at the wrong end, and it is not resolving the problem, for all the reasons that have been given. If we really want to improve housing supply, we have to do two big things. One, obviously, is to invest in it, and the other is to allow local areas to decide on the appropriate way to address their problems. There will be differences; I have described how different my city is from some places in the north-east of England, which face quite different issues. We therefore need to allow local knowledge and local planning to come into play, but that is not happening with the policy that is being imposed.

Finance Bill

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Sheila Gilmore

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

And Scottish farmers, I am sure, and so on.

A mansion tax—I think my colleagues on the Front Benches would agree—is about residential property, not business property, which is already taxed in various ways. Obviously, a whole raft of taxes are appropriate for businesses, and that would be the best way to deal with the issue, rather than a mansion tax. If a mansion tax is a way of ensuring that we can appropriately tax wealth, we should consider it very seriously, given that it is probably a better basis for taxation than income, which people can move around—I have yet to see a house be dragged offshore. That may not be impossible, but in this country we generally do not put houses on wheels and move them, unlike in the United States—at least, so we see in the movies. A mansion tax would be a way to help the low-paid, through the introduction of the 10p rate.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has made a strong speech so far, but is she—as I am—completely bemused by the position of the Liberal Democrats? In February, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“My approach is simple: taxes on mansions; tax cuts for millions.”

It is more like no taxes on mansions and tax cuts for millionaires.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I suspect that that policy got lost in the negotiations that are part of a coalition. I have also heard the Deputy Prime Minister say that he would flex his muscles on all kinds of issues, the most recent being the number of children that could be cared for. The Deputy Prime Minister was keen to tell the country that he had flexed his party’s muscles and prevented that change from being introduced, but he has not flexed them on the mansion tax. Either it is possible for the junior partner in the coalition to flex its muscles successfully or it is not. There are other areas in which the Liberal Democrats have seemingly not thought it necessary to use the muscle they claim to have.

In relation to the mansion tax we will doubtless hear a lot about income-poor people—how will they be able to afford it? Would we expect them to sell their homes or move elsewhere? We cannot have that debate, however, without talking about the bedroom tax. A constituent of mine is 59 and has recently been made redundant. She is looking for work, but with a retirement age of 63 she will not easily find another job. She has been living in her home for 18 years, but it has a relatively small single second bedroom. The kitchen opens off the living room, which militates against taking in a lodger—one of the things people have been advised to do. Her current income is less than £72 a week. From that, she is paying £14 towards her rent as a result of the bedroom tax. That is a significant proportion of her income.

My constituent does not want to leave her home, as she has put a lot of effort into it and she lived there with her husband until she was widowed about four years ago. She has looked into the possibility of moving, but there is a shortage of one-bedroom homes in the city. Two weeks ago, 23 one-bedroom homes were advertised—the total from all the social landlords in the city, the housing associations and the council. Those homes attracted varying numbers of applications, but the lowest was 45 and the highest was 370. Four had more than 200, and another seven had between 100 and 200. My constituent’s prospects of being rehoused are, therefore, not great. Our city also has a large number of people waiting for this kind of housing who are living in expensive private rented housing or temporary accommodation that costs far more in housing benefit than the rent being charged to my constituent.

People like my constituent are being asked to make some serious sacrifices, and they do not have an easy choice. It is not easy to downsize, because there is nowhere to downsize to—