Housing Benefit (Wales)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am also delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the Welsh Affairs Committee on its report and its Chair, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), on the position that he has taken in the debate.

It is no surprise that, as we have heard, the Government’s housing benefit changes have hit the least well-off the hardest. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) was among those who made the point effectively that a greater proportion of housing benefit claimants have been hit by the bedroom tax in Wales than elsewhere. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) said that this is a “wicked” measure. I, and I think many who have contributed to the debate, share that view. The bedroom tax is certainly the most hated of all the Government’s changes.

The Minister might not be inclined to take as much notice as he should of the representations made by my hon. Friends the Members for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), but I hope that he will at least take notice of the views of the Social Liberal Forum, an organisation that he has been associated with. It says that the bedroom tax is

“easily the most disgraceful of all the Government’s welfare reforms.”

The Minister who, when in opposition, espoused a progressive position on social security will, in a few minutes, endeavour to defend this most regressive of changes, which is making a big contribution to the cost of living crisis being suffered by people in Wales.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) reminded the Committee that the Minister is a Liberal Democrat. I wonder whether the Minister can help us resolve a puzzle. It would be helpful to know what his party’s policy is on the bedroom tax, as that is a bit of a mystery. The president of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), spelt out a clear position in Inside Housing in February. He said that his party will be opposing the bedroom tax at the next election. He explained why:

“It’s creating more hardship, it’s wrong and unnecessary…it’s impacting on people and the most vulnerable. It’s also having an impact on housing associations—it means that they have less to invest in social housing.”

He is absolutely right about that and that is why, no doubt, the Minister’s party conference voted overwhelmingly against the bedroom tax last September in a motion that condemned it as discriminating against the most vulnerable in society. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) said that he has voted against the policy in the past. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister could tell us what his party’s position is on the bedroom tax. It rather looks at though it opposes it, but it does not vote against it. I hope that he can shed some light on that in this welcome debate.

The uniquely dreadful feature of the measure is that it cuts the income of people who are already hard up without giving them any options for making up the loss. We have heard in the debate that only 6% of those affected throughout the UK have been able to move; 94% are taking the hit. We pointed out in debates in the Welfare Reform Bill Committee three years ago that smaller homes for rent are simply not available in many areas. The Committee drew attention in the report, as its Chair did in his speech, to the particular difficulties in rural areas, with people reported as having to move 50 miles or so. Most people have therefore just taken the hit. Many of whom, as we have heard, are now in arrears and some who simply cannot afford the extra and—like the great majority—cannot find somewhere smaller to move will, in due course, lose their homes.

In Wales, the bedroom tax affects a larger proportion of claimants than in any other region and the Select Committee is right to draw that point to our attention. It affects 40,000 households, 62.5% of which are households with a disability. Some of the homes we are talking about have been specifically adapted to support their tenants’ needs. We argued, again in the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, that this pernicious measure should not apply to such homes to avoid the problem identified in Bron Afon Community Housing’s evidence, which is in the document before us today. Unfortunately, the Government rejected our proposed change and again rejected the idea of an exemption in response to the report. The Minister, in his intervention, at least hinted at some sympathy for that case and that, for homes with perhaps major adaptations, there should be some exemption. If he is able to encourage us that he might take that thought further, that would be welcome.

The Select Committee told us that local authorities have been asked to report on

“the number of awards that have been made to help with ongoing rental costs for disabled people in adapted accommodation.”

Will we be told how many disabled people in adapted accommodation will be refused discretionary housing awards? Can the Minister offer any reassurance to those affected?

We have heard about the survey undertaken by Rebecca Evans, the Member of the Welsh Assembly who has established that, in a survey of housing providers, the number of one-bedroom properties available was about 1% of those needed. The bedroom tax is simply a tax on people who are hard-up.

In some areas, larger properties are being left empty because smaller households cannot afford to live in them. That is another aspect of the waste being caused by this tax: good homes are being left empty. On Tuesday, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) brought another aspect to the House’s attention: panic rooms, which have been installed in some homes, reflecting the serious domestic violence problems that some people face. Such rooms are not exempted from the bedroom tax either. Surely it makes no sense to force people in that position to move, even if there was anywhere for them to move to.

For many, the bedroom tax has proved a hit too far on their household budgets. It has been one of the major drivers of the extraordinary increase we have seen in demand for food banks in Wales, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) rightly pointed out. Her survey showed powerfully just what a big increase there has been in the number of housing association tenants in rent arrears because of the introduction of this tax. She also calculated the loss to housing associations as a result of that.

In January, a loophole was discovered in the bedroom tax legislation that, in effect, exempted those who had held the same tenancy since 1996. This is a mess. The Government claim that only 3,000 to 5,000 people are eligible for a refund of their bedroom tax payments, but freedom of information requests to local authorities have already identified 23,000 who are affected and at least 1,800 of those live in Welsh local authority areas. Can the Minister give us an estimate of the cost of reimbursing tenants affected in Wales? That is, however, another reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said that it is likely that this measure will end up costing more than it was ever likely to save.

Labour’s policy, and I think the Liberal Democrats’ policy—it was at least its policy at its conference—is that the bedroom tax should be scrapped. We will continue to press the Government to scrap it and, if they do not, the next Labour Government certainly will.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

No, I will not. Labour cannot explain why it is right to say that private tenants have to pay for the size of the house that they live in, but that social tenants should not have to. Some suggestions were made about our views on excluding pensioners from the measure. They are generally excluded because, for example, expecting them to take work would be unrealistic. We have excluded pensioners for that reason, but it is pretty obvious why the Labour party wants to exclude social tenants, but not private tenants.

Someone said during the debate that we cannot both save money and make better use of the housing stock, but we are doing both of those things. The original estimated savings from the measure for the whole country of some £0.5 billion remains our expected order of magnitude. In addition, some people are moving to more suitable accommodation and freeing up accommodation for the people whose voice never gets heard—as has been said in the debate.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

No—I have only one and a quarter minutes left. Why did we not hear about the 13,000 people in Wales living in overcrowded social sector accommodation? Where was their voice in the debate? What about the people living in overcrowded private sector accommodation, or the 90,000 people on housing waiting lists?

There is a whole set of unmet housing need while we have people under-occupying social rented accommodation —through no fault of their own, so it is not a criticism of them, but it is a fact. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said that when people’s kids grow up, they should go on being able to live in a big family house, but what about the people who would love a big family house, but cannot get it because it is under-occupied? We have to help people with the transition, but that is why substantial additional DHPs have been found.

Finally, on the specific issue of adapted accommodation. We would have loved it had we been able to write a law in Whitehall that said, “This is adapted; this isn’t. Here is how we define it in an Act of Parliament or a statutory instrument. We will have a blanket exemption.” That would have been great. We looked hard, but we could not think of a national and consistent way of defining what it was. We therefore found the money instead—£25 million across Great Britain, which was our estimate of the cost of buying out the impact on substantially adapted properties. No one in the country living in a substantially adapted property who goes to a local authority should be turned away because there is not the money for DHP. We have given the local authorities the money, and that should not need to happen.

There is lots more that I would love to say, but I am constrained by time. I hope that I have been able to give some responses to the questions asked by the Chairman of the Committee.