Steve Webb
Main Page: Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat - Thornbury and Yate)Department Debates - View all Steve Webb's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“notes the substantial structural deficit which was inherited from the previous Government and the need to get the nation’s finances back into shape; further notes the need to bring expenditure on housing benefit under control; further notes that the proposed reversal of this policy would cost the Exchequer around half a billion pounds a year; regrets any exaggeration and misrepresentation of the effects of the policy; recognises the inequality of allowing social tenants to receive benefit for a spare bedroom whilst denying this opportunity to private tenants; supports the Government’s action to deal with this unfairness whilst protecting vulnerable groups such as pensioners and providing substantial funding through Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities to support other tenants who would otherwise be adversely affected; further notes the Government’s continuing commitment to monitor the effects of the policy and the use of Discretionary Housing Payments; and welcomes the potential beneficial impact of this policy on those living in overcrowded accommodation and the 2.1 million families on waiting lists.’”
I begin by reasserting that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is meeting European leaders at a long-arranged summit to tackle the vital issue of youth unemployment. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) might not think that a priority use of his time, but we do.
The hon. Lady’s motion did not mention people living in overcrowded accommodation. Indeed, the voice of those in overcrowded accommodation has not been heard from the Labour Benches, and it is the coalition Government who are speaking for those people. This policy will help to address those long-standing needs.
Steve Webb
I will give way in a moment, but I want to make a little progress. Let me take the first line of the Labour motion and change one word so that it reads,
“this House regrets the pernicious effect on vulnerable and in many cases disabled people of deductions being made from housing benefit paid to working age tenants in the private rented housing sector deemed to have an excess number of bedrooms in their homes”.
The Opposition position seems to be that this is pernicious and evil when it affects social tenants, yet not merely acceptable but policy when it affects private tenants. There are two coherent positions: one is the Government position that asks anyone on benefits to contribute towards the cost of an extra bedroom, and the other is to state that anyone on benefits will receive housing benefit, regardless of the size of house they need; that would cost a lot of money but it would be coherent. The Labour party’s position is incoherent. It states that social tenants should not have to pay towards an extra bedroom, but that private tenants should. We have heard cases of people who need extra bedrooms, for example for dialysis machines. Social tenants need an extra room for that machine, but private tenants should have to pay for it. Surely some mistake.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
One of the strangest things in this argument about the private rented sector is that during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill I never once heard the Government mention it—it is one of those later justifications. The problem is that people in the private rented sector were not suddenly told one day, “Your house is too big; you have to start paying for the extra rooms regardless of whether you can move.” That is a huge difference and the two things are not comparable. If we want to talk about equalising, perhaps we should equalise rents.
Steve Webb
I am interested that the hon. Lady mentions rents, because if we compare private and social tenants, she is saying that social tenants, who already benefit from subsidised rent, should not have to pay for an extra bedroom, whereas private tenants paying a market rent should pay for it. That does not seem fair to me.
Steve Webb
I will give way in a moment. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Leeds West, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) pointed out something that has not hitherto been flagged up—Labour’s intention to extend the principle of the local housing allowance to social tenants. Let me quote Hansard from January 2004 when the late Malcolm Wicks stated:
“We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the private rented sector…We aim to extend our reforms to the social rented sector as soon as rent restructuring and increased choice have created an improved market.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 1075W.]
Interestingly, the Labour party planned to do that, yet when this Government do it, suddenly it is somebody else’s problem.
John Hemming
From what the Minister has said, the Labour party was quite happy to have a bedroom tax, not just in the private sector but also in the social rented sector as soon as rents had gone up.
Steve Webb
I congratulate my hon. Friend on drawing the House’s attention to the Labour party’s plans. Not only did the Labour party invent the principle of paying for an extra bedroom, it intended to extend it.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
What research did the Government do into the flexibility of the housing market, in both the private and public sectors, before introducing this policy? Was it a case of introducing the policy now, researching it next year, and reporting on it in 2015?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the flexibility of the housing market because to hear Labour Members one would imagine the market was static. When they talk about the availability of one-bedroom properties—someone said a moment ago that there were 10 available or something—those are empty one-bedroom properties. If one looks, for example, at social housing swap websites, significant numbers of social tenants are looking to free-up small properties and exchange with those looking for family-sized accommodation. There is plenty of evidence of fluidity. Tens of thousands of social tenants move house every year; this is not a static market.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The Minister said that we are ignoring the potential benefits of his policy on overcrowded accommodation. Will he tell the House why his amendment includes the words “potential beneficial impact” and say how many people have been helped to date?
Steve Webb
I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman refer to overcrowding, because strangely that was an omission from the Labour motion. It is almost as if the voice of the overcrowded has not been heard. To give him a sense of scale, based on the English house condition survey we estimate that more than a quarter of a million households in social accommodation are overcrowded. Census data, which offer a different definition, suggest there are getting on for 400,000 overcrowded households. The research the Government are undertaking as the policy is rolled out will monitor the extent to which people are trading down and moving from overcrowded accommodation, and the extent to which they take jobs, take in lodgers or use discretionary housing payments. People can respond to the policy in a whole raft of ways, but the idea that we can have hundreds of thousands of people in overcrowded accommodation while there are free spare bedrooms does not seem fair.
Mr Ellwood
There is a sense of déjà vu in this debate because we discussed this issue in 2008 with reference to the private sector. Going back to 2008, one major problem is the lack of housing stock and new builds. Just 30% of new houses are single dwellings, although the demand for that is 60%. Does the Minister agree that that imbalance needs to be addressed?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right. Labour Members say there is a mismatch between housing stock and housing need, but who was doing the house building for 13 years? Why do we have that mismatch? On the volume of social housing construction, I was shocked when I saw that in many years of the previous Labour Government, fewer than 25,000 new units of social housing were built per year. Even in these difficult economic circumstances, the coalition Government are already building more social housing every year than in most years of the Labour Government, and that will only increase.
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right. The level of new housing association properties built was well below 25,000 in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The Government are already building well over 25,000 social houses a year, and have further plans for expansion.
Emily Thornberry
The hon. Gentleman began his contribution by talking about overcrowding, which is something Labour feels very strongly about, certainly in my borough. Part of the problem, however, is empty nesters—elderly people whose families have grown up. If the principle behind the bedroom tax is to free up homes and move people to smaller units, why does it not apply to pensioners?
Steve Webb
I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is encouraging us to apply the policy to pensioners.
Emily Thornberry
The hon. Gentleman will be surprised to hear that I am doing my job and probing the Government to find out the purpose of this policy. He began with the justification of dealing with overcrowding—something I feel very strongly about after what I have seen in my surgeries—but my borough authority has always had a policy of speaking to people as they retire, and encouraging them to move onwards, not doing this.
Steve Webb
At least an Opposition Member is talking about overcrowding, which is a start—we might be making progress. The hon. Lady is right that we need to do more to assist and support older tenants to move into more suitable accommodation. One thing we have discovered in the course of doing that work is how little many social landlords knew about their tenants. We were shocked to discover that. Part of the process is social landlords engaging with their tenants and helping them to move to the right sort of accommodation.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned the mutual exchange service, otherwise known as HomeSwapper. Is he aware that 56,000 one-bedroom properties, 147,000 two-bedroom properties and 104,000 three-bedroom properties are available?
Steve Webb
We often hear from Opposition Members the refrain, “There aren’t the properties,” but my hon. Friend has exploded that myth. Significant numbers of people want to move from one-bedroom properties to two-bedroom properties, and from two-bedroom properties to three-bedroom properties. That will be facilitated by our measure.
Steve Webb
I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy).
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—it is characteristically generous of him, particularly because he knows my past record and that I have been unable to give my support to his policy. I have a specific question on how the policy will develop. The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recommended some time ago that communities of fewer than 3,000 people could be exempted from the impact of the policy. I represent the largest geographic constituency in Britain, and that question is of great interest to the Highland council welfare committee. Will he please look at it?
Steve Webb
My right hon. Friend and his hon. Friends have been effective in lobbying for the needs of remote rural communities. That is why we specifically made available this year an additional £5 million, focused exclusively on remote rural communities, which face difficulty because of the distance people might have to travel to alternative accommodation. I hope that that Government decision this year has helped to address those concerns.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
What solution does the Minister suggest for a Hebridean island where there are 105 houses, 50% of which are single occupancy, but only 20% of which have one bedroom? If people live on such islands, what is the solution?
Steve Webb
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was listening a moment ago when I referred to the specific additional funding we have allocated to remote rural areas to respond to that problem.
Philip Davies
Does the Minister agree that the spare room subsidy is one reason why we do not have the right mix of housing? Social housing providers could build houses as big as they wanted, knowing that the Government would cover the full bill irrespectively. In that respect, does he deplore the social housing provider in my area, of which a Labour MP is a director? It complains on the one hand that it has too many three-bedroom houses—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Just to help hon. Members, we need shorter interventions. Many hon. Members wish to speak and the matter is important to all our constituencies, so we need short interventions.
Steve Webb
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, but my hon. Friend raises an important point on the responsibility of social landlords to build housing stock to meet the needs of local people. For too long under the previous Government, that did not happen.
My hon. Friend made the point that some social landlords have worked the system. One or two hon. Members have shouted, “No, that cannot be the case,” but I want to refer to the oral evidence given by Fife council to the Scottish Affairs Committee. Fife council saw the arrangements as a nice little earner. Apropos of two-bedroom properties occupied by a single person, Fife council said:
“we have under-occupied them to maintain an income from them”.
It also stated that the
“progress that we had made in maintaining our income by allocating properties with perhaps a spare bedroom is under risk now.”
I do not apologise for that. The purpose of housing benefit is not to subsidise social landlords who are using the system; it is to help people who are in need.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
The extra money that the Government have given to sparsely populated councils for discretionary housing payments has been welcome. It has helped Argyll and Bute in particular and other sparsely populated councils. Can my hon. Friend give me reassurances that it will continue in future years?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend has been a doughty campaigner for his rural constituency. I cannot commit the Government to a further £5 million—that is the amount allocated this year for remote rural areas—but I am aware that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury tends to be quite sensitive to the needs of remote Scottish constituencies.
Let me address the amendment, because the shadow Secretary of State did not mention the state of the nation’s finances—she used to be an economist, so I am surprised she did not mention the subject. The context of the debate is a deficit in 2009-10 in excess of £150 billion a year. The previous Government were spending £4 for every £3 they raised in taxes—that was not investment for the long term, but borrowing money to pay today’s bills. There is nothing progressive or fair about asking our children to pay the costs of current spending to benefit ourselves. That is why the context needed to be addressed.
Steve Webb
I am going to make progress.
The deficit was £150 billion. How can we address that? The biggest area of public spending is the Department for Work and Pensions. More than half of that budget goes on pensioners and pensioner-related benefits, which we had pledged to protect. That meant that a very substantial budget—the working-age welfare budget—had to be addressed. The biggest income-related benefit is housing benefit. The biggest group of housing benefit recipients comprises social tenants. We are told that the Labour party would have sought to address the budget deficit, but if we are looking to do so, housing benefit for social tenants must be looked at. If we have to make savings in that, where do we do it? We look at spare rooms in the social housing sector.
However, some people legitimately have a need for an additional room or should not be asked to move. The issue of adapted accommodation was raised. We could have dealt with adapted accommodation in two ways. First, we could have written in a long, complicated statutory instrument what is and is not adapted accommodation. Clearly, just a hand rail would not constitute adapted accommodation and a whole extension probably would, but what about the properties in the middle? Given that there are often no records of how much has been spent on adaptation, trying to write that into the law of the land would not have been an effective way to help those in need.
We therefore decided that we would estimate the cost of protecting those with substantially adapted properties—our estimate was £25 million—and allocated the money to local authorities to assist those in need. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) says that it is not enough. Last year, we were told, if I remember rightly, that the discretionary housing payments we had made available for other housing benefits changes were “not enough,” but, at the end of the year, local authorities repaid to the Government £10 million of unspent discretionary housing payments.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I can absolutely guarantee that the Minister will not be getting any of his money back this year from any of the local authorities, and certainly not from Manchester. My constituency has among the highest number of people affected by the bedroom tax in the country. The money is fast running out, if it has not already run out, because there are far more people with adapted homes than there is money to go around. I can guarantee that he will not be getting any money back from Manchester city council this year.
Steve Webb
We have estimated £25 million to cover adapted properties. The hon. Lady might have better statistics than the Government on adapted properties, but I suspect that the default position of Labour Members is to say, “It’s not enough; it should be more.”
Let me address the issue directly to respond to the hon. Lady’s point. In 2012-13, we made available £60 million of discretionary housing payments. This year, we have trebled that amount to £180 million. That money is what we might call hard cash for hard cases—the cases to which hon. Members have referred. I say this sincerely to hon. Members: those who raise individual cases should be holding their local authorities to account. The Government have given local authorities the money to help people in need. In fact, we have gone further. Within year, we have allocated an extra £20 million for local authorities to bid for. If they have exhausted, or if they anticipate exhausting, their discretionary housing payments budgets, they can come to the Government for a top-up. So far, barely a dozen local authorities have asked for additional funding.
The hon. Member for Leeds West mentioned the strain being putting on her local authority’s discretionary housing payment. Leaving aside the fact that Leeds has an extraordinarily low rate of home swaps—in other words, is the local authority doing the right thing by its tenants?—it has not asked the Government for a share of the £20 million. If Leeds is so cash-strapped for DHPs, why has it not asked us for the money it says it needs, rather than turning away people it thinks are vulnerable?
Robert Flello
The Minister talks about cash-strapped authorities. Stoke-on-Trent has been the third hardest hit by cuts every year and simply cannot mop that up. He made a point about swaps. In Stoke-on-Trent, approximately 11,000 people are on the waiting list. Where are the one-bedroom flats? Where are the two-bedroom places? They do not exist in Stoke-on-Trent. Will he tell me where they are?
Steve Webb
The hon. Gentleman misses the point. He mistakes the issue of empty properties for properties that are currently accommodated. The social housing swap website indicates tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people in smaller properties who want to trade up, while people in larger properties want to trade down.
In response to the hon. Member for Manchester Central, I am rather startled by this figure, but it appears that last year Manchester local authority sent back to the Government £595,000 of unspent DHPs.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and his colleagues for the extra allocation of money. My local authority has bid for an extra £600,000, which I hope it will receive. I supported the motion at the Liberal Democrat conference arguing for changes in this policy. [Interruption.] I will take no lessons from Labour Members. Will my hon. Friend look at exempting those who have applied and are eligible for a smaller property, and are waiting to be allocated?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for referring to our policy motion, which is a darn sight better than the one we have been asked to consider by the Opposition. The Government are addressing many of the elements in our conference motion. For example, the motion calls for
“an immediate evaluation of the impact of the policy”
which we are undertaking, and
“A review of the amount allocated to local authorities for the Discretionary Housing Payment Fund”.
Lucy Powell
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister incorrectly gave figures for last year—the bedroom tax was introduced only in April. I was talking about money that will come back this year. I can guarantee that the Minister will not be getting any money back from Manchester this year—the year of the bedroom tax.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We do not need any help from those on the back row. That was not a point of order, but the hon. Lady has put her point on the record.
Steve Webb
I will come back to that in a moment.
I can assure my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) that we are addressing many of the points raised in the conference motion, not least because the motion congratulates our colleagues on their role in securing additional discretionary housing payments—something they can all be proud of.
The hon. Member for Manchester Central says that I referred to last year’s figures. I did, because we have not got to the end of this year yet. Last year, we stood here and other Opposition Members said about last year’s budget exactly what she has just said. We allocated DHPs for other changes to housing benefits. They said there would not be enough money, but at the end of the year substantial amounts were repaid.
Steve Webb
I have no idea what that gesture means, but last year we allocated just under £1 million to Manchester, of which more than £500,000 was repaid. This year we have allocated nearly £2 million to Manchester to address those concerns. If it finds that it is still short of cash, despite sending back £500,000 last year, we will of course consider an application to our top-up fund, which we have not so far received.
We have heard nothing from the—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. In fairness, a lot of people want to listen to this. All of our constituencies are affected and it is better if we all listen. The Minister has given way a lot. Hon. Members should indicate that they want the Minister to give way, but please accept it if he does not want to
Steve Webb
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am aware that a large number of hon. Members want to participate in the debate, so I will sum up the Government’s position.
The Opposition do not talk about the £150 billion deficit, because they are rightly embarrassed and are ashamed of the state in which they left our finances. They would have had to deal with the same deficit that we had to deal with, but we have no idea how they would have done so. The idea that they could reverse this change by finding £500 million from obscure corners is implausible. They could not raise anything like the sort of amounts they are talking about. We recognise that it is not appropriate to expect every person to move to a smaller property, which is why we have trebled the budget for discretionary housing payments. I say to Opposition Members and all my hon. Friends that if someone comes to see them with a legitimate reason not to trade down—they do not have an option to work, to take in a lodger, or to do the other things people do —the local authority should be asked to explain whether it has spent its cash and, if it has spent it, whether it has asked the Government for more cash. We can then have a conversation. Until that point, we need fairness between—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I said that hon. Members should indicate if they want to intervene, but do not continue to stay on your feet, Mr Burden. It is for me to judge and for the Minister to give way. Please do not take advantage of the situation. That is not good for this Chamber.
Steve Webb
We need action on overcrowding, we need fairness between social and private tenants and we need action on the deficit. Those are the things we need. The Labour party has no answer to those problems. The coalition has addressed them. I commend the amendment to the House.
Ian Swales
I worry that housing policy tends to be dictated from inside the M25. It becomes less appropriate the further away from the M25 that we go.
My constituency has a discretionary housing payments problem. The last figures that I have seen show that there were 1,307 applications, but that only 358 awards were made. That happened because the money ran out, not because the applications were inappropriate.
We also have a one-size-fits-all penalty in the calculation for the amount of the spare room subsidy. In my constituency, the cost of an extra bedroom is about £7, but people are penalised by about £11. Therefore, people who should move from a three-bedroom property to a two-bedroom property get less housing benefit than they would get if they were in a two-bedroom house, which is deeply immoral.
Like many hon. Members, I have campaigned on various issues. I am pleased to welcome the Government’s concessions on foster parents, serving military personnel and disabled children. I also welcome the trebling of discretionary housing payments, but there is a lot of unfinished business. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, made some good points. I would make a plea for the exemption of disabled adults. Children are exempt when they need separate bedrooms for medical reasons. Let us do that for adults, instead of making people go through the demeaning process of applying. In my local council, people have to apply every quarter, and the application form is deeply intrusive.
As the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) has said, many people are perfectly willing to move to right-size accommodation, but it simply does not exist anywhere in their area. In the north of England, we have a shortage of one-bedroom accommodation. In fact, some one-bedroom accommodation is being demolished in my constituency.
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is making a thoughtful speech. I assume that he has a Labour-run local authority. If it has told him that the money for discretionary housing payments has run out, will he ask it why it has not applied for our additional funding? It appears not to have done so.
Ian Swales
I thank the Minister for that response. His announcement of that extra funding is the first I have heard of it. I will ask my local authority why it has not applied.
We need to recognise that some people simply cannot afford right-size accommodation and that it does not exist in their area. The Government should seriously consider a policy of treating those people as willing but unable to move and give them concessions in the system.
In my area, there have been some helpful consequences. I have been thanked by a number of families who have managed, owing to the policy, to get a bigger house in the area where they want to live. One social housing provider I met was surprised by the number of large families moving into their houses from overcrowded private rented accommodation. I do not know why that provider was surprised; surely, we ought to have expected that. Only the week before last, I was in an excellent hostel run by Coatham House, a charity in my constituency for homeless young people. It has said that it has seen a dramatic fall in the number of homeless young people. It put that down to the policy. Hon. Members might think there are bad reasons for that—I can think of those, too—but there might also be good reasons.
Many points have been made in the debate. The hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) mentioned the financial stability of some of the stock transfer social housing providers. Some of them are highly leveraged and threatened by arrears, which will increase when direct payments begin. They could find themselves financially unstable.
I welcome the Government’s efforts to free up the system. One of the first cases that I dealt with as an MP was that of a single man living in a three-bedroom house. He wanted to downsize, but the system was so rigid that he was told that he would be moved to the bottom of the waiting list, with no guarantee of how and when he would get his next social house. Guess what? He did not move. I welcome that the system has, to an extent, been freed up and that exchanges are happening more often.
I welcome the continued commitment to review the policy, as it does need continual review. Despite the views that I have expressed in my speech, it is hard to welcome the hypocrisy evident from the Labour party on this issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.