Under-occupancy Penalty (Nottingham)
Debate between Steve Webb and Chris Leslie(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Steve Webb
All I can say to the hon. Lady is that there are more than 1 million people on housing benefit in the private rented sector. There is not a little island called Nottingham where those people do not exist. Across the United Kingdom, private sector landlords are renting to people on housing benefit.
The hon. Lady mentioned Nottingham City Homes. I welcome some of the measures that it is taking to assist people who are affected by this measure. For example, it has produced a lodger guide so that any tenant who wishes to take in a lodger has information about how to do so. That will not be the answer for everyone, but it will be the answer for some. It will mean that there is better use of the scarce resource that is the empty or unused bedroom in social housing.
The hon. Lady mentioned HomeSwapper, a mutual exchange website that Nottingham City Homes is encouraging people to refer to. That is very welcome because it tries to make better use of the valuable social housing that we have. Nottingham City Homes ran what I think it called a speed-dating event to help match people who want to move to smaller properties with those who want to move to larger homes. It is true that this measure saves money, but it also leads us to make better use of the very underutilised resource of our social housing stock. As these initiatives demonstrate, there are some people living in overcrowded accommodation, whose voice was silent in the hon. Lady’s speech, and some people who are living in accommodation with spare rooms.
There is an issue with what one might loosely call “hard cases”. Those include people for whom a spare bedroom is not spare, but is very important. The hon. Lady dismissed in a very new Labour sort of way the £700,000 that is being given to Nottingham next year in discretionary housing payments, as if it is a drop in the ocean or a trivial sum of money. That money is being given to local authorities so that they can assist people on a case-by-case basis who approach them and say that there is a particular reason why the measure would be unfair or adverse in their case.
Steve Webb
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I try to respond to the hon. Lady.
It is said that the money will help only a relatively small proportion of people. That is entirely true because it is for exceptional cases. The basic principle is that if people have spare bedrooms, they should either put somebody in them or pay for them, perhaps by earning more if they are able to.
It is important to say that the price we are asking for a spare bedroom is just under £2 a day in Nottingham. That is what we are asking private renters on a low income to contribute anyway.
Steve Webb
Well, other local authorities have avoided doing that. It is noticeable that many Labour-led local authorities have decided to pass the cost on to their tenants. For example, my local authority of South Gloucestershire has not passed on the cut to tenants, so they will receive full council tax benefit. Nottingham city council, however, has decided to expect its low-income tenants to make a contribution. The hon. Lady said that Governments have to make choices, but so do local authorities. Nottingham council has decided to charge low-income working age households a contribution towards their council tax. That was its decision.
Looking forward to the changes we have made, foster families were mentioned and the Government have been clear throughout that we want to protect such families. Our original strategy was to put the £5 million that we think it will cost to protect those families into local government budgets through discretionary payments, but, partly because of the alarmist scaremongering about foster families, we decided it was far better to avoid any anxiety on that point and simply to entitle foster families to an extra bedroom at the same cost. We have not had to find extra money for that measure because it was there already. We always said that we would protect those families, and we will. However, we will do so directly because when we relied on discretionary payments, Opposition Members claimed that we were not going to support foster families, which caused concern among those families. Giving foster families a right to a room seemed a more direct way of providing that support. Likewise, we have made it clear, as the Prime Minister did—
Steve Webb
No. I only have a couple of minutes left. I have made my point clear. As the Prime Minister made clear from the Dispatch Box a couple of weeks ago, families with disabled children who cannot share a room will have the right to an extra room if they approach their local authority and make their case. Provided that case is accepted, they will have a right to a room. There are a number of elements where we have either given a right to a room, and the hon. Gentleman for, I think, Shipley—
Steve Webb
No. I apologise. I am sorry, I cannot remember the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but he cited a case where a carer had to come in and use a spare bedroom. To be clear, the rules allow for a non-resident carer who has to stay overnight to have a room. Obviously, I do not know the full details of that individual case, but a spare bedroom is allowed for a non-resident carer.
Chris Leslie
I am afraid that the carer rules do not capture that particular case, but I wanted to ask the Minister a particular question about the bedroom tax—sorry, the spare room subsidy. I know the name is important, much like the community charge which some people did not want to call the poll tax. Can the Minister provide a figure for the number of households affected by the bedroom tax that include a disabled person?
Steve Webb
The hon. Gentleman glossed over his constituent’s case, but to be clear for the record, a spare bedroom is allowed for a non-resident overnight carer and it is important that he does not alarm people about the issue. In our impact assessment we published the number of disabled people affected by the change, and, as he knows perfectly well, around one in three—broadly speaking—of those affected by the measure is receiving the disability living allowance. Time is running out, but simply to say—
State Pension Reform
Debate between Steve Webb and Chris Leslie(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Steve Webb
In answer to my hon. Friend’s first question, the NHS as an employer already pays the reduced rate of national insurance from its own resources; it will have an increased rate of national insurance. Obviously the Exchequer will have an increased revenue. It will be a matter for the Chancellor of the day to decide what to do with that increased revenue, but the NHS as an employer will pay more national insurance—that is a fact.
In answer to my hon. Friend’s question about small firms in her constituency, very few small firms run contracted-out defined-benefit pensions, so the only people paying increased national insurance will be those who are contracted out who run these special final salary schemes. We have allowed those schemes to adjust their rules to offset the cost if that is how they choose to proceed, but most small firms will not be affected.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Crucial to these proposals is the notion that parents who take time off work to bring up children—stay-at-home mums—will register for national insurance pension credit in order to get their cumulative 35-year tally of contributions. However, surely the Government are not saying that the only way to get these credits is to apply for child benefit, because from 7 January not everybody has been eligible for child benefit payments. That would be ridiculously complex and confusing, would it not?
Steve Webb
There are two groups of people. First, those who are currently receiving child benefit that will cease because of the changes for people with higher-earning spouses will continue to get credits under this system—they are in the child benefit system with a zero award. For people who have their first child under the new regime, we already put information in what is called the bounty pack—which new mothers get—to encourage them to claim child benefit, not least because even if their spouse is a high earner at the moment, that might not always be so, so they should always claim child benefit anyway, to ensure they get their credits.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Steve Webb and Chris Leslie(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Steve Webb
The process of long-term saving through auto-enrolment in workplace pensions is imminent, but there has been a big growth in workplace coverage of occupational workplace individual savings accounts, which is an encouraging development. We are looking to see what more we can do to encourage that trend.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Many who use credit unions also need help to access credit advice. What is the Minister doing to help those who will lose out when he scraps the £27 million financial inclusion fund from next March?
Steve Webb
One of the things we are looking at as part of our feasibility study on the future of credit unions is their crucial role in supporting people who need financial advice and assistance. That work will report back to the Department next month.