Housing Benefit
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, opposing the main motion but supporting the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friends. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee. We might disagree on elements of the policy, but I appreciate that she holds her opinions very strongly.
Government Members are keen to create a fair housing market. It is astonishing to hear Opposition Members talk of the criteria, given that they voted for them with the introduction of the local housing allowance. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) talked about divorced families, but that situation happened before and still happens now. Why should those in the private sector or people who own their own homes be treated differently? I recognise the point about the retrospective nature of the policy, but the Government are trying to fix problems left unfixed by the last Government, and although some of these necessary changes might seem difficult, overall fairness is what truly matters.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
What would the hon. Lady say to Mr and Mrs Goodwin of Caerphilly borough, both of whom are registered blind, yet have to pay the bedroom tax? Where is the fairness there?
Dr Coffey
I do not know the details of the hon. Gentleman’s case, but I am sure that he is taking it up with his local council. Rather than responding to individual cases, however, I would prefer to stick to the principle of why we believe this to be fair and right. I will come to my reasons in a moment.
On social housing, as the Minister said, it would be wrong to expect thousands of homes to sit empty waiting for people to move in. I took up such a case in my own constituency recently. The local council said that it was not getting as much new homes bonus as it had expected, and I wondered whether that was because Suffolk, thought to be prosperous, was missing out. We looked into it and discovered that 120 of the homes sitting empty belonged to the local housing association. I found that extraordinary. So we brought the association in to find out what was being done to maximise the use of those houses—whether they were one, two or three-bedroom homes. Not only will Flagship have to pay more money council tax, if those homes are not used, because we have allowed councils to charge 100% for empty homes after a certain time, but maximising their use would help the council to keep more of its new homes bonus.
Of course, the market can operate in social housing, as has been eloquently explained, via house swapping. I understand that 392 house swaps have been arranged in north Kensington, compared to only nine in Doncaster. It is incumbent on Members to work with their councils to understand what they are doing to facilitate house swapping. From what I learned this morning, my own area is not doing enough, and I will pursue that matter in the future.
Sheila Gilmore
The problem is that the hon. Lady and her Front-Bench team do not seem to know what the policy is for. We hear that it might be about making savings, but if everyone slots into the right-sized house—according to the Government’s criteria, which I do not necessarily accept—there will be no saving. Is it about making savings or making better use of properties? If it is about making better use of properties, there are lots of better ways to do it.
Dr Coffey
The beauty of Government Members is that we think we can achieve both. We believe we can save the taxpayer money and put it towards the affordable homes programme. Our estimate—I appreciate that it is only an estimate and that we will have to wait and see—is that it will save £500 million a year. Meanwhile, we have set aside £4.5 billion for the affordable homes programme to build houses in this Parliament and are already arranging the programme for the next Parliament.
Dr Coffey
I will not give way. I have given way already and lots of people want to speak.
With this policy, we are trying to achieve multiple aims, by making better use of the housing stock and working to get more housing built. It is worth noting that Labour voted against the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, which is one of the things that we introduced to unblock housing developments.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen South and the Minister mentioned adaptations for disabled people. More than a quarter of my constituents are over 65, so hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that my constituency has a fair number of adapted houses and flats. It is appropriate that local councils should make an assessment and decide whether it is better for someone to stay in their home, rather than having to redo the adaptation somewhere else. I understand the point that the Minister made about this. If a wet room needed to be recreated, for example, there might well be merit in deciding that instead of someone having a three-bedroom house with a wet room, they should move to a one or two-bedroom apartment, as appropriate. We are saying to councils and housing associations that, instead of Whitehall setting those criteria, they should look after their housing stock together and ensure that people’s needs are met.
Listening to the stories that have come out today—I appreciate that they are personal stories about what people are experiencing—anyone would think that we in government had done nothing about this. However, we have allowed councils to retain the underspend in discretionary housing payments from previous years, and we have put in extra money for those payments. It is not as though we are sitting on our hands and doing nothing.
The last sentence of the Labour motion talks about using
“the funding set aside for discretionary housing payments to deal with under-occupation by funding local authorities so that they are better able to help people with the cost of moving to suitable accommodation.”
In an answer to a parliamentary question, the Minister has told me that a £20 million fund was set aside for new ideas for councils working together. At that time, only five councils had applied for that funding, and I would encourage our colleagues to speak to their councillors about that.
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) talked about pensioners. There might be some people who can work an extra three hours to capture that extra £14 a week. [Hon. Members: “What?”] The Government are fixing the problems of the past. This debate reinforces the fact that we in government want to fix the problems, and that Labour remains the party of welfare.
Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)
I intend to use the term “bedroom tax” today and not “under-occupancy penalty” or “single room subsidy”. If that offends anyone, I can assure them they will not be anywhere near as offended as thousands of my constituents have been by this repulsive Government attack on disadvantaged and disabled people. The conflict surrounding the description of this despicable act reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to force the term “community charge” down the throats of the British people. Not surprisingly, she failed, and history damned it as the poll tax. The same fate awaits the single room subsidy.
The policy itself will also fail because, like the poll tax, it is based on mean-mindedness and political dogma. It will be also rejected by Conservative and Liberal leaderships yet to come, and once it has gone—as it will do after the next election—it will be disowned. Even as Margaret Thatcher was being driven away from Downing street in tears, John Major was planning to ditch the poll tax. He had remembered what Mrs Thatcher had clearly forgotten: that, regardless of how big someone gets for their boots, if they want to win elections and stay in power they should keep in touch with public opinion. They should also bear in mind that our electorate are, I am proud to say, for the most part decent and fair-minded people who know a pig in a poke when they see one. John Major understood that, which is why he went on to win the next election in 1992.
Prime Ministers have their albatrosses, however: John Major’s was the exchange rate mechanism; Margaret Thatcher’s was the poll tax; Tony Blair’s was Iraq; and Jim Callaghan’s was the winter of discontent. The bedroom tax will belong to the present incumbent. As with the ancient mariner, it will hang round his neck in shame.
Dr Coffey
The hon. Gentleman might wish to check the recent opinion polls. We would appreciate it if he were more consistent about changing the rules for people on local housing allowance. If they were so bad for private sector rented flats, why is the situation so different for the public sector?
Mr Crausby
I do not think that my political principles have changed, to be perfectly honest. I would have put forward these same arguments prior to the election as well.
On a more serious point, nearly 2,500 people back home in Bolton have been affected, and more than 75% of them have fallen into arrears since April—so much for this being a money-saving measure.
Ms Buck
My hon. Friend is right. We are already seeing some of the impacts of this and other housing and welfare policies impacting detrimentally on seaside towns, in the same way as happened in the 1980s and 1990s. But the fact is that this policy simply cannot achieve the objective of tackling overcrowding because the larger properties are in the wrong place, and the numbers demonstrate that. It will work only if people do something that they do not want to do, which is to leave their homes, communities, networks, grandchildren, and families—to leave the people for whom they provide care.
That is also why those Government Members who have repeatedly made the argument that the Labour Government introduced a local housing allowance that applied a restriction on bedrooms in the private sector are so fundamentally wrong. A third of all private tenants across the country have lived in their homes for less than a year. Whether we like it or not, and whatever changes we might want to make to it, the private rented sector is highly mobile. Some 40% of all social tenants have lived in their homes for 10 years or more.
People went into a social property believing that it was a home for life. They believed that they would be able to bring up children, look after elderly relatives, care for people, live in their communities and contribute to them because they had a home there. That has now been removed, and it has been removed—this is the absolute cruelty of the bedroom tax—retrospectively. The situation simply cannot be compared with the private rented sector, because people in that sector move around much more and they are not impacted retrospectively.
Dr Coffey
I agree with the hon. Lady that this is retrospective, unlike her point about local housing allowance, but the principle is the same, although it might not have been applied retrospectively when it was introduced by the previous Government. On her point about private mobility, it is we on the Government Benches who are trying to help people buy their homes.
Ms Buck
There is no attempt to do anything of the kind, otherwise people would be looking at longer-term tenancies and introducing that. The fact is that there is no principle in this. The principle of a tax being retrospective, as it is in this case, is the only principle that matters.
Even within the Conservative-led London borough of Westminster, which has a serious overcrowding problem, people are still unable to move. They are unable to move within the borough, let alone to Liverpool or Wales. Of the 405 families affected—it is a small number, because London is not the most affected by the bedroom tax—only 40 have been able to move. Half of them are in arrears and half of them are disabled.
I will conclude my remarks by referring to one of the many difficult cases that have been brought to my attention. A gentleman e-mailed me at the weekend. He wrote:
“I’m a 50-year-old single man living in a two-bedroom flat and have been hit by the so-called Bedroom Tax. I’m on employment support allowance and have been suffering from Chronic Depression and Anxiety for several years now and I’m now finding these latest attacks on the weakest and most vulnerable in society very difficult to deal with. I have little money and now find my rent arrears total nearly £800 as a result of the Bedroom Tax. I’m continuing to pay the previous level of rent, but the council have now sent me a letter saying that the next step will be to serve me with a Notice of Seeking Possession if I don’t pay the arrears in full. I simply can’t do this.
I’m loth to downsize for several reasons. My main reason is that I’ve lived at my present address for over 29 years and there is a lot of sentimentality connected with my home… because I lived here with my brother, who sadly passed away… This is my last link to him and I really couldn’t envisage living anywhere else. I’m feeling increasingly fatalistic and helpless and my thoughts are turning more and more to ending my life, which is something I’ve successfully avoided since my brother’s death. This latest setback just seems so insurmountable and there really doesn’t seem to be any sympathy or understanding… I no longer have anywhere to turn.”
He asked me to vote against the bedroom tax this afternoon, and I will be very proud to honour an obligation to him by doing so.
Remploy
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Esther McVey
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We are looking at that, at what we can do and at the best way forward. That is why we have a brand new, two-year specialist disability employment strategy, which will start later in July, to see what is the best support we can give to those people.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Could my hon. Friend confirm for people in Norwich what kind of support package they will have? She mentioned something about access to personal budgets and similar support.
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend asks a good question: what support do we offer and how do we provide that support? It is tailored to what the person needs, whether it is help with CVs or extra training, or support into the workplace. Therefore, it is dictated not by me but by the person who is coming forward who needs that help.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
It is despite the fact that he knows nobody trusts him with the economy, which is why he looks more and more like an angry Mr Potato Head. It really is appalling and the idea that the alternative to the Chancellor is the shadow Chancellor is, frankly, enough to make one leave the country.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
The list of initiatives that my right hon. Friend has read out illustrates that this Government are part of the aspiration nation, wanting people to own their own homes. That is one of the greatest things to which people aspire, and it is fantastic that we are doing everything we can to help the construction industry and help people achieve that dream.
Mr Duncan Smith
I congratulate my hon. Friend on arriving at a really good statement: the aspiration nation. She is absolutely right, and the fact that she has come across it herself is testament to her brilliance on the Back Benches. This is about an aspiration nation, and the alternative—as somebody just remarked to me—is Mr Potato Head to infinity and beyond on borrowing. That is about the end of it.
The Budget also includes further measures, which I want to go through because some are really good.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I am grateful to follow the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) and I thank her for a thoughtful contribution to the debate. I will be extremely non-controversial and talk about two technical measures regarding social enterprise investment, which I hope will attract hon. Members’ interests, but it may not attract the interest of all hon. Members.
To pick up briefly on growth, we heard from the Opposition claims that this is not a Budget for growth. Whatever is said in the House, I take comfort from what those outside the House say, such as the Federation of Small Businesses, to which I referred. It said how much it welcomes the Budget and the contribution that it believes it will make to creating jobs, which is fundamentally what this is about. The CBI has welcomed many of its initiatives on a micro-economic level. The main people who are doing the business, not talking about it as we are doing, are broadly supportive of many of the measures and recognise that they will bring growth. I suspect that it is they who can give us a non-partisan, objective look at what will happen. The measures on national insurance, housing, fuel, the business bank—we await further details on that—corporation tax and anti-avoidance are significant moves towards what we all want: more jobs and people being lifted out of difficult times.
I will now turn to the specifics. Over the past few years, particularly the past two and a half years, there has emerged a thirst for social enterprise, the use of local community development finance initiative funds and housing to help drive change in local communities. At present, the tax system does not go far enough to help to encourage that. I and others have lobbied the Chancellor to encourage tax changes so that we help mobilise private capital towards local community development finance initiatives. CDFIs are vital, since the non-bank CDFIs—this is a crucial difference—are running out of money at a time when demand for their funds has never been higher, as a result of the need for alternatives to high-interest lenders for disadvantaged and financially excluded communities.
What does that actually mean in practice? Let me set the scene. Capital funding for CDFIs has more than halved in the past two years. That means that they do not have enough money to support the requests for funding from CDFI initiatives. In fact, the demand for lending from CDFIs rose by two thirds over the same period that their capital was halved. The disbursals remain unchanged, but that poses a threat, because their balance sheets are getting weaker as a result of lending more money. Members might be surprised to learn that barely 20 CDFI houses have less that £500,000 left each for lending, which means that at least half the sector is struggling and we are facing a problem.
Despite some of the tax measures, such as the aptly named “community interest tax relief”, with which I am sure all Members are familiar, private sector support for those CDFI houses is low. Money is going to the banking institutions that run community development finance initiatives—banking CDFIs—which, of course, are not focused entirely on lending to those who are slightly more disadvantaged or to more of the social enterprises. However, under the present tax regulations for CITR, those banks are claiming 70% of virtually all the relief available. The wrong people, who are not lending at community level, have most of the money and are getting most of the tax relief. The Treasury has listened, or so it indicated in the Budget, about the challenge that presents, and I am pleased to draw Members’ attention to page 74 of the Red Book, where the Treasury sets out that it will look at CITR and consider measures to help social investment tax relief from private people.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
I support community investment tax relief—Foundation East is my local CDFI. However, I encourage my hon. Friend to go further than simply restricting it to CDFIs and allow direct investment in community interest companies, because CDFIs can often be middlemen. We need to expand the scheme and not keep the focus narrow.
Nick de Bois
My hon. Friend raises an interesting and technical point that I will move on to later, because it relates to a model in north London. There is a need to find a CDFI to manage the investment that goes out and its disbursal to local businesses and enterprises, and I will touch on that point briefly.
Essentially, I am arguing that we should tailor tax changes to the non-banking CDFIs that would allow private capital to come in, in very small amounts if necessary, as well as from small businesses that might want to take their corporate social responsibilities to a level at which they just want to fund local activities and be assured that those funds can go into just those activities and that they do not necessarily have to manage the whole programme. If the Treasury, as part of its review, looks at measures that are more flexible and allow multiple different types of vehicles to attract the tax relief, there will be advantages for the investor and it will increase the capital of the CDFIs, some of which are in danger of being unable to function for much longer. A more realistic tax scheme would mobilise private capital towards those institutions, and we could even start mobilising capital from very successful crowd funding exercises.
That brings me to an example that we are putting together in north London, which alerted me to this problem in the first place. I have been ably assisted by the local Member of the European Parliament, Syed Kamall, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). Essentially, we have been working on a scheme for north London crowd funding so that we can back start-ups, particularly for young entrepreneurs who are looking at it as an alternative to full employment. It is based on the Kiva model— I recommend that Members look at it—which derives capital from small loans from individuals, and even an option for small and medium-sized enterprises and corporations to meet their corporate responsibility ambitions. Kiva is aimed at the third world. An individual can give as little as £25 to the scheme and choose someone to support. They do not make a profit, but they are lending at a reasonably attractive rate to people starting small businesses, such as shops. I want to change that and bring the model to north London so that people can have a stake in investing in their community and roll it out worldwide. All that I am asking the Treasury to do, in its review, is try to introduce attractive tax investment incentives, perhaps as simple as ticking a box, so that the £25 can become £30 or the £10,000 can become £12,000. I think that it is a win-win situation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Today is the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, and it also marks the launch of celebrations in Aldeburgh for Benjamin Britten’s centenary year. Will the Secretary of State join me next year at the Red House to celebrate one of our greatest ever composers?
Mr Vaizey
I have already accepted a number of invitations on behalf of the sports Minister, and I am happy to confirm that the Secretary of State will, I am sure, make it to Aldeburgh next year to celebrate the centenary of one of our greatest composers whom children will learn about in school, particularly after we publish our national cultural education plan—the first of its kind in our history.
Employment Support
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Maria Miller
Communication is vital. The hon. Gentleman has to understand that this is part of a 12-month process. We have been in consultation, and 1,400 people contributed to it. It is well known that we have been in this process. Today, Remploy management took a great deal of time to make sure that that communication process continued. I challenge him to look at some of the facts and figures for his own region—to look, for example, at the number of disabled people who are getting into employment. That is something that we believe should be available for Remploy employees as well.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Everyone in the House will empathise with the people who are at risk of losing their jobs tonight; there is no question about that. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the support these people will receive will help a greater number of people to get into jobs and that the money will be used effectively? Does she share my surprise that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), who just five hours ago expressed his concern that the Minister should be here tonight, is not here tonight?
Maria Miller
Obviously, it is important for Members to take part in this debate. I can reassure my hon. Friend that as a result of the proposals that we have announced today, some 8,000 more disabled people will be helped into employment. This is not just about the £320 million that the Government have already announced that they have protected to support this important group of people; it is about an extra £15 million on top of that, and I think that our actions speak very loudly.
Youth Unemployment
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Byrne
I want apprenticeships for young people, and it is this Government who are not delivering them. That is why, all over the country, we now see long-term youth unemployment rocketing up. Some 233 Members of this House now represent constituencies where long-term youth unemployment has risen by over 100% this year. Overall, long-term youth unemployment is up by 64% since the start of the year. All over Britain, scars that we thought were gone for ever are reappearing, and not just in Labour constituencies, but in places such as North Dorset, Aylesbury and Stevenage. Some 238 of us now speak for constituencies where, since the election, youth unemployment is up by 20%.
Mr Byrne
In a moment.
The bad news is that business is saying that it will get worse before it gets better. In October, BBC Radio 1 surveyed the business community. It found that two thirds of firms surveyed said that the situation would get worse for young workers before it got better. Half said that the Government should do more to train young workers. That is surely a sentiment that the hon. Lady will agree with.
Dr Coffey
I think everybody in this House shares the sentiment that it is a tragedy for any young person who wants to work not to be able to get a job, but we are trying on that. What I would like to understand from the right hon. Gentleman is this. Under the last Government, people who were unemployed for 12 months were moved on to a training programme. That meant that they moved out of the unemployment figures, but they went back if they were not successful in securing a job. This is an opportunity for a genuine debate about the future of our country, but I am afraid that some of the—how can I put it—casual use of certain statistics is not helping us to achieve that.
Mr Byrne
Is the hon. Lady seriously denying that a crisis in youth unemployment is unfolding now? [Interruption.] I am glad that she says from a sedentary position that she agrees that there is a crisis, because the question now is what we do about it. That is the answer we want from the Government.
Before I set out what the Opposition believe is the right next step, let us remind ourselves who is paying the bill for this failure. Since the Government came to office, the benefits bill alone is projected to rise by more than £12 billion, which is £500 for every house in this country. To pay that bill for the new workless, the Government are having to squeeze working people through cuts to child care and tax credits, and the acceleration of the rise in the state pension age. Good people who are doing the right thing and who are trying to get on and go up in life are being squeezed to pay the bill for people who have been put out of work by this Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Thérèse Coffey Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We obviously want to ensure that the policy works for everybody involved. The benefit system is designed to maintain a basic income for carers when caring responsibilities prevent them from working full time. It is right that carer’s allowance is paid with reference to what families could expect to earn if they were in fully paid work, but we will keep the policy under review and ensure that it works for carers.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
14. What options he has considered for future support for mortgage interest payments for those out of work.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
We are in discussions with mortgage lenders about the scope for them to freeze benefit claimants’ mortgage accounts and apply a standard interest rate for a fixed period. In return for lenders receiving up-front interest payments from the Government, claimants getting help with their payments would not accrue any arrears or face the threat of repossession.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
T7. Before the election, one of the policies that resonated most with my constituents was the Conservative plan to eliminate the couple penalty—the absurdity whereby people can be better off splitting up as a family than staying together. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that that penalty will be erased completely in the next few years, and that there will be no unintended consequences of any other policies that we might be putting forward?
Mr Duncan Smith
I must say that this remains a target for us, which is—[Interruption.] It is all very well for the Opposition to laugh: they are the ones who created the couple penalty. They could not care less whether people had to split up because of their benefits bills; the disincentives were all there and they created them. We will do our level best to eradicate them.