Housing Benefit

Debate between Tom Clarke and Aidan Burley

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burley]

No, I want to make some progress.

I wish to take head-on the accusation made by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill that this is all about the cuts. Of course, a lot of the changes that we are making to housing benefit, and others matters that we are debating at the moment, are a result of having to make public spending reductions. It is broadly agreed by Members of all parties that we need to reduce public expenditure to pay off the deficit and start paying off the £1.4 trillion debt.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House of one single television debate in which his leader referred to housing benefit cuts?

[Mr Burley]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that housing benefit expenditure ballooned from £11 billion in 1999 to £20 billion 10 years later, and is forecast to reach £25 billion by 2015. The Prime Minister would agree with me that the country simply can no longer afford that. We cannot go on like this, spending £25 billion a year on housing benefit.

I wish to leave for a moment the necessity argument and the fact that we have to make these changes. Even if we were in the boom years, they would be necessary purely on the grounds of fairness. They are all about fairness, but the problem with the word “fairness” in political debate is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is no single agreed definition of what is fair. Everybody in the House defines it in their own way. For Opposition Members—I respect them for it—it is about redistribution of income. It is about taxing the rich more and throwing more money at the poor. For us, it might be about fairer taxes or rewarding hard work and playing by the rules. Fairness is about being able to keep more of what one earns.

What I wish to add to the debate is what we believe is fair when it comes to housing benefit. I will start with a few basic questions of principle. Is it fair that hard-working individuals and families in this country should subsidise people living in properties that they have no realistic chance of ever affording to live in? Is it fair that when the average salary in this country is £22,000 a year, some people, as we have heard, can claim more than £100,000 a year just for their rent? Is it fair that even under the proposed cap of £20,000 a year, a person would still need to earn about £80,000 just to have that disposable income for their rent? Is it fair that the cap is being set so high? If the average salary in this country is £22,000, the cap should actually be about £7,000 a year.