Local Housing Allowance: Supreme Court Ruling

Debate between Will Quince and Richard Burden

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I am afraid that I do not recognise the picture that the hon. Lady paints. We are spending record amounts on our welfare system—over £95 billion a year for those of working age.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that this Supreme Court judgment not only highlights the huge gap between local housing allowance rates and the reality of rents in the private sector, but shines a light on the much bigger crisis of homelessness, which today is a massive part of my caseload and, I think, that of other hon. Members? It is a crisis that in Birmingham, the month after the case went to the Supreme Court, saw 12,000 households on the council waiting list including the homeless and 2,500 households in temporary accommodation. Does he accept that this will not be tackled until the Government recognise the need to invest in social housing on the scale required and adopt social security policies that tackle poverty rather than exacerbate it and compound the homelessness problem, and that unfreezing the LHA cap would be a first step in that?

Finally, does he recognise that the message here for Birmingham City Council and other local authorities is that they must always keep focused on the people, not simply on the procedures?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman should not underestimate my determination—I chaired the all-party group on ending homelessness—to absolutely deliver on our commitments to halve and then end rough sleeping. I recognise what he says about LHA rates, but that is not the case across the country. Rates are an issue in some parts of the country but not in others, which is why I am looking at this very carefully. I have been working with my counterparts in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as he suggests, because supply is also an issue.