Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That is one of the reasons why I so warmly welcome the appointment of the Minister of State, because he has demonstrated extraordinary personal commitment to this wider agenda of devolution and decentralisation. As my hon. Friend will know, we are examining the case for 20 more city deals, and we will then be seeking to roll out a much more extensive programme of decentralisation on the back of the Heseltine recommendations, which I hope will leave all of our country far more decentralised now than we found it back in 2010.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

T10. In the borough of Wigan over 100 tenants have moved into the private rented sector since April, where rents are between £700 and £1,200 higher than council rents. Can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm therefore that, rather than falling, the housing benefit bill is likely to rise as a result of the bedroom tax?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I hope the hon. Lady will accept that there is an underlying problem. We have lots of people on the social rented sector waiting list. There are 1.8 million households on the waiting list and about 1.5 million bedrooms in the social rented sector are not being used. We need somehow to make sure that those people who do not have homes are better matched with available homes. At the same time we have many families living in very overcrowded conditions. Those are the problems: those are the imbalances of the system that we are trying to straighten out. I accept that that leads to some hard cases. They need to be treated fairly and compassionately.