Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend.

Before we go into detail about the ending of the spare room subsidy, it is worth providing a little more detail about the fiscal context in which this measure is being taken. In the final year of the Labour Government, borrowing was £150 billion a year. This measure saves £500,000 a year, so if we were trying to fill Labour’s deficit by measures of this sort, we would need 300 such measures to tackle that scale of borrowing. I expected the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who opened the debate, to suggest alternative sources of revenue not just for this measure, but for every single welfare spending reduction that she has opposed—all £12 billion of it.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

If the hon. Gentleman’s proposition in setting out the context—on which he and I profoundly disagree—is that those who, in effect, should foot whatever difference there is between us in public finances are the people affected by this bedroom tax, I must say that he is absolutely wrong. May I give him the specific example of my constituent Cheryl Maskens? Cheryl Maskens was homeless and was offered a two-bedroom property. Had she refused that property she would have been told that she had not accepted re-housing. Should she be the person who loses out in this scenario?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

A lot of Members want to speak and we are only up to the Front Bench speeches. Can Members make sure that if there are to be interventions, they are short? Those who want to catch my eye but intervene too much will go down the list, and they will understand why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

At the risk of straying into other legislation, let me point out that when we had to make difficult decisions on benefit rates—which, of course, the hon. Lady opposed—we specifically exempted DLA, attendance allowance and the support component of employment and support allowance as a sign of our commitment to disabled people.

The hon. Lady suggests that we should exempt a third of those affected by the policy. As she will understand, this measure is partly about reducing the deficit and partly about making better use of the housing stock. Receiving DLA is not synonymous with needing a spare bedroom: that is the point. Someone who needs a spare bedroom can approach the local authority, and we have given local authorities funds for that purpose, but a blanket exemption of people receiving DLA does not correlate with the need for a spare bedroom.

As my noble Friend Lord Freud announced on 15 October last year, these measures will be monitored and evaluated over a two-year period from April this year. Initial findings will be available in 2014, and the final report will be published late in 2015.

[Andy Sawford]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

The Secretary of State cannot defend the fact that families of serving soldiers will be hit by this policy while those on remand and accused of the most serious offences we can imagine will not be hit by it. I do not think that the Secretary of State, of all people, will want to defend that. He should be speaking to his colleagues the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister, who I understand is the Chair of the Sub-Committee on the Armed Forces Covenant, and he should be bringing to this House safeguards for the families of armed personnel out on service, should he not? As he remains in his place, it is clear that he is not going to bring forward those safeguards for the families of people serving on the front line. The House will be disappointed to have observed that.

Foster parents will also be hurt. Again, we heard nothing from the Minister today about how foster parent families are going to be helped. [Interruption.] I listened very carefully to what the Minister said, and he said nothing today that countermands what he sent out in a recent circular, which says:

“a household that has an extra room for a current or potential foster child will be treated as under-occupying.”

Families in that position will be hit, therefore. [Interruption.] We then hear that under universal credit a couple where someone is a pensioner and someone is not will also be hit. [Interruption.]

Over all this, of course, looms the truth that two-thirds of the people hit by this bedroom tax will be disabled. [Interruption.] The Minister has been pleading from a sedentary position that the discretionary housing payment will somehow help. He will, no doubt, have seen the National Housing Federation research that found that 200,000 people who will be hit by this bedroom tax are on disability living allowance. The NHF estimates that if we spent all the DHP money helping those people, it would help 73,000 people, so there would be 127,000 people in receipt of DLA who would get absolutely no help whatever. Of course, that would leave nothing for foster parents either. I am afraid that the Minister cannot simply plead that the DHP is of some help to foster parents, those who are disabled and people whose houses have been adapted. The truth is very different, and he has been found out this afternoon.

[Andy Sawford]

Much has been said about particular groups who will be hit by this policy and my right hon. Friend is right to talk about the impact on disabled people and foster families. There are also, however, people like my constituent Hayley Duncan, who has two boys aged one and 13 who are now expected to share the same bedroom. I can honestly say I would not ask two children of mine of such different ages to share the same bedroom. Does my right hon. Friend think this is right? Is there hypocrisy here?

[Mr Byrne]

Of course there is. The Minister, unlike his party colleague the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), did not resile from his support for a whopping great tax cut for millionaires at the same time as Hayley Duncan and her children are being hit by this bedroom tax.

This is a policy that is unique in its cruelty. It sets out to tackle the problem of under-occupancy, and the Minister made much of the 1 million spare bedrooms he wants somehow to bring on to the housing market. As he knows, however, the policy will only save the money chalked up in the Treasury scorecard if it fails. That is the reality. About £490 million is earmarked to be saved by this policy over the course of this year, but it will be saved only if 660,000 households are hit for £14 a week for 52 weeks a year. That is how those savings will be delivered. This is not about bringing spare bedrooms on to the market; it is about hurting vulnerable people and asking them to pay extra.

What is particularly troubling to many Opposition Members is the Minister’s refusal to acknowledge that in many parts of the country there will simply not be the smaller houses for people to move into. Again the NHF has been very clear about that. In large parts of the country there is simply not the housing stock for people hit by this tax to move into. The Government have removed any shelter where vulnerable people can take cover before opening fire. This is a policy of unique cruelty, therefore. The Government are not seeking to solve under-occupancy. Instead, they are simply seeking to make the poorest and most vulnerable even poorer. As the Secretary of State once cared about poverty, perhaps he would like to justify that fact?