Oral Answers to Questions

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Lady is right to bring this matter to the House, and such situations are always difficult, but the room would be allocated to whoever was the main carer of the child. In this instance, that is the mother and that is who we would be looking to. We would not be supporting two sets of rooms in two separate houses, as we are trying to get this housing policy right.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

May I bring the Minister back to the issue of unpaid family carers of sick and disabled people? She recently admitted in a response to my question that 50,000 or 60,000 of those carers were affected by the bedroom tax. More than 1 million of those carers have given up work to care, and they have nowhere to go to find the money. She has talked about live-in carers, but it is not about that. Will she answer about the 50,000 or 60,000 carers? Will she admit that it was a mistake not to exempt them from the bedroom tax?

[Esther McVey]

What we did is not name absolutely everybody who could have part of the discretionary housing payment. We have allowed discretion for those people who might need it the most, hence it is called “discretionary”, hence it has been trebled and hence we are supporting these people. Obviously, if somebody on housing benefit, or their partner, needs an overnight carer on a regular basis, they would have their spare room subsidy; they would be exempt from this.