Housing: Under-occupancy Charge

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of those affected by the social rented sector size criteria who have downsized into smaller properties.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

Across the seven months between May and December 2013, around 22,000 households affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy either moved to the private sector or downsized within the social rented sector. The final independent evaluation report will be published later this year. This will provide more up-to-date information on how people are responding to the policy.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, 22,000 out of 600,000 people is very few. Most tenants cannot move, as there are not the small properties; nor can they afford to stay without going without meals or going into debt. Some are desperately downsizing from two-bed social houses at £82 a week to one-bed private flats at £140 a week. These are of poorer quality and half the size, but cost almost double the rent and therefore almost double the benefit bill, which we all pay for. We are smashing lives. Why are the Government pursuing such ugly, faulty economics, and why are they pursuing such pointless cruelty?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, looking at the position in the round, people move from low-cost social housing to higher-cost private housing, but that allows another family who may have come out of private housing to go into social housing. You have to look at the bill as a whole, and the saving on this particular part of the bill is running at £0.5 billion a year.