Housing Benefit (Wales)

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. We have worked together in another capacity in Europe, but it is good to be here with you this afternoon to discuss two important issues for the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs. The first is the impact of the changes to housing benefit within Wales. I welcome the Department for Work and Pensions Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), in whose constituency I once lived. I shall listen carefully to what he says at the end.

It will not come as news to hon. Members that I have strong views about this issue. During the last debate in which I spoke, one Opposition Member asked me whether I was speaking in a personal capacity or as the Chairman of the Select Committee. On that occasion, I was speaking in a personal capacity as the MP for Monmouth; on this occasion, I am speaking as the Chairman of the Select Committee, so I will stick closely to my notes, and try not to go off them.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

It hurts.

[David T. C. Davies]

It does hurt. However, I think the Select Committee worked well. The issue was potentially controversial, yet we managed to get a certain amount of agreement, some of which the Government will have to answer. I welcome the fact that the Select Committee, politically divided as it is, can work so well together, and I am grateful to the Committee members here today.

One thing that I think we can all agree on is that the cost of housing benefit is unsustainable at the moment and that changes must be made, although we may differ about how those changes should be made, what their impact will be and how people affected can be helped.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am trying to stick to the facts as I saw them on the Select Committee. To be fair, the first fact that the hon. Gentleman presented is correct. Personally, I agree with him that house building is one solution. In Wales, that is obviously a devolved responsibility for the Welsh Assembly. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman and I agree that the Welsh Assembly could and should be doing a lot more to increase house building within Wales. The costs at the moment are about £25 billion a year. About 250,000 people in Wales receive housing benefit—about 8% of the population.

The Committee focused on two areas of Government policy. The first is the changes related to under-occupancy in the social rented sector, sometimes called the spare room subsidy and at other times referred to—incorrectly, in my view—as the bedroom tax. The other is the move towards direct payments, which also raised concerns across political parties. We took a lot of evidence from various witnesses, including the housing associations, representatives of landlords and the TaxPayers Alliance, which made an interesting contribution and which I hope is welcomed back to Select Committees in future.

The policy that we discussed came into force in April 2013, but it is probably worth mentioning that the same rules had been introduced for the private sector in 1989 and re-emphasised by changes made to housing allowances by the last Labour Government in 2008, so it was not as new as people might have thought. As all Members here will know, tenants had their housing benefit reduced by 14%, an average of about £12 a week in Wales, for having one extra bedroom, and by 25% for having two extra bedrooms.

At the time of the report, the Government estimated that 40,000 tenants in Wales lived in households with one or more excess rooms, representing 40% of those eligible to be affected. That was the highest proportion of any region in the United Kingdom, so we would like the Minister to provide us with any updated figures that he has on how many working-age tenants of social housing in Wales continue to live in properties with excess rooms and how many have been successful in downsizing.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I give way first to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane).

[Chris Ruane]

The national figure, as I understand it, is that only 6% of people have moved out of their properties and downsized into smaller ones.

[David T. C. Davies]

Right. Did the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) want to intervene?

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

My Latin is not quite as good as my Welsh, but if the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the impact will be greater in Wales than anywhere else, I accept that, because it already was. Yes, I absolutely think that the issue should be looked into. Also, if the figure cited by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd is correct and only 6% of those who wanted to downsize have been able to—no doubt we will hear it from the Minister—that is also clearly worrying.

[Chris Ruane]

Across the UK.

[David T. C. Davies]

I had better not get into a conversation across the room about it, but that figure would certainly be worrying. It could be even worse in Wales, anyway.

As I am about to mention, one concern of ours was that Wales’s rurality and the lack of available housing there will make the issue much harder to deal with there than in London. Although personally, I absolutely support what the Government are doing, as I shall say at the end, I recognise that a tailored approach may be needed to the different problems that may arise in different areas.

[David T. C. Davies]

I do not accept that it is an attack on the poor.

[Chris Ruane]

They would.

[David T. C. Davies]

I think a lot of people who would consider themselves poor pay taxes and would rather resent the fact that some of their taxes are supporting people with excess bedrooms. However, I suspect that I am getting a little far from my role as Chairman of the Select Committee in reporting the facts. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) is correct to say that 40,000 people within Wales were affected by the measure. I do not know what the updated figure is; it might be somewhat different now. I hope so. It worries me to hear evidence that some people would have to move 50 miles to find suitable accommodation in order to downsize, and I hope that the Minister will address that.

Due to the shortage of smaller-sized social housing, it is possible that benefits will have to move into the private rented sector. The Committee heard evidence that higher rates in the private rented sector compared with the social rented sector might lead to increased public expenditure, thus defeating one of the key purposes of the policy. As somebody who believes that we must reduce the deficit as much as possible, I would obviously be concerned about any policy that increased spending levels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Williams]

We could well have attended the same surgeries. It is certainly my experience that I have had people willing to move, but there is simply nothing available for them.

[Chris Ruane]

I was born on a council estate and lived on one for 27 years. There, the council built new single-person bungalows for pensioners who were living in three-bedroom houses, locating them right next to that community, so that all their social ties were maintained. Is the answer to move people from larger premises when, and only when, smaller premises are available in that community?

[Mr Williams]

I agree. The key point, as the hon. Gentleman said, is that the housing is in those communities. What we have in front of us, were the proposal to be actioned, is communities unfortunately being split up and disrupted, and that cannot be appropriate.

I have not had many people coming to my surgeries on the issue of overcrowding—I know that will not be the experience of other Members in the Chamber today. I have had some casework about that, but the more common concern is that there is no housing at all. I repeatedly have to tell constituents of mine in the Aberystwyth area that there are lists of up to 400 people waiting for suitable accommodation.

I move on to housing with disabled adaptations. I remember being told during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill that the matter would be dealt with through funds made available to local authorities from discretionary housing payments. To be fair, that is true in part: some moneys have been made available. My challenge to the Government is that the sums are inadequate. When the challenge was made to colleagues in the Government about the difficulties in rural areas, again, the Government rose to those concerns and made additional funds available, and they are much appreciated. However, they are, in my view, inadequate, which makes the situation in some local authority areas a disgrace: there is still money left in discretionary housing payment budgets that is not being spent. I still maintain that the Government need to look at the moneys available to us.

I appreciate what my hon. Friend the Minister said—no doubt, he can see Wales from his constituency, and I am particularly glad that he is here—about the need to define what we mean by disabled housing adaptations, but a particular problem needs to be addressed and the policy has caused huge anxiety. For example, there is a couple in my constituency, on the Ceredigion-Pembrokeshire border. The husband’s medical condition has meant significant multiple adaptations to his house, where his principal carer is his wife, necessitating an extra available room. That room has been made available by the children now having flown the nest. Above all else, when huge sums of public money have been spent on adapting that property, we cannot expect that couple to move anywhere else, not only for the social reasons that we have discussed, but just for the cost.

I cite the work that the Wales and West Housing Association has undertaken on the issue. It estimates that about 3,500 disabled households across Wales could be affected, and that £25 million has been spent on adaptations and another £15 million would be needed to adapt new properties. When we talk about wastes of public money, let us be clear what we are potentially countenancing, were some families with disabled relatives to move.

I understand the principle by which the Government are operating, the principles behind discretionary housing payments. Matters are constantly referred back to local authorities to make the judgment, but the guidance is hugely open to interpretation. I support the Government’s localist agenda. I support the capacity of local authorities to make judgments that affect their areas as they see fit. However, the guidance on these issues needs to be much clearer and much more detailed; otherwise we run the risk of a postcode lottery.

The Select Committee report said a great deal about monitoring the policy’s effects, including those on disabled people and local authorities. That is good to hear. Any good Government will monitor the effectiveness of their policies, but I ask the Minister to outline the extent to which that monitoring is taking place and what outcomes we can expect from the monitoring. I am delighted to hear what Lord Freud has been saying, but could the Minister allude to the outcomes? Will there be more discretionary housing payments and more exemptions in the future? What will the monitoring mean on the ground to our constituents?

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman has catalogued many of the defects of the legislation. In retrospect, does he regret having voted for it?

[Mr Williams]

I did not vote for the legislation at the time. I am a very modest person, as friends will testify, but I had the foresight on these matters not to vote for it. I deeply regretted not supporting my hon. Friend the Minister, but I did not vote for it and I stand by the reason why I did not. I want amendments to be made now to remedy the problems of constituents in Ceredigion and elsewhere.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the concerns expressed by some friends of mine in the veterans community. Three armed forces community champions from Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, who met on 17 April to discuss the policy’s effects on the ground among the veterans whom they represent, highlighted the fact that the exemption clause for armed forces personnel exists for people only when they are on operational duty. They assert that that overlooks the needs of many veterans locally. We have to be careful about definitions. I appreciate that and I am not arguing for wholesale exemptions. I will just convey to the Minister one of the points that a friend of mine in the veterans community has made. Councillor Paul Hinge, who has been working with another councillor in my constituency, Councillor Paul James, says that

“what I and the three community covenant boards find so unpalatable is that all of this”—

the legislation—

“is contrary to the meaning and purpose of the armed forces covenant”.

That is a sweeping statement, but he is making the assertion that in many instances for the members of that community—people who are in work and having difficulties and people who are out of work and having difficulties—the legislation is seemingly contradictory to the principles of the community covenant. He says that it is

“contrary to the meaning and purpose of the armed forces covenant that this Government placed great force in by enshrining it in legislation.”

This is his assertion, not mine. He says:

“Quite frankly it becomes empty rhetoric if they cannot and will not fulfil the promise in that document.”

That in part is a responsibility of our county council and its community covenant, but it is also, I believe, a responsibility of the Government to look at all the interest groups in society that are being affected by their legislation and to act accordingly.

The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) mentioned the effect that the legislation is having on the voluntary sector and advice giving. People need to have sound financial advice. We need to place on the record our appreciation of the work of citizens advice bureaux up and down the country. They have been giving a great deal of advice and are under huge pressures themselves. I hope that the Minister, as time progresses, will give some thought to some of the changes or the implied suggestions for change that the Select Committee has made in its report, so that life for many of our people can be all the more bearable.