Housing Costs: Government Support

Jayne Kirkham Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I will come to the extremely difficult decisions that any Government need to make about how this policy adds up with the available resource. Certainly, if one wants to avoid driving private landlords out of the market altogether, one has to form an understanding of how the market works. I entirely agree with the principle of what the hon. Lady is saying, and I will come to how we can how we can pay for these things. That is a very difficult question, which Opposition politicians generally avoid, instead asking for more money, while not necessarily explaining where they will get it from.

My primary message is that current Government policy is not working. It is driving the poorest into debt, food banks, homelessness and, in many cases, sadly, destitution. I have a number of questions for the Minister, which I sent to him in advance. If the Government know that a person’s private rental is bound to be at least x, why in my area of Kernow West, when the Valuation Office Agency assesses these factors, is the benefit level set at x minus 30% to 40%? That leaves people in the kind of poverty I described in the two cases I mentioned earlier. Have the Government reviewed the adequacy of the present methodology for LHA calculations, and are Ministers confident that the present arrangements do not risk tipping families and individuals in areas of high-priced private rental accommodation into rent arrears and potential destitution?

I understand that the Valuation Office Agency collects the rental data from landlords to determine the LHA, but how accurate and up to date is that data? Is the VOA using historical cases, where people have been living in accommodation for a very long time, and where the data would not reflect the price of that accommodation were it to come back on to the market? The Government need to answer many questions about this issue. I know the Minister is sympathetic.

One example was raised with me by Citizens Advice Cornwall. A family in Penzance consisting of either a couple or a single parent with two children of different sexes, one of whom is 10, meaning the children need separate bedrooms, would technically require a three-bedroomed house. Local housing allowance states that they can have a maximum of £812.76 per month. According to Rightmove last night, the lowest price for a privately rented three-bedroomed house in the Penzance area, a few miles away in Marazion, is £1,800, making a gap of £987.24 per month for that family. I could go through a large number of cases, but I do not have time now.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to make an important but related point. Emergency and temporary accommodation in Cornwall is also extremely expensive because of the seasonal nature of things, and particularly because of the holiday let industry. That adds to the burden on councils and tenants.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady from the next neighbouring constituency for raising that issue.

I was going to make the point that although there were over 1,700 Airbnbs available in my constituency last night—and that is just Airbnbs, not all holiday lets—there were zero private rental properties available within the LHA rates when we checked on how the market is operating. I will come on to how we will pay for any kind of increase, but the reason why I compare those properties with holiday lets is that for the last 10, 12 or 13 years, we have been paying out multibillions to second home owners through small business rate relief and other tax loopholes that are available to people with second properties. Local people do not get any small business rate relief. The people with second properties who do not let them to local people, and flip from paying council tax to business rates, are able to apply for small business rate relief and pay nothing at all. In Cornwall alone, that has cost over half a billion pounds in the last decade.

If the Government want to invest in desperately needed homes for local people, they may well incentivise private landlords by providing tax concessions to those who provide decent homes with security and an agreed, negotiated rent cap to bring it within the scope of what is affordable. That would be a far better way of spending the Government’s resources.

I urge the Minister to look carefully at the issues I have raised. I urge him to look at ending the freeze of local housing allowance rates, to restore and maintain the link between local housing allowance and the 30th percentile of the local market, to commit to an annual LHA uprating, to introduce measures to mitigate the impact of the benefit cap, and to continue wider housing reforms, such as, as the Government want to, delivering more social housing. I hope he will consider those matters, but now I want to give time for others to speak.