Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)Department Debates - View all Karen Buck's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
There are people in work who receive housing benefit, but the worst aspect of the changes with which the previous Government left us is that many of them are now trapped in short working hours. They dare not work for more hours, because they would lose too much of their housing benefit and would lose their homes as a consequence. Setting housing benefit at the levels at which the previous Government set it was no kindness to people who really do want to get on and work longer hours, because they are faced with the invidious choice of whether to move. That is one of the reasons more than 100,000 people moved in the rental market last year. Many people have to move to find a house that is suitable so that they can go and find better work. That is the reality. The hon. Gentleman’s party left us with that situation, and it is his party that he should now blame for the mess and chaos.
Mr Duncan Smith
I must make a bit of progress. I will give way in a second.
Although that was not the largest number, the fact is that the top 5,000 of those cases of housing benefit cost the Exchequer £100 million a year. Unless Labour Members think that £100 million a year is not a lot of money, I should like to know why the shadow Secretary of State does not say that he agrees with the capping system that we want to introduce. Will he perhaps tell me whether he agrees with the capping system? No, he will not. Yet again we have heard no policy from the Opposition, but the fact is that we inherited a chaotic housing system.
Mr Duncan Smith
At last, we have an admission from the shadow Secretary of State that Labour is going to cap this. Now we only have to deal with the levels. It is unbelievable. If he wants to say that he is going to cap it, why was that not in the motion? There is not a word. Labour Members have spent the last two weeks scaring everybody out there and then not daring to tell people that they themselves want to cap. What a ridiculous lot of nonsense. The reality is that we inherited the mess that their Government left behind.
Ms Buck
On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Mayor of London’s housing adviser has stated that, in London alone, the cost of temporary accommodation for homeless households, arising from the impact of the caps, could exceed the total savings by £13 million in one region alone? Will he also confirm that the figure for working households on local housing allowance is almost half the total case load, including those on JSA with the 90% annual turnover that he has just confirmed?
Mr Duncan Smith
The reality is that the adviser said that before he even knew how much we were using for the discretionary allowance. [Interruption.] Hold on a second. He said “could”. The reality is that this is not going to happen. There should be no need, with the discretionary allowance, for people to be made homeless. That is just the nonsense with which Labour Members want to scare everybody.
Mr Duncan Smith
No, no; I am already answering the question. I do not agree and we do not agree with the statement that the adviser made. I have explained the issue to him personally, and he has accepted that.
Mr Duncan Smith
No, I am not going to give way. I also want to say to the hon. Lady that she includes in her figures those who are in work with those on jobseeker’s allowance. She must not confuse two different positions, yet again trying to merge figures that are not right.
Mr Heald
I am running short of time, I am afraid.
Let me turn to disincentives to work. The fact is that the Government’s welfare programme is all about trying to get people back to work. It is a big ambition to do something about the 3 million households where nobody works, even though there are people of working age.
Mr Heald
I have got only a few minutes left, and I have already given way three or four times.
It is a disincentive for someone to work if they know that they will never be able to earn enough to pay their rent. That is a ludicrous situation in which to have trapped people. We need to tackle that problem, and there is no other truly sensible way of doing so.
Ms Buck
Just before this myth takes hold too completely, will the hon. Gentleman at least concede that just under half the recipients of local housing allowance are either in work or on jobseeker’s allowance? The Secretary of State confirmed that 90% of JSA claimants returned to work within a year. Constantly repeating the idea that housing benefit claimants are not in work is misleading the House, frankly.
Mr Heald
But the hon. Lady must accept that the Secretary of State has a grand ambition, which is to get people into work. One of the ways of doing that is the universal credit, which tackles the very problem that she is talking about. We should be supporting the Secretary of State, as a Parliament, for finally tackling some of these dreadful issues that have pulled our country back for so many years. The hon. Lady really must not go around telling people that 50% of such people are in work or on JSA, because 13% are in work, not 50%. Someone who enters work on low pay loses housing benefit very soon afterwards. Addressing that issue is one of the great improvements that universal credit will bring. I support the policy, and I believe that the independent evidence supports it.
James Wharton
The hon. Gentleman is right to voice his concern about any level of Government debt, and I entirely understand the historic context in which the new Labour Government found themselves, and the one in which we find ourselves today. It is important, however, that we do not spend all our time looking back. We must look forward and consider what the Government are doing to address the challenges that we face, and specifically address the issue of housing benefit, which is just one piece of that much larger jigsaw.
Housing benefit today costs about £21 billion a year, and we have heard about the trend of housing benefit costs in recent years. Between 2000 and 2007, it increased by about 25%, and, in the past five years, it increased by about 50%. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the difficult times during the worst of the recession when it was increasing at its greatest rate. That was true, and we cannot take those times as typical and project them forward, but we can identify a clear long-term trend of housing benefit costs increasing unsustainably and putting a burden on the Exchequer that cannot be maintained in this day and age. The Government therefore have to make some tough choices.
A word that we frequently hear on both sides of the House, in different contexts, is “fairness”. We are asked what it means to be fair. Opposition Members appear to dwell on outputs, rather than giving consideration, as is correct when considering any matter of fairness, to what people put in—that is, to inputs and outcomes. It is important to look at the proposed changes to housing benefit in the context of the national financial situation, and of the need for real fairness that takes proper account of what the Government can do to help people out of poverty and into work, and to take away the benefit traps that hold people back in poverty and on housing benefit. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) said, housing benefit is one of the very worst benefits when it comes to encouraging people and helping to make work pay, because of the very steep rate at which it is withdrawn.
Ms Buck
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the impact of housing benefit during the recession. Does he accept that 250,000 households claimed housing benefit during the period between 2008 and 2010 because their earnings dropped? Does that not show that housing benefit has a critical role to play in sustaining people, both in work and in their homes, during difficult times?
James Wharton
The hon. Lady is quite right. That is why nobody on either side of the House would ever propose to do away with it. It is an important part of the welfare state in this country, but that does not mean that spending on housing benefit should be allowed to escalate out of control indefinitely. That is why the Government are introducing measures to bring it under control and to ensure that people are properly incentivised to find work, to earn and to contribute successfully to our economy. The hon. Lady is right to say that housing benefit is important, however; that is why it is being reformed in a way that will secure its sustainable future.
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman obviously does not want to let the facts interfere with a good story. Some of the newspapers have taken the same view. However, he too should try to look at the facts. He should establish whether London councils are making such inquiries, and whether B-and-Bs are being booked up. There is absolutely no evidence of that. Rents are expected to fall, which will make things less costly for us all.
Ms Buck
My local authority, Westminster council, has written to me and to Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government, asking for changes in the homelessness legislation because of the potential impact of the cuts, and stating that it will expect substantial out-of-borough bookings for temporary accommodation if the proposals go ahead unamended.
Amber Rudd
That is an interesting comment, but I can tell the hon. Lady that I have spoken to the cabinet member in charge of Westminster council—which has the largest supply of houses at the top level above the cap—and she told me unequivocally that the council was not doing that.
Amber Rudd
I also have a letter. Perhaps we can exchange letters later, and see what the conclusion is.
It is impossible not to see these reforms of housing benefit outside the context of the overall attempt to carry out the reforms of the welfare system to which the Government are so committed. I commend to all Members a fascinating article in today’s The Times by a former Labour Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in which he draws strong parallels between our efforts to reform the welfare system and the proposals on which he had been working for the past few years, until the last two years or so, when he was unable to obtain any traction and had to resign. He spoke of the line that Government must tread between the poverty trap and the welfare trap. That is exactly what this Government are trying to do, but let me add that there is not just a welfare trap or a poverty trap. The welfare trap is a poverty trap in its own right. It is not a good place in which to be, but our efforts to reduce housing benefit and introduce a universal credit will start to change the present position and make a fairer society for us all.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I think I am right in also wishing you a happy birthday for tomorrow. I also wish to say that it is a privilege and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson).
We cannot divorce housing benefit from the plethora of other benefits that have been allowed to build up over the last 13 years: jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, and also council tax benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit. Contributory benefits and universal benefits will all play a part in resolving this country’s benefits problem.
These benefits are a bureaucratic nightmare. They are mainly paper based, and enormous amounts of evidence are required to justify their application. As a consequence, many individuals who claim benefits have to go to Jobcentre Plus, the pensions authority, the disability and carers service, their local authority and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. If they are on jobseeker’s allowance they may have to swap between that and incapacity benefit, claiming the money from the same agency yet having to claim again. Clearly therefore, what we have inherited will be a nightmare to resolve. Housing benefits impinge on all those other benefits, and I have said before that housing benefit is a very bad benefit, because it is so complicated to administer.
Let us look at what has happened over the last 10 years. I will not repeat the figures for the increase in the total budget, but we should note that it costs £1 billion to administer that budget. For most local authorities in the country it is the biggest single item of expenditure going through their books. We are using it as a form of housing subsidy. That is right and justified, but the extent to which the costs have built up and been allowed to spiral is completely wrong. The one thing I agree with the Opposition about is the need to reform housing benefit, yet for 13 years they ran this country but did not reform it. Instead they made it worse. Now we have inherited that situation and we, as the new Government, must deal with it.
What must we do to reform it? First, we must look at the costs involved in housing benefits. As we have said, this is the first stage in simplifying the country’s benefit system, making it more effective, reasonable and transparent, and changing it into a system that encourages people to go to work. In my constituency people frequently say to me, “I can’t get a house for love nor money.” The advice given to them by the local authority is, “We can’t provide you with a council house, but what we can do is this: you go into private sector rental accommodation, and housing benefit will pay for it.” If people in that situation follow that advice but then have the temerity to get a job, they lose housing benefit pound for pound, which is, of course, an immediate disincentive to getting a job. What we have to do is make sure that any reform of the whole housing benefit regime transforms it so that work always pays.
Bob Blackman
I will repeat the mantra that my hon. Friends have repeated, which is that 13% are in work and the rest are on JSA. The LHA has distorted the market even more, as my hon. Friends have said, by making it more beneficial in certain instances for people to be on housing benefit and pocket the difference. What nonsense! Rent levels have been distorted in many parts of the country.
The Opposition are claiming that the modest reforms being introduced will mean people being thrown out of their houses and suddenly being cleansed out of all proportion, but what will happen is exactly what is happening in the borough of which my constituency is a part. Its housing director has said that 3,040 families will be affected by the change, and the borough will seek to ensure that the rents fall and adjust to the levels of housing benefit that are applicable—although that still distorts the housing market. Some 3,000 properties out of more than 100,000 in the borough will be affected, so this involves a small percentage of people.
When I challenged the housing director to tell me what he would do about the families who might, sadly, lose their houses as a result of this change, the figure came down from 3,040 to 80. I have great sympathy for the 80 families who could be in that position, so I then challenged the housing director to tell me what he would do about it. My authority will do what every local authority in this country should do, which is challenge the landlords to reduce their rents so that those people are not made homeless.