Under-Occupancy Penalty

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I will address that issue in my next point. My local citizens advice bureau is receiving more than 33 inquiries every week related to the bedroom tax.

One case study identified a young lady who had never been in rent arrears. As a result of the bedroom tax, she has only 84p per day to live on—to buy food, clothes and toiletries. That is an absolute scandal. Her story resonates with what food banks and homelessness charities in my constituency have told me. They feel that the increase in demand for their services is directly linked to the bedroom tax.

At the same time as the crisis was looming, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was quoted in our local newspaper, the Shields Gazette, saying:

“When 13,101 households are stuck on a waiting list for social housing in south Tyneside, there’s a big problem that needs addressing… it can’t be right that many households across the north-east are living in an overcrowded home. There’s nothing fair about making families wait and wait for a house that is big enough, while other households on benefits are allowed to live in homes that are too big for their needs, at no extra cost.”

The Secretary of State helpfully advised that my constituents may

“decide to take up work, or work a few more hours to cover the difference”

or

“move to more appropriately-sized accommodation or take in a lodger.”

I would like to take this opportunity to invite him to South Shields to deliver that advice personally to my constituents.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

A number of pensioners have told me in my surgery that they are living in three or four-bedroom houses and are subject to the bedroom tax, but cannot downsize. The shift that we want to see is three and four-bedroom houses becoming available, but in my constituency they are now hard to let.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is correct. Elderly people in my constituency have come to my surgery to say, in their words, that they are rattling around in three-bedroom homes. They would like to move, but they cannot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed, because of the nature of building at the time, a lot of smaller properties in the city, when we have them, are to be found in high-rises.

[Pat Glass]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing the intervention. Does she agree that many current housing allocation policies came out of the recommendations in the Scarman report, and that a move back to pre-Scarman policies not only makes no financial sense, but is potentially dangerous?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is helpful. It reminds us of the many ways in which we are going backwards.

In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, I mentioned a DWP Minister’s suggestion that if councils were struggling with three-bedroom houses that they could not let, they should have anticipated the problem and taken steps to divide those houses. I was fantasising slightly about how that would work. Let us take a typical three up, two down property in England; in Scotland, we are more likely to be talking about a tenement flat. What exactly would be involved in dividing it? First, either the tenants would somehow have to use the same door and stairs, or the council would have to create a separate entrance, which would cost money. One of the upstairs rooms would have to be converted into some form of kitchen, which would cost money. That leaves the downstairs, which would have a kitchen, but not a bathroom. Where would the bathroom go, or at least a toilet? A bathroom extension? Remember there are only two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, so building a bathroom would not be easy, unless it were built outside, and an extension costs money. Then I thought, “I know what the Minister must have had in mind: a portaloo in the back garden.” That would take us right back to the days when people had outside toilets, but it might help get the house divided up. It would involve not only huge additional cost but a style of living that I hope most of us would think inappropriate. That shows how little thought was given in practical reality.

It is the same with the idea that everybody could take in lodgers. That does not take into consideration the nature of many of the properties in which people live, and the difficulties involved.