PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

471WH
[Steve Webb]
Under-Occupancy Penalty
(Birkenhead)
come across in 30 years in Parliament—except that he
was a Minister in my Department and, intermittently, a
supporter of the previous Government, who introduced
the local housing alliance. As I am sure he knows, with
that allowance we say to private sector tenants on
housing benefit that, broadly speaking, the rents we pay
will reflect household size: generally, if not universally,
someone can have private rent up to, now, the 30th percentile
of rents for a household of the size it is. For some years,
therefore, we have said to 1 million LHA private sector
tenants, “We won’t pay benefit for an extra bedroom. If
you want one, that’s fine, but you pay for it.”
If that policy is fair and appropriate for private sector
tenants, why is it squalid, evil and unprecedented for
social tenants? Surely consistency and fairness—a word
the right hon. Gentleman used—mean that we should
treat people the same way, whether they are private
sector or social tenants. One might argue, indeed, that
social tenants generally have the advantage of a subsidised
rent, which private sector tenants do not have, and we
treat private sector tenants unfairly in the sense that we
do not give them an extra bedroom.
Mr Field: The Minister knows perfectly well that the
local housing allowance level we set was above the
average amount for those in social housing, so there is
still a real difference in the rent levels for what someone
can command in the private sector compared with the
public sector.
Steve Webb: The right hon. Gentleman reinforces my
point: people in the private sector were having to pay
higher rents than those in the social sector, and they
could not have a spare bedroom.
Mr Field: No, taxpayers were required to pay higher
rents.
Steve Webb: People in the social rented sector still
benefit from subsidised rents and, potentially, spare
bedrooms. The figure used by the right hon. Gentleman
was of more than 800,000 spare bedrooms in households
where the rent is paid for by housing benefits.
To give a sense of scale, we are asking a household
with one spare bedroom to contribute £2 a day on
average for having the spare bedroom. I do not belittle
the financial pressures that many households are under,
because it would be entirely wrong of me to do so, but
we know from experience of the private rented sector
that some households will decide that, notwithstanding
the financial pressures on them, £2 a day for the advantage
of that extra bedroom is a price that they will pay. There
will also be many other responses. The right hon. Gentleman
mentioned taking in lodgers, and some housing associations
and local authorities have given their tenants advice on
how to do that. It is good use of a spare room, because
it provides accommodation to someone, such as a young
single person perhaps, as well as extra income to the
household, and deals with the problem.
There will be some movement in the social rented
sector. In the right hon. Gentleman’s area, 20 housing
associations and local authorities have come together to
form Propertypool Plus, doing exactly what they should
be doing, which is pooling their stock and giving
26 MARCH 2013
Under-Occupancy Penalty
(Birkenhead)
472WH
a much greater chance of having something to suit a
particular family than an individual housing association
would have. If we facilitate someone moving from underoccupied
accommodation into a house that fits, someone
else who is living in overcrowded accommodation can
also move to a house that fits, which seems to be an
entirely good thing, although the latter person’s voice
was silent in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman.
I looked at the Wirral housing strategy for 2011 to
2026, and the council has realised that under-occupation
is an issue. Before we invented our policy, the local
authority stated:
“Research has identified that there are a number of people
who are under occupying their home, regardless of tenure,”
going on to say that
“the Council will seek to help people by offering a range of
services”
to help them live in more appropriate accommodation.
There is therefore recognition in Wirral of a mismatch
between the homes people are living in and the homes
that they might need, perhaps particularly in the case of
older people, although I stress that pensioners are exempt
from our policy.
Creative things are being done in the right hon.
Gentleman’s part of the world. For example, Wirral
metropolitan borough council has obtained £2 million
of Homes and Communities Agency funding to work
on empty properties and plans to bring 765 empty
properties back into use over a three-year period. He is
right to say that supply is a crucial part of the story. We
want to ensure that the supply is there for people, but
that will not happen overnight. We also know that
initiatives to deal with under-occupation have not really
worked. Simply saying, “Would you like to move to
somewhere smaller?” when there is no reason for anyone
to do so, has not worked, and we have to regard the
spare bedrooms in social housing in this country as a
precious resource, because there is not enough housing.
The right hon. Gentleman colourfully described bricking
up spare bedrooms, but I can save the landlords he is
seeking to send down that track the trouble. If, for
example, they want to designate a property with one
bedroom occupied and a spare bedroom as a one-bedroom
property, they can do so. They do not need to brick
anything up or knock any walls down; they can simply
designate it as a one-bedroom property. They will take
the lower rent, but the tenant is not under-occupying.
The reduction in the spare-room subsidy would not
apply because there is not a spare room; it is the
landlord who takes the financial hit in that situation.
Knowsley local authority has, on occasion, followed
such a policy. If landlords decide that that is the best
solution, we have no problem with that. Obviously, we
get the saving, because we are only paying the rent for a
one-bedroom property and not a two-bedroom property,
so if local authorities and other landlords can bear the
financial impact, that might be a part of the mix. I do
not think that many will be able to do so, but questions
of bricking up rooms do not arise.
I have come across cases in which housing associations
have designated a box room as a second bedroom and
they have been gaily claiming the rent on a two-bedroom
property. Then this measure comes in and it is quickly
apparent that it is not really a bedroom; it is just a box
room. Part of the answer is for landlords to be honest