PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

1459 Oral Answers
26 MARCH 2013
Oral Answers
1460
T9. [149778] Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): My constituent’s
adult son has spina bifida. He keeps his wheelchairs in
his spare box room and will lose £14 a week as a result
of the bedroom tax. Is that in accordance with Liberal
Democrat principles?
The Deputy Prime Minister: As I say, we have made a
number of changes already to the detail of the spare
room subsidy. We have provided a considerable amount
of extra money for discretionary housing payments.
Councils, including the council of the hon. Gentleman’s
constituent, have discretion to use that money and to
change the way the policy is adapted in practice. However,
we will, of course, look at these difficult cases, work
with councils and, if we need to, further adapt the way
in which the policy is implemented.
Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD): I thoroughly
welcome what my right hon. Friend said about city
deals. Will he take note of the governance model for
Greater Manchester, and does he recognise the value of
a system that does not have a big mayoral figure?
The Deputy Prime Minister: I do not know which big
mayoral figure my right hon. Friend might be thinking
of, but I agree with him about the model of co-operation
between local authorities of different political persuasions
in Greater Manchester, which operates under the city
deal system. Greater Manchester is pioneering the earn-back
system, where Greater Manchester will be able to keep
more revenue for infrastructure investment in the local
area to the benefit of the people in Greater Manchester.
That may prove to be a model that others seek to
emulate elsewhere.
T10. [149779] Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab): The
Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that independent
researchers have concluded that the Budget and recent
welfare reforms will substantially increase child poverty
and material deprivation among children. Is he proud
of that?
The Deputy Prime Minister: As the hon. Lady will
know, we have set out some ideas on child poverty. In
addition to the existing poverty targets, which we are
duty-bound to seek to meet, we have tried to ensure that
the factors that hold back children from fulfilling their
potential—whether it is poor housing or poor education—
are addressed through measures such as the pupil premium;
there is £2.5 billion of extra money to help the most
deprived children in school. In addition, as of this
September, the Government are making 15 hours of
free pre-school support available to two-year-olds from
the most deprived families, something that her Government
never delivered.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con): The Deputy
Prime Minister said that he wants to see cross-party
consensus on solutions to the airport capacity issue, so
can he explain why he and his party have welcomed the
re-inclusion of Heathrow into the Davies commission,
given that his party had already ruled it out for ever?
Surely that means he risks wasting an awful lot of
money and everyone’s time.
The Deputy Prime Minister: My hon. Friend rightly
says that I and my party are not persuaded at all of the
case for Heathrow expansion, but equally we should not
seek, and no party on either side of the House should seek,
to tie the hands of the independent commission looking
at this issue in the round. We will await with interest, as
I guess everybody will, the results of the interim report
of Howard Davies’s commission and its final report
after the next general election.
T13. [149783] Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East
Falkirk) (Lab): Given the Deputy Prime Minister’s feeble
response to the question from the shadow Deputy Prime
Minister, in which he gave no safeguards that people,
including people from abroad, will not be able to buy
second homes with the mortgage subsidy, can he deal
with two other problems? First, all the analysts say that
this measure will create a housing bubble and inflate
house prices. Secondly, it will trap many people who
would not otherwise get on to the housing market in
sub-prime mortgages that they cannot afford in the
long run.
The Deputy Prime Minister: One would have thought
that a party that crashed the economy, sucked up to the
banks and let them get away with blue murder, and
presided over a massive housing boom and bust would
have a hint, a note of contrition in its questions about
the housing market. Why does the hon. Gentleman
want to deprive his constituents of the ability to get
their feet on the first rung of the property ladder? Why
does he want to deprive young families who want to
have a home they can call their own of the ability to do
so? Instead of constantly carping about our attempts to
fix the mess he and his colleagues left behind, perhaps
for once he should come up with some ideas of his own.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con): Does the Deputy
Prime Minister agree that the measures in the coalition’s
Budget for small and medium-sized businesses, including
introducing the business bank, changes to national
insurance and the industrial strategy, all add up to a
massive confidence boost for the small business sector?
That is great news for our economy, and we should be
right behind those measures.
The Deputy Prime Minister: I agree with my hon.
Friend. Of course, we all know that times are very
difficult and that the British economy is taking time to
heal. That is why it is a great tribute to the Chancellor
and his team that in the Budget we have none the less
found measures that will take 2 million people on low
pay out of paying income tax altogether, that will give
small employers and businesses around the country
£2,000 off to allow them to employ more people, and
that included £1 billion extra for the aerospace industry.
It means that people will not face the higher petrol and
fuel prices they would have faced under Labour, and it
has got rid of the beer escalator and made sure that we
ease the squeeze on household budgets.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab): Given that
the Deputy Prime Minister has changed his mind on
cash bonds for some visitors coming to the UK—a very
different policy from the one he advocated in his Opposition
days—could he put in the Library a list of the items he
believed in and argued for before the election, but which
he no longer believes in and, indeed, has totally changed
his position on?