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Claim that only 2-3 hours minimum wage work are needed to cover the bedroom tax deduction doesn’t stack up
From Affinity Sutton -
‘There’s just two months to go until what has become known as the ‘bedroom tax’ comes into force, and more questions are being asked about how those hit are going to cope.
DWP minister Steve Webb has been addressing some of these questions this week, both in the media and in the Commons. He suggests that one solution is for people to find work, saying in response to a parliamentary question that “just two or three extra hours on the minimum wage would cover this deduction”.
Is it true that just a few hours of work would save people from the bedroom tax ....’
I don’t agree with her sums but I’ve been assuming a 19 year old on low minimum wage and that may not be correct.
Interestingly that first example does rather well out of Universal Credit.
It might also be helpful for Affinity Sutton to say how many smaller sized units they have, which they could possibly move current “under—occupiers” into. Government yesterday were making claims that the volume of “under-occupied” social housing properties has some direct correlation to the number of over-crowded private-rented houses, when the reality is that both are aspects of a seriously dysfunctional housing policy, at national and local level in much of the country.
The point is that Webb (who has now publicly repeated this claim twice at least) appears not to understand the effect of tapers in means-tested benefits. Different examples will produce different results but his claim only works for households not on HB and…er….therefore subject to the bedroom tax anyway!
Incidentally, I am personally not keen on the term “bedroom tax” - not because I agree with the policy, but because of this term’s potential to mislead. My authority is starting to get a trickle of calls from tenants not on HB who are asking “will I have to pay this tax because I’ve got a spare bedroom…?”
My worry is that the Minister’s dodgy grasp of facts will actually add to this misunderstanding.
I had a call, via another agency, this week from a single claimant with an adult dependant in a three bedroom property who said she was told that if she switched bedrooms with her daughter whose bedroom was smaller, she could avoid the ‘bedroom tax’. Chinese Whispers has gone into overdrive on this one.
Indeed they do. I’ve heard people saying that they won’t pay the bedroom tax, despite the fact that the deduction will be made at source, as it were.