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Bedroom tax: Lord Freud and Housing Minister today
excellent guardian blog re Lord Freud and Housing Minister giving evidence to Work and Pensions Committee earlier today -
‘MPs question Lord Freud and Kris Hopkins over the bedroom tax - Summary
The committee hearing is now over. Here are the main points.
• Kris Hopkins, the housing minister, was criticised by a Labour MP on the committee when he suggested that some disabled people were having difficulties with the bedroom tax because they were “set in their ways” in relation to their spending. When asked about the impact of the bedroom tax on the disabled, Hopkins said:
There are vulnerable individuals, there are people who are set in their ways about the way that they spend and use their money.
Debbie Abrahams, a Labour MP on the committee, said that attitude was “shocking”.
• Hopkins dismissed a report from the National Housing Federation saying two thirds of households affected by the bedroom tax are in rent arrears. The data in the report was out of date, he said.
• Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, said the government would continue to give money to councils to enable them to help people affected by the bedroom tax for a long period of time. It was originally thought that these discretionary housing payments (DHPs) would be a temporary measure. But Freud said guidance had gone out recently saying they would stay in place for a long period of time.
• Freud said that this year councils would not use all the money available to them through the DHP programme to help them support vulnerable people, such as the disabled, affected by the bedroom tax. This meant that enough money was available, he suggested.
• Freud ruled out exempting disabled adults, or people with adapted homes, from the bedroom tax. That was because DHP money was available to help them, he said. He said it would be hard coming up with a tight definition of who should be exempt.
• Freud conceded that cuts to housing benefit had not resulted in private sector rents coming down. When asked to defend this claim, which the government originally made in 2010, he instead said that rent increases had been “relatively modest”.
• Freud said the benefit cap rules were being amended so that, from April, in practice all women’s refuges would be exempt. At the moment only some are exempt.
• Freud said that the DWP still believes that fewer than 5,000 people have been affected by the loophole that resulted in them losing money under the bedroom tax when they should have been exempt. Other estimates suggest almost 50,000 people could be affected.
• Freud claimed that private sector landlords were not becoming more reluctant to take tenants on housing benefit.’
When asked about the impact of the bedroom tax on the disabled, Hopkins said:
There are vulnerable individuals, there are people who are set in their ways about the way that they spend and use their money.
That’s a truly appalling comment though I suppose I should have learned to expect nothing less by now.
Have you noticed the use of ‘[the report] is out of date’ as a way to bat away criticism? Hopkins uses it here. It’s become a regular with government figures.
Another blocking ploy is to claim they are ‘researching’ - should this not have been done prior to implementation???
They also continue to shelter behind the flexible magic of DHPs, dodgy figures and shaky stats.
Strangely enough the lack of research and testing was a major critism of the recent UN report, condemning the Bed Tax. Also if the report is out of date what is the updated info that is correct., no one seems to push for these answers.
It was the same with the Pension age increase, yes we are living longer, but are we staying fit, and still able to work, none of the committee’s or media asks these questions.
In time, this really will go down as one of the great policymaking failures of our age.
Ministers spend all their time dissing others’ research whilst clearly having done none of their own. It is quite clear that they never even researched the possibility of people affected being able to downsize to somewhere else. They’ve destabilised the finances of social housing providers, saved no money, put thousands into debt, and cannot point to any significant freeing-up of larger housing for families on the waiting list.
The cock-up in the drafting of the legislation is merely the icing on the cake, and it is already obvious that their claim of less than 5000 households affected by the 1996 loophole in the whole country is utterly untenable. Liverpool alone have stated that they have 2600.
It is telling that the DWP press office’s highly prolific, highly partisan twitter account never seems to talk about the bedroom tax these days…..