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How Newsnight humiliated single mother
The New Statesman has a story about a recent Newsnight story that looked at a single parent claiming housing benefit. Presenter Allegra Stratton interviewed young single mother Shanene Thorpe, asking her why she thought it was ok to be living in her own flat and claiming housing benefit, rather than living with her mother.
After the interview, Stratton says directly to camera: “The government is thinking of saying to young people: if you don’t have work, don’t leave home.”
Except, Thorpe is not unemployed. As you may have read by now, she works full time for Tower Hamlets council, but claims housing benefits to help cover the cost of rent. In a series of statements on Twitter, Thorpe attempted to tackle the inaccurate portrayal of her situation: “To set the record straight, I work for tower hamlets council, I’ve worked since 16 and I only get help towards my rent because it is so high.”
The article has now been updated, with the blandest of apologies from the BBC:
Newsnight was sorry to hear Shanene Thorpe was unhappy following her interview. While the BBC is still yet to receive a formal complaint, Newsnight contacted Shanene to hear her concerns. We are happy to accept her contention that her current situation was not made clear and have apologised.
I saw this. it was excruciating.
Allegra Stratton basically suggested that she would have stayed at home if she couldn’t afford the rent….
The suggestion that a person should choose not to claim entitlements in this way is complete hipocrisy.
What is the difference with the following situations (which I am sure Stratton would have no problems with despite the fact that they are analogous):
1. I cannot afford to go to University if I have to pay the entire fee myself. Luckily, even though I end up in a lot of debt the price I have to pay is subsidised massively.
2. I cannot afford to educate my child privately, luckily there is a comprehensive school.
3. I cannot afford childcare amounts myself. Luckily, the state subsidises childcare.
4. I cannot afford IVF therapy. Luckily, it is available to me on the NHS.
and then we have the benefit claimant:
5. “I cannot afford to pay rent….. so I have to stay at home with my mother???”
The difference is that the first 4 examples are for state subsidised services which are used by everyone.. benefits on the other hand are state subsidised services that because of the residualised way the system is run are only available to the poor. Given the class hatred towards such ordinary people common in the media, this allows them to say that it is actually morally wrong to claim an entitlement….
Ken Livingstone in the discussion afterwards did at least make the point that HB is a subsidy for landlords and could be better cut by rent control. No doubt many of the people outraged by someone relying on the state for a bit of help with the rent have lots of acquaintances benefitting from the high property prices and rents….
grrrrrr.
Your parents come out of that anecdote slightly better than you do ;-)
Edit: for what it’s worth, I apologise for this pointless remark.
[ Edited: 15 Jun 2012 at 10:52 pm by Jon (CANY) ]CSBailey01: is it something about welfare benefits in particular that makes you think it is wrong for people who are entitled to use them?
Which bits of the services provided by the state do you think it is ok to take advantage of? Own a car? If so do you drive on the roads? Get your rubbish collected by the council?
How about: if you can’t afford to take your rubbish to the dump you shouldn’t produce any?
It is the same argument you make as far as I am concerned.
CSBailey01: is it something about welfare benefits in particular that makes you think it is wrong for people who are entitled to use them?
Which bits of the services provided by the state do you think it is ok to take advantage of? Own a car? If so do you drive on the roads? Get your rubbish collected by the council?
How about: if you can’t afford to take your rubbish to the dump you shouldn’t produce any?
It is the same argument you make as far as I am concerned.
Rightsnet really needs to have a ‘like’ or ‘agree’ button!
The way I see it (as a full-time worker, lone parent, of 36, living in modest rented accommodation for which I too get HB) benefits are a statutory entitlement… if you meet the criteria you are paid, that is the law passed by parliament. If CSBailey01 doesn’t like the law or the intention behind the law then he/she should become an MP (!) and not denigrate people who are working hard and claiming their statutory entitlement.
CSB is arguing the the public purse saves money if someone chooses to move into their parents home rather than renting somewhere commercially. That may be true but it misses out on some points.
Is it their choice alone? Their parents might refuse or agree only under pressure, there’s no absolute right so there’s no absolute choice to exercise either. Their parents may be on benefits so there will be a NDD; what happens if they don’t pay the equivalent amount to parents? Is it a more attractive choice because parents typically subsidise more than solely the accommodation in this sort of situation, often giving the child a higher disposable income than if they were renting with HB?
If there’s a situation when, as an adviser, someone asks whether they’ll get HB if they rent a new property, do you ask them whether they could move back with their parents? Only if they’re under 25? If they’re 60 with 80 year old parents?
If you’re already renting and working and your pay or hours fall should you move out and descend on parents with the extra load that imposes on them?
Is HB not to be payable to people with friends or relations with floor space?
AC tells us she’s working and therefore in a complex financial relationship with the government. She pays tax and NI and may claim tax credits and CTB as well as the HB I’m glad to see she gets. Should she be expected to maximise the tax she pays or is she entitled to follow the rules for both giving and getting?
I’m glad that CSB was able to have a choice, and that others went along with it. Nobody will want to make you rent somewhere and claim HB if you don’t want to but, equally, nobody should force others to move back, or take back, if they don’t want to.
[ Edited: 11 Jun 2012 at 11:36 am by Gareth Morgan ]A couple of points for CSBailey to consider.
One, the quote from the Newsnight interview was “The government is thinking of saying to young people: if you don’t have work, don’t leave home.”
As the young lady in question was working, the whole premise for the interview was fundamentally misleading - she was working, she wasn’t able to access social housing, and thus was claiming housing benefit to subsidise the costs of renting privately.
Two, this in turn flags up a related issue, namely the chronic shortage of social/affordable housing for people, particularly young people, who are in similar positions to those of the person interviewed. Far from railing against the apparent or perceived failings of someone justifiably and quite legally claiming a statutory entitlement to state assistance with their housing, I would have hoped that you might somewhere have expressed an opinion on this.
Yet you fall back to this view that it should only be “afforded to those in desperate need”, which is one of the most pitiful distortions of the role of social housing that I have heard expressed. If social housing isn’t available to someone who isn’t perceived to be in “desperate need”, let’s say a working single mother on a relatively low income, than her only choice suddenly becomes private renting if she cannot stay at home.
Yet your argument appears to be that, she shouldn’t be able to access social housing as she has no desperate need, and she shouldn’t be able to claim housing benefit either, because she has a mother with a flat (even though she said it wasn’t suitable for all 3 of them to live together).
I simply think you’re approaching social housing from totally the wrong angle, for the reason you already highlight i.e. subjectivity of need.
Shelter, in my opinion, make a very clear definition of the purpose of social housing:
“A key function of social housing is to provide accommodation that is affordable to people on low incomes. Rents in the social housing sector are kept low through state subsidy. The social housing sector is currently governed by a strictly defined system of rent control to ensure that rents are kept affordable.
Unlike the private rental sector, in which tenancies are offered according to the free choice of the landlord or existing household in question, social housing is allocated according to need.
The fact that there is a shortage of social housing does not, again in my opinion, mean that we should therefore aim to introduce ever-more stringent criteria in order to limit access to what housing remains - that’s a race to the bottom essentially, which undermines the fundamental case for the provision of social housing full stop. Further, the degree of need is already a factor in allocation, but not pinned to a notion of “desperate need” which is something I strongly disagree with.
The reason people are up in arms about the Newsnight story is because it misrepresented an individual’s actual situation, in pursuing a line about benefit claimants taking advantage of the system, thus laying the stage for further cuts to eligibility on a wholly false premise. In this case, the fact that other people such as your severely disabled client was unable to secure appropriate accommodation doesn’t mean we start pitting one set of needy people against another - notions of deserving and undeserving poor were something that the post-war welfare state was intended to overcome.
If you take the time to read through to my link to Shelter and understand how allocation and need work, it includes availability of social housing (varies throughout the country - in London and the South East demand for social housing massively outstrips supply) and set eligibility criteria.
Local authorities must also ensure that the following groups are given ‘reasonable preference’ under any allocation scheme:
* people who are legally classed as homeless (or threatened with homelessness)
* people occupying unsanitary, overcrowded or otherwise unsatisfactory housing
* people who need to move for medical or welfare reasons
* people who need to move to a particular location: for example, to be nearer to special training opportunities or special medical facilities and who would suffer hardship if they were unable to do so.
That is a very different model of provision to your preference for only for those in “desperate need”.
Further, I fail to see why any of the above mitigates against the real scandal, which is the complete failure of successive government’s to make adequate investment in social housing stock due to their dogmatic obsession on home ownership, coupled with a chronic failure in any kind of private rent controls.
But hey ho, if you want to argue for more divisions between how we measure who is in need, more means-testing and greater restrictions on the help or assistance available for those on lower incomes, go right ahead.
The Government wrongly assumes that parents can actually afford to support their children once they become an adult at 18. Suppose the parents need to downsize through their own financial need? And there is the question of adult privacy.
The problem is that unless you are upper middle income-you dont have enough money to live; however i do think that we all expect more from lifestyle than we did in the 1960’s and 70’s. I think this is the issue that the higher income people and politicians have with benefit claimants-in that they assume benefits will keep them to the same level as people who work and benefits were created purely to prevent poverty and there is a difference. This is where the arguments start.
Great. A real knockabout rightsnet thread that is nothing to do with social security law and all about policy issues…
Some more welfare rights rhetoric then…. (my previous posts did have a lot of rhetoric but there was an underlying argument: ie that people should not feel (or be made to feel) that it is wrong for them to make a claim for a benefit to which they are entitled and that such a suggestion would never be made with respect to other aspects of state services).
There was no argument, my point was, as per the interview, is it an appropriate situation where young ladies leave the family home when they have no means to cover the full cost of rent in either social or privately rented accommodation?
“Young ladies” ???? Oh well…
Surely people make decisions to move out based on the real cost of rent- that is the amount their private sector landlord charges minus the sum they will be entitled to on housing benefit.
Am I right in thinking that the point here is really the policy point: should such a person be entitled to HB? ie you are suggesting that the “Young people: If you can’t afford the rent without HB don’t move out” policy suggested by the Government would be a good thing to do in this time of austerity etc.
Basically, all these issues are ones about where the burden of dealing with the crisis should fall. Should they fall on young people on low wages who cannot afford to live independently, or should they fall elsewhere? I know what I think on this one…..
Using a Martin Williams style metaphor: when is appropriate to advise a person to take out a mortgage they clearly cannot afford to take out? It is the same situation with rent ....
I know it has now been abolished, but we used to have mortgage interest tax relief. At the time we had this, when advising a person whether or not the mortgage was affordable, presumably one would have worked out the cost net of the mortgage interest tax relief? One does the same thing where someone can claim HB.
I do actually appreciate that my ideas may be viewed radical, if I am offending, I apologise.
I would characterize the ideas as reactionary, rather than radical. That is the case unless you use the term radical to refer equally to right as well as left positions. That is not usually how the term has been used this side of the Atlantic.
M
I know it has now been abolished, but we used to have mortgage interest tax relief. At the time we had this, when advising a person whether or not the mortgage was affordable, presumably one would have worked out the cost net of the mortgage interest tax relief?
I can confirm this was the case in the 1980’s (Latter end obviously.)
MIRAS was deducted and affordability was based on the NET figure.
As an aside I find it a bit cart before horse when HB is seen as the problem when the issue is excessively priced rents/homes. A mass devaluation of property would have a drastic effect on many fronts.
The policymakers view would seem to be the lesser of two evils is the lack of affordable housing.
As we’re broadening this out to policy fundamentals, and reductio ad absurdum, what are people’s views on the following.
a) Should there be any limit on the size or cost of property eligible for support from HB? If so what?
b) If someone is currently in adequate accommodation, with no immediate threat, should they be allowed to move to a more expensive property (bearing in mind that you can’t do this with SMI)?
I’ve lobbied my MP to introduce a private members bill into the Commons. I think it might drastically reduce the deficit and allow all those altruistic and generous bankers and financial speculators to get on with the proper job of making obscene amounts of money by bringing the world to its financial knees. I must say, he seems very keen. The relevant clauses are as follows.
An Act for the Amendment and better Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor in England and Wales. [4 & 5 Will. IV cap. 76]
It shall be lawful for His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, by Warrant under the Royal Sign Manual, to appoint Three fit Persons to be Commissioners to carry this Act into execution.…
II. … the said Commissioners shall be styled ‘The Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales’; and the said Commissioners, or any Two of them, may sit, from Time to Time as they deem expedient, as a Board of Commissioners for carrying this Act into execution.…
V. … the said Commissioners shall once in every Year, submit to One of the Principal Secretaries of State a general Report of their Proceedings; and every such general Report shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament.…
XV. … from and after the passing of this Act the Administration of Relief to the Poor throughout England and Wales, according to the existing Laws, or such Laws as shall be in force at the Time being, shall be subject to the Direction and Control of the said Commissioners; and for executing the Powers given to them by this Act the said Commissioners shall and are hereby authorized and required, from Time to Time as they shall see Occasion, to make and issue all such Rules, Orders, and Regulations for the Management of the Poor, for the Government of Workhouses and the Education of the Children therein, and for the Management of Parish Poor Children.…
XXIII. … it shall be lawful for the said Commissioners… by and with the Consent in Writing of a Majority of the Guardians of any Union, or with the Consent of a Majority of the Rate-payers and Owners of Property… to order and direct the Overseers or Guardians of any Parish or Union not having a Workhouse or Workhouses to build a Workhouse or Workhouses…
XXVI. … it shall be lawful for the said Commissioners, by Order under their Hands and seal, to declare so many Parishes as they may think fit to be united for the Administration of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor, and such Parishes shall thereupon be deemed a Union for such Purpose, and thereupon the Workhouse or Workhouses of such Parishes shall be for their common Use.…
XXXVIII. …where any Parishes shall be united by Order or with the Concurrence of the said Commissioners… a Board of Guardians of the Poor for such Union shall be constituted and chosen, and the Workhouse or Workhouses of such Union shall be governed, and the Relief of the Poor in such Union shall be administered, by such Board of Guardians; and the said Guardians shall be elected by the Rate-payers, and by such Owners of Property in the Parishes forming such Union as shall in manner herein-after mentioned require to have their Names entered as entitled to vote as Owners in the Books of such Parishes respectively; and the said Commissioners shall determine the Number and prescribe the Duties of the Guardians to be elected in each Union, and also fix a Qualification without which no Person shall be eligible as such Guardian.…
XLVIII. …the said Commissioners may… as and when they shall think proper, by Order under their Hands and Seal, either upon or without any Suggestion or Complaint in that Behalf from the Overseers or Guardians of any Parish or Union, … remove any Master of any Workhouse, or Assistant Overseer, or other paid Officer of any Parish or Union whom they shall deem unfit… or incompetent.
XCVIII. … in case any Person shall wilfully neglect or disobey any of the Rules, Orders, or Regulations of the said Commissioners or Assistant Commissioners, or be guilty of any Contempt of the said Commissioners sitting as a Board, such Person shall, upon Conviction before any Two justices, forfeit and pay for the First Offence any Sum not exceeding Five Pounds, for the Second Offence any Sum not exceeding Twenty Pounds nor less than Five Pounds, and in the event of such Person being convicted a Third Time, such Third and every subsequent Offence shall be deemed a Misdemeanour, and such Offender shall be liable to be indicted for the same Offence, and shall on Conviction pay such Fine, not being less than Twenty Pounds, and suffer such Imprisonment, with or without hard Labour, as may be awarded against him by the Court by or before which he shall be tried and convicted.
Are the parish guardians to be allowed ‘three quarts of good ale each at everey session’?
As we’re broadening this out to policy fundamentals, and reductio ad absurdum, what are people’s views on the following.
a) Should there be any limit on the size or cost of property eligible for support from HB? If so what?
b) If someone is currently in adequate accommodation, with no immediate threat, should they be allowed to move to a more expensive property (bearing in mind that you can’t do this with SMI)?
A) Probably, Don’t know.
The issue maybe demonstrated by the disparities below.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-22191417.html
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-22234917.html
B) Don’t know. I think there is an issue around people having choice.