Tag Archives: Affordable Housing Bill

Isn’t it interesting how Lib Dems change their policies when there’s an election coming?

Here’s a meme that’s appropriate to the subject. Click on it and you should go to a linked article on Another Angry Voice:

quislings

Here in Brecon and Radnorshire we have a Liberal Democrat MP – Roger Williams – who voted to support the Bedroom Tax (and probably all the others) at first and has now turned his back on it to support the Affordable Housing Bill, put forward by his party colleague Andrew George.

In local newspaper the Brecon and Radnor Express (of which Yr Obdt Srvt used to be the editor), he defended his actions by saying: “We found first of all it doesn’t work and secondly it creates hardship for many tenants. We’re not stupid enough not to amend legislation which has proven to be not fit for purpose.”

Further into the article Mr Williams admitted he initially supported the policy in the belief that it would actually do what the Conservatives said it would, and get people moving into appropriate housing: “My support was on the basis I get so many young people and couples coming to my office about inadequate housing while so many are living in social housing that is bigger than necessary. My support was on the basis we would get some mobility in social housing; that hasn’t happened.”

What utter, dissembling bilge!

We all knew the Bedroom Tax would never succeed in its stated aim of getting social tenants to move into more appropriately-sized accommodation because there simply wasn’t enough available – the Tories had sold off most of it during the 1980s and 1990s, while denying councils the ability to build replacements.

When the Bedroom Tax became law in April last year, only a tiny fraction of the amount of appropriate social housing was available for people affected, who wanted to downsize. The others were captives in their own homes, forced to pay a tax because they had been allocated a home that was larger than the law said they needed. In most cases, this was in turn because it was the only size accommodation available.

The Conservatives all knew that. Vox Political published it. It is unrealistic of Mr Williams to expect us to believe that he and the Liberal Democrats did not know it.

If you can’t believe what they’re saying about what they’ve done in the past, why should you believe what they say they’ll do in the future?

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Writing is on the bedroom wall for the Tories as they lose landmark vote

The Conservative Party has been humiliated in the first major Parliamentary vote since the summer recess – on a Private Member’s Bill to exempt disabled people from the Bedroom Tax.

Liberal Democrat Andrew George’s Bill proposed modest reforms, laid out by Vox Political in an article yesterday evening.

The debate lasted nearly four hours – and would have continued if a Tory filibuster had been successful. The Conservatives wanted to ‘talk out’ the Bill but their proposal was defeated by 304 votes to 237 – a majority of 67 votes.

This set the scene for an even greater defeat when MPs were asked on whether to approve the second reading of the bill. This time the Conservatives lost by a greater majority of 75 votes – the ‘ayes’ had it with 306 votes to 231 against.

Desperately, Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to refer the Bill to a select committee, rather than the normal committee stage. It failed by 28 votes.

An even more desperate attempt to refer the Bill to a Committee of the Whole House was rejected out of hand by Deputy Speaker Dawn Primarolo as out of order.

The Tories had also tried to derail the Bill at the start of the day’s business by moving a motion to hold the debate in private. This was defeated out of hand – only three MPs voted in favour of it – but it wasted a good 15 minutes of debating time.

Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Rachel Reeves tweeted: “Labour will now seek to amend the bill to scrap the Bedroom Tax completely. But an important victory… for all those paying it today.”

So the writing is on the wall for the Conservative Party. Shipley MP and imbecile Philip Davies asked if this meant the Coalition had come to an end. Let us hope so.

In that case, this will be the first of many defeats, leading up to a rout at the 2015 General Election.

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It’s time to kill off claims that Labour started the Bedroom Tax

Homeless: The Bedroom Tax has forced the eviction of an ever-growing number of social tenants. How many people have been evicted because of Local Housing Allowance?

Homeless: The Bedroom Tax has forced the eviction of an ever-growing number of social tenants. How many people have been evicted because of Local Housing Allowance?

It seems every debate on the brutal Tory Bedroom Tax has lately been overshadowed by some ill-informed commentator claiming that the Labour Party cannot oppose the measure because it imposed its own version of the same thing on the private rented sector, years ago.

Such a claim was made on the Vox Political Facebook page yesterday (Thursday) and Yr Obdt Srvt promised to seek out the facts.

Thanks to today’s debate on the Affordable Housing Bill, there was no need to look very far.

As mentioned in the debate, Labour imposed the Local Housing Allowance in order to stop private tenants from abusing the Housing Benefit system by moving into accommodation that was larger than they could afford – remember, private rented accommodation is more expensive than social housing – and forcing the taxpayer to fund the difference.

Labour’s measure was imposed only on people moving into privately rented accommodation after the LHA law was enacted.

So, for example, a single person might choose to take a place with two bedrooms. Before LHA was brought in, they could claim housing benefit on the property and rely on the taxpayer to stump up for the extra space. LHA means they get the money required for what they need – and they have to pay for the extra space. This is fair because moving into the larger property was their choice.

As with ordinary housing benefit, if a tenant’s circumstances change for the better, the amount of benefit payable is reduced. Why should a private tenant expect preferential treatment?

It seems that private landlords, who have been charging more than they should, have been angered by the imposition of the LHA and have chosen to wage a propaganda war against it, claiming that it is the Bedroom Tax by another name. Note that they are not against the Bedroom Tax, because it drives social housing tenants to the private sector.

Compare that with the Bedroom Tax. The Tories have imposed a charge on people who are living in social housing that was allocated to them on the basis of their need and the accommodation that was available; it is not the tenants’ fault if the only available accommodation was larger than they needed (more appropriate dwellings had probably been sold off under a previous Tory government’s ‘Right To Buy’ scheme).

The Conservative Bedroom Tax was imposed retrospectively – that is, it affected people who were already sitting tenants rather than those moving into accommodation. It was not intended to combat abuse of the system but was simply a way of robbing social tenants of help that they needed.

And the Bedroom Tax was imposed in the knowledge that the amount of alternative accommodation available to social tenants who needed to downsize in order to avoid the charge was only a fraction of what was needed. These people were trapped by this cruel legislation and driven into debt – in stark contrast to the Labour legislation which only affected people choosing to move into accommodation that was larger than they needed.

There is a huge difference between the Local Housing Allowance and the Bedroom Tax.

Any claims that they are similar must be rooted either in stupidity or in politically-motivated malice.

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Why would an early budget stop the habitual Tory pre-general election bribefest?

'For the privileged few': Anything George Osborne offers to the poor in next year's Budget statement will be removed after a Conservative government is returned to office.

‘For the privileged few’: Anything George Osborne offers to the poor in next year’s Budget statement will be removed after a Conservative government is returned to office.

It is hard to understand why the Liberal Democrats seem to think bringing forward the 2015 Budget from March to February would stop George Osborne from using it to try to bribe gullible or selfish voters with tax giveaways.

The Conservatives habitually try to buy votes with measures that appear generous at the time, only to put the squeeze on the electorate in some new way after securing an election victory.

Look at Nigel Lawson’s announcement that the base rate of Income Tax would drop from 29 per cent to 27 per cent in 1987. The Tories won a landslide and then imposed the Poll Tax on us all. It was a disaster for the UK’s lowest-paid.

According to the BBC, the Tories are saying a “flashy pre-election Budget” would “weaken the credibility of their central message of economic revival and fiscal rectitude”.

Vox Political readers will probably agree that talk about “fiscal rectitude” is more likely to come from the rectUM, where Tories are concerned.

The Liberal Democrats don’t believe a word of it – and after more than four years in coalition with the Conservatives, they should know!

The BBC report claims that Tory backbenchers want to increase the level of income a person earns before they start paying the 40 per cent rate of income tax, or raise the threshold for employees’ national insurance by more than inflation, to lure lower-paid people into thinking the Conservatives have had a change of heart and the brutality inflicted on the poor since May 2010 is over. That would be a foolish notion!

The Lib Dems know they would not be able to stop the Tories doing this. But a February budget would allow around six weeks between the Budget statement and the start of the general election campaign, in which they would be able to separate themselves from the Tories and expose the motivation behind any faux generosity in the Chancellor’s speech.

Of course, some Lib Dems have been discussing the collapse of the Coalition before the Budget is announced. This would make the Conservatives a minority government and it seems unlikely that they would be able to pass their Budget if the Liberal Democrats did not support it.

Let’s hope that happens. The Affordable Housing Bill would be a good opportunity to ram in the wedge.

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Will the Tories be embarrassed by the Affordable Housing Bill?

The National Housing Federation ran a campaign against the 'bedroom tax' while the legislation was going through Parliament - but the government was blind to the concerns of this expert organisation.

The National Housing Federation ran a campaign against the ‘bedroom tax’ while the legislation was going through Parliament – but the government was blind to the concerns of this expert organisation.

Tomorrow (Friday) the Labour Party will do something it hasn’t done in a fair few years – support a Parliamentary Bill put forward by a Liberal Democrat!

Andrew George’s Affordable Housing Bill seeks to soften the effects of the Bedroom Tax by exempting households in which disabled people have had adaptations made to the building, and in which any person in receipt of Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payment (but notably not Employment and Support Allowance) is not able to share a bedroom with a partner, meaning that all bedrooms are occupied, if only by the claimant and their partner.

It would also force the Work and Pensions Secretary to review the number of affordable homes and intermediate housing available, assessing the need for such dwellings, progress made in meeting this need and the potential to do so, the role of registered providers and community land trusts, and whether he should act to meet any need revealed by the review.

This could doubly harm the Conservatives as David Cameron went on record during Prime Minister’s Questions many times as the Bedroom Tax passed into law, to say that it would not affect the disabled. Clearly his statements were false; clearly he was lying to Parliament.

It is also public knowledge that the Conservatives were well aware of the lack of appropriate housing for people to downsize into, once the Bedroom Tax came into effect and they were forced to pay for rooms the government now considers to be under-occupied. The plan was never to get people to move into more appropriate accommodation; it was always to force people – who had been allocated housing on the basis of what was available at the time – into a benefit cut created by conditions that were not of their making.

Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Rachel Reeves, writing on LabourList, stated that Labour will support Mr George’s Bill. “Though most MPs will have commitments in their constituencies, I and other Labour MPs will be present in the House of Commons chamber to support the Bill so that it has the best chance of progressing through to its next stage,” she wrote.

It is to be hoped that any absent MPs will have ‘paired’ with opposing MPs, in order to ensure that no side has an unfair advantage when the matter comes to the vote; it is bad enough that the government scheduled the Bill’s second reading for a Friday, when most MPs have constituency duties.

Labour has lately come under fire from certain individuals – including readers of this blog – who are living under the delusion that Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has supported the Coalition government with regard to the Bedroom Tax. Let’s put that to rest with a few more words from the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary:

“Labour has been clear and consistent in its opposition to the Bedroom Tax.

“We said it was cruel and unfair, taking an average £700 a year from half a million low income households. The government has admitted that two thirds of those hit have disabilities, and another 60,000 are carers. All the evidence from housing and disability experts showed that most would have nowhere else to move to.

“We also said it was unworkable and could end up costing more than it saved, with people unable to keep up with their rent, destabilising the finances of housing providers and risking costly eviction proceedings, or ending up with private landlords where rents and housing benefit bills are higher.

“Our fears were confirmed by the government’s own independent evaluation of the policy slipped out over the summer. This revealed that just 4.5% of affected claimants had been able to move to smaller accommodation within the social sector, that 60% had fallen behind with their rent after just six months, and that there was “widespread concern that those who were paying were making cuts to other household essentials or incurring other debts”.

“These are the reasons why Labour MPs forced a vote in the House of Commons for its abolition in November last year. It is why we supported a Bill to abolish the tax put forward by Ian Lavery MP in February this year. And it is why Ed Miliband has committed the next Labour government to repealing it if we win the general election next year.

“We in the Labour Party will take any opportunity to protect as many people as we can from this unjust and ill-conceived policy.

“But the only sure way to get the Bedroom Tax fully repealed will be to elect a Labour government next May.”

The Affordable Housing Bill is scheduled to be the first discussed in the September 5, 2014 session, and it should be possible to watch the debate at http://www.parliament.uk or the BBC’s Democracy Live site from 9.30am onwards.

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