Unions condemn housing benefit cuts
The Trades Union Congress has condemned the government’s decision to cut housing benefit payments.
The TUC said its analysis of the Department for Work and Pension’s impact assessment into the changes suggested the government was burying difficult decisions ‘in the small print’ of the Budget document.
The DWP’s assessment concedes that 100 per cent of households on local housing allowance will be hurt by the reforms, and that families will lose around £12 a week once their benefits are cut.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘The chancellor promised “not to hide any hard choices from the British people or bury them in the small print of the budget documents”, but this is another reminder that we are definitely not all in this together.
‘While the rich have been let off, families are being left to pick up the cost of the recession.’
This came as the National Housing Federation predicted that nearly a million people will be put at risk of debt, arrears or homelessness as a result of the changes.
The federation said the cuts would affect 431,000 women, 308,000 low-paid workers, 299,800 single parents, 205,500 unemployed people, 178,000 people with disabilities 121,800 black and Asian people and 75,000 older people.
David Orr, chief executive of the NHF, said: ‘Ministers have said consistently since taking office that they will do their utmost to protect the most vulnerable – and yet the introduction of the housing benefit caps will clearly lead to an onslaught on some of the most vulnerable groups in society.
‘The changes could see hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people fall into debt, forced out of their homes and neighbourhoods and crammed into overcrowded ghettos. Many others will simply become homeless.’
Inside Housing is running a campaign calling for a fairer way to cut the housing benefit bill. Visit our What’s the Benefit? page for more information or sign our petition to support the campaign.
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Readers' comments (33)
michael barratt | 05/08/2010 9:15 am
Banks and 'wheeler dealers' (not worthy of the name business people) with their reckless financial practices have brought Britain to the brink. However, the price for this recklessness is not being paid for by those who created the mess. Banks are prospering due to Government handouts and at the expense of savers. Banks are acquiring capital at next to nothing (0.5%-1.5% on many savings accounts) while they lend money out at high rates of interest. No wonder banks are making record profits.
Yet to clear up the economic mess created by those banks and city high flyers the LIBCON Government has declared war on the disabled and other socially disadvantaged groups. The LIBCONS intend to introduce policies that will inevitable lead to the economic cleansing of our cities and the possible compulsory resettlement of the 'under performers' on benefits to provincial backwaters.
How could the Liberal Democrats sign themselves up to such neocon policies that will inevitably see their obliteration as an independent political party at the ballot box?
Is it not amazing that those who are the first to complain about the disabled and economically disadvantaged receiving social income and state benefits are the first to stand in line for government handouts to salvage their businesses that have gone 'pear shaped' due to their recklessness and incompetence.
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Alpha One | 05/08/2010 10:03 am
This is not correct, the issue of deficit reduction is completely separate from HB payments. Yes it will save money, but I believe this government would have made these changes regardless of the state of the economy.
HB cuts are not a bad thing, it moves the benefits system away from being an alternative lifestyle choice to being what it should be, a safety net for those who need it.
Far too many people get too much in benefits and have no incentive to work, and this must end.
£1,600 per month is a lot of money, even in London, for a a bed house.
It might sound heartless, but if you are on benefits you can't expect to reside in the nicest parts of town, that socialist ideal is wrong in every sense of the term.
Look at it from another angle, you go to work, you earn £35k a year, and you work hard for it, you're wife doesn't work as she is taking care of your 4 children. It means you can afford a modest property, with a mortgage, of about £150k which is perhaps 3 bed rooms. Then you see a family of 6, mum and dad on benefits, but because they have 6 children then need a 5 bed house, at least. That 5 bed house costs £450k, and the monthly rent is £2k. Mum and dad are only on benefits because, the amount they receive could never be matched by their earning capacity.
How is that a fair use of public funds. Mum and dad can work, but choose not to because their earning capaity is such that benefits are a better solution to their income needs.
What the HB changes are intended to do is to say to that mum and dad, we'll give you £1,600 a month (still a tidy sum), but you need to find the extra £400.
When you factor in the changes to job seekers that require people to find a job, and to IB which require people to actually be incapacititated, that family has two choices, homelessness or finding work.
The lefties amongst you almost always go for the inevtiable being that that family will become homeless. When in reality, all dad has to do is go and get a modest job, a couple of days a week, and he can earn £400 a month easily. If we worked a decent 9-5 5 days a week, he'd be pulling in sufficient money to not need benefits. He'd still get HB as he'd probably still be in housing need, but he could afford to pay more of it.
Now that's a fair society. Why should I work all hours, so that my neighbour can sit around watching sky sports all days on the free TV, in their free house earning free money.
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Sidney Webb | 05/08/2010 10:24 am
A1 - the point you are missing is that previously that 5-bed home was available for rent at an afrodable amount. However, by popular acclaim the house was privatised and has now ended up owned by a private landlord. The 2kpcm charged is against the 0.5kpcm that the same property used to cost. It is this reason and this reason alone why the family in your example require housing benefit to meet their rent. Tenants are not the ones exploiting the benefit system, but are being exploited as a means for landlords to maximise incomes - as was the stated aim of government when they deregulated the rents.
Briefly - on earnings of £35kpa a mortgage of £150k may have been ok under the deregulated banking debacle, but relistically to be sustainable a £40k deposit would now be required.
Now, in the real world benefits postion. Your 'dad' happily trips out and takes that minimum wage job which you say easily bridges the housing benefit gap. What you are ignoring is that the benefit tapers across the benefits paid combine to reduce the overall income from wages towards zero or even to a negative. That is why 'IDS' proposals to unify benefits has merit (so long as it avoids the minutia repetative means testing which will cost more than is saves).
Security of tenure, reasonable living standards supported social welfare, and social inclusive fairness are all positive aims for a civilised society. When the share of the nation's wealth production is fairly paid in wages the demands on the welfare state and hence its costs are lower. Over the past 30-years the polarisation of profit into the hands of the elite (recorded and reported across all commentators left and right) has meant the creation of a low wage economy, increasing benefit dependence at the same time as resricting the pool of potential tax income from the reduced earnings of the majority. Adding into this the removal of available social let housing and its replacement by high charge private housing and you get the scenario that we now face.
At no point has the tenant or the benefit claimant caused this circumstance, other than to vote in the governments legislating the disaster into existance.
It is depressing the number of site posters who seem to be, in one shape or another, demeaning of those with less than they but jealous of those with more, except where those with more are members of the elite when it appears their right to wealth is unchallengable. Why Alpha One can you decide who deserves to live where? Why Alpha One can you decide who deserves to earn what? Why Alpha One are you so jealous of those who have advantages that you do not have?
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kass | 05/08/2010 11:35 am
to start with, how is it an advantage to have to bring up 6 children? If you expect parents to be good parents is not that a full time job?
If you say they were worng to have 6 children, don't you know that being poor produces large families?
And the fact that being poor produces large families surely cannot be effectively solved with making them poorer. The would only produce even larger families.
Instead of attacking those with larger families you got to provide them with the means of enriching them and give them more opportunities so they become well off and realise that is much more convenient not to have so many children and therefore produce less need of large housing accomodation.
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kass | 05/08/2010 11:35 am
to start with, how is it an advantage to have to bring up 6 children? If you expect parents to be good parents is not that a full time job?
If you say they were worng to have 6 children, don't you know that being poor produces large families?
And the fact that being poor produces large families surely cannot be effectively solved with making them poorer. The would only produce even larger families.
Instead of attacking those with larger families you got to provide them with the means of enriching them and give them more opportunities so they become well off and realise that is much more convenient not to have so many children and therefore produce less need of large housing accomodation.
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Anonymous | 05/08/2010 12:03 pm
Kass - Those who have six children without any means of providing for them have fallen at the first hurdle in terms of being good parents as far as I'm concerned. Sadly their stupid and selfish actions require the state to help them, otherwise it's the children that suffer.
I'd agree providing opportunities for those in need to enrich themselves is a great aim, but don't avoid the basic fact that those procreating without thought for their children's welfare can't blame their actions on being poor, it's being stupid and selfish.
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Sidney Webb | 05/08/2010 1:11 pm
Whatever the pontification about family size, the basic fact is that cultural and religious differences mean that there are different perceptions about the rights and wrongs of more of less children being born.
It is not stupidity nor selfishness. Anonymous | 05/08/2010 12:03 pm
I do not believe that the majority of those with large families have had their children as a route to financial benefit, but without being inside their minds I can not state definately one way or the other. I could ask if anyone believes the Queen deliberately planned a large family so as to increase the benefit from the civil list. Of course not, the motivations of the Queen, as with any other parent, are not so base.
The problem is not people having children, nor people gaining tenancies for sake of the benefit. The scrounging mentality motivation is false. The problem is a deliberate removal of affordably rented housing and a deliberate shortage of housing in general forcing prices higher and higher and forcing the poor into the hands of private landlords. Remove the housing shortage, remove the excessive private rents, and you remove the cost of paying the benefit to cover both wrongs.
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Anonymous | 05/08/2010 2:28 pm
PSR - having six children and expecting other people to support them is either selfish, stupid, or both, regardless of your cultural or religious background.
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Sidney Webb | 05/08/2010 2:31 pm
If you say so
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navidson | 05/08/2010 2:55 pm
"don't you know that being poor produces large families?"
I don't really understand how this argument works? Can't afford a TV so have to entertain themselves in other ways?
If you can't afford to have kids, don't have kids - It's not rocket science. I'd like to drive a big posh car and live in a big posh house, but i can't - So i don't.
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