'I'll shout until they hear me'

Bob Russell’s constituency headquarters still hasn’t recovered from the election. The former church hall which houses his Colchester office is strewn with hustings paraphernalia including a now rather dated sticker which reads, ‘The Conservatives make me sick! Proud to be Liberal.’ It clearly displays the Liberal Democrat backbencher’s distaste for some of the policies his party is entering into as part of the new coalition government.

Before the election, Mr Russell’s Liberal Democrat colleagues spoke out ferociously against reforms to housing benefit which might damage the most vulnerable families in society. Sarah Teather, then spokesperson for housing, launched a campaign against Labour’s plans to remove the excess £15 in local housing allowance paid to claimants who found a lower deal on their rent. Meanwhile, party leader Nick Clegg and junior communities minister Andrew Stunnell also fought Labour’s plans for benefit reform in the Commons.

Now those voices have fallen mysteriously silent, with the coalition government’s Lib Dem pensions minister Steve Webb even fending off questions in a recent Westminster debate about coalition government’s plans to reform housing benefit. Those reforms, announced in June’s emergency Budget, included plans to cap local housing allowance and change the way it is calculated. Charities and housing organisations have since warned that the changes could put nearly a million people at risk of debt, arrears and homelessness.

The Liberal Democrats will have to take joint responsibility with their coalition partners for the impact of the reforms, which come into effect from April 2011, something the left-of-centre Mr Russell must surely feel uncomfortable with?

‘I have spent at least 40 years in public life as a councillor and an MP trying to improve the situation for the least privileged in society,’ he answers frankly. ‘This policy was ill-thought out and has many unintended consequences.’

Mr Russell speaks passionately and at length about the victims of those unintended consequences. In his polite, gentlemanly way, he is clearly very irritated by the coalition’s plans.

He expresses a sense of betrayal over the government’s attitude towards housing in general, particularly following prime minister David Cameron’s recent comments on security of tenure. ‘I do not recall anything in the coalition agreement which says that we are going to make life harder and more difficult for the least well-off in society,’ he states.

Making a stand

Mr Russell has signed up to Inside Housing’s What’s the Benefit? campaign, which aims to find alternative ways to lower the housing benefit bill. And last month, he became so concerned by warnings from groups such as the National Housing Federation about the consequences of benefit reform that he tabled four early day motions in swift succession, each calling on the government to change its policy. Two of the motions spoke bluntly about the impact of the reforms, while the others were more oblique, calling for the government to ensure that its policies never forced vulnerable people to leave their homes and communities as a result of changes to their economic circumstances.

He was quickly joined by other Liberal Democrat MPs, including Mike Hancock, MP for Portsmouth South, who told Inside Housing that he was speaking out because he ‘did not get elected to hurt the poor’. Other party members who signed the motions include Adrian Sanders, MP for Torbay and Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West.

Mr Russell insists his actions were prompted less by a groundswell of backbench rebellion than a desire to make his colleagues on the frontbench sit up and take notice. ‘I hope we might be able to use our influence in government to make things better for people on low incomes,’ he says.
The MP, who has held a seat in Colchester, Essex, since 1997, is not just worried about vulnerable tenants in his own semi-rural constituency, but also about the impact of the reforms on the character of the UK’s big cities.

‘We need these people [who will be affected by the benefit reforms] in our cities,’ he says. ‘They are the people who provide the services that we all take for granted: security guards, cleaners, nurses, and if you take the houses from low-income families, then part of our community will go.’

Capping the amount of LHA paid per bedroom means that many areas of London will become unaffordable to claimants, with shortfalls between rents and the new LHA rates reaching as much as £600 a week in some areas, including Camden and the City of London. Mr Russell describes this policy as being akin to ethnic cleansing - one of the early day motions he filed reads: ‘This house congratulates successive governments for their strong condemnation of regimes overseas which have embarked on policies aimed at the removal of people from their home communities, sometimes by force known as ethnic cleansing… and calls on the government to ensure that its own policies do not lead to the forced removal of British subjects from their homes and communities through changes to their economic circumstances.’

Mr Russell worries that cutting state support to low-income families will also wreak long-term damage on London’s economy. ‘Most families will have less disposable income, and they will cut down on the food they eat and the clothes they wear, and lower spending will not help the economy to grow,’ he warns. ‘What’s more, the cost to those individuals if they have children in local schools will be huge, as they may have to move away.’

Having served alongside David Cameron on the government’s home affairs select committee for the three years up until 2004, he says he ‘admires the man as a politician’. Mr Russell even claims that it was he who told the prime minister that national service for young people and giving power to parish councils to pinpoint land for development - both of which became core Tory policies in the run-up to the general election - were sure-fire election winners. He recalls imparting this advice over a pint in the House of Commons bar several years ago when Mr Cameron was a mere Conservative leadership hopeful.

Housing policy

Despite having shared a friendly drink with Mr Cameron in the past, Mr Russell does not spare his disgust at the prime minister’s plans for security of tenure.

‘He is basically saying to low-income people that if you are poor, you are not entitled to have a home, you are only entitled to have somewhere to live. There is a world of difference between a place called home and a house to live in,’ he says.

Mr Russell is a member of the left-leaning Beveridge Group of Lib Dem MPs, and like many left-wingers he believes ending tenancy for life is not the answer to the housing shortage. Instead, he says, the government must build more homes, which would, in turn, drive the housing benefit bill down as those in need of affordable accommodation would have a social tenancy rather than a costly bill for their private rent.

Although he has never held a housing portfolio, Mr Russell has always taken a strong interest in the sector, regularly questioning the Labour government about its house building record. He proudly points out affordable housing developments in the streets around his office which sprang up during his watch as a member of Colchester Council, first for Labour, then the Social Democratic Party, and finally for the Lib Dems.

Of Mr Russell’s views on housing, Tim Young, member for housing at Colchester Council, says: ‘His relationship with local councillors sways between amicable and adversarial. He sometimes disagrees with his own group on the council, and at the moment, he is deeply, deeply unhappy about the coalition: he has spent his life fighting the Tories on behalf of Labour or the Lib Dems. Now he has found his party in government with the Tories, he is very unhappy.’

Mr Russell says with some relish that his housing policies sit further to the left than those of the previous government, yet he is a passionate supporter of the Conservative right to buy policy. In fact, he claims that his sympathy for the programme is one of the reasons he left the Labour Party in 1979. ‘Right to buy was a great policy, and it wasn’t the cause of the housing crisis that we have today,’ he says. ‘What caused that problem was a failure to build more social homes.’

Since his four early day motions appeared online five weeks ago, momentum has built in the campaign for fairer reform. Key players in the Liberal Democrat party have sat up and listened to the concerns of charities and backbenchers, with deputy party leader Simon Hughes recently revealing to Inside Housing that he was working with a cross-party group of MPs on alternative reforms for housing benefit in London.

Now that he’s started the ball rolling, Mr Russell plans to continue campaigning until the government listens to his worries. He might have all the gentle demeanour of a friendly next-door neighbour, but it’s clear this long-standing politician isn’t afraid to stick his head above the parapet and stir up trouble on a policy that seems so deeply unfair to him.

Over 1,000 people have signed Inside Housing’s campaign petition - but Mr Russell warns that most politicians and members of the public will only cotton on to just how damaging the reforms are when they start coming into force from April next year.

‘My experience is that people normally don’t do anything until something actually happens: it’s one of the great failures of our democratic society,’ he says, with a cynical chuckle.

‘But when this does come in, people will realise just how bad it is and they’ll start shouting about it. In the meantime, I’ll keep shouting until they hear me.’

See our What’s the benefit? page for more on the campaign, or to sign our petition.

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