News story

17th October 2002

Government Is Completing The Thatcherite Agenda

Commenting on today’s Government proposals to deduct housing benefit from “neighbours from hell”, Liberal Democrat Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Steve Webb MP, said:

“The best answer to the real problem of anti-social neighbours is to tackle the causes, not simply to move them around by means of Housing Benefit sanctions. Cutting the Housing Benefit of nuisance tenants is likely to be highly ineffective. In going down this road, New Labour is seeking to complete the Thatcherite agenda”.

On proposals to trial flat-rate housing allowances instead of meeting tenants’ actual rent costs, Steve Webb said:

“The Government seems to be living in a world where tenants have the luxury of a wide choice of properties, with opportunities to haggle for lower rents with landlords. In reality, most tenants in receipt of housing benefit have to take what they are offered. Paying average housing payments instead of meeting the full rent will force people into arrears or require them to move to a smaller house.

“These proposals will force children to move schools and disrupt their parents’ jobs. They will ghettoise benefit recipients, especially in high rent areas such as London, and do nothing to increase the supply of decent affordable housing.

“The decision to pilot these new arrangements in limited parts of the country and to exclude council and housing association tenants, means that wholesale reform of the Housing Benefit system is still only a distant prospect. The Housing Benefit system is in crisis, and urgent action is needed to tackle it now”.

ENDS

Notes to editors:


1. In the House of Commons this afternoon, Work and Pensions Secretary Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP announced a shake up of the housing benefit system. The proposals are laid out in: “Building Choice and Responsibility: a radical agenda for Housing Benefit”.

2. The DWP published an in-house report earlier this year on pilot schemes that tried to encourage people to trade down into smaller houses. The report found that “the firmly-held local authority view evinced by this research is that the crucial limiting factor in achieving trading down moves is the quality of vacancies available for offer. By comparison, the significance of incentive schemes is no more than marginal.” Instead of moving to smaller houses, almost a fifth of Housing Benefit-eligible tenants in the pilot areas moved to homes where the rent was higher than before. (Source: Evaluation of Department for Work and Pensions Underoccupier Incentive Scheme, in-house report 99, 2002)