29-10-02

Barrett slams Housing Benefit experiment

John Barrett, the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West, today criticised the Government for using Edinburgh as a pilot area for Housing Benefit reforms.

It follows the decision of Andrew Smith, Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, to introduce from April 2003, a flat-rated standard housing benefit rather than paying individual amounts for differing properties and including Edinburgh as one of the trial areas for the scheme.

In a statement, Mr Barrett, said:

"It is clear the Government have failed to think these changes through and unfortunately, it is Edinburgh which has to suffer as the guinea pig in the experiment.

"Their decision to introduce flat-rate housing allowances instead of meeting tenants' actual rent costs just shows how out of touch the Government are.

"Unfortunately, tenants in my constituency and throughout Edinburgh do not always have a wide choice of properties from which to choose from or have the opportunity to haggle for lower rents with landlords. As a result, many in receipt of housing benefit have to take what they are offered. Paying average housing payments instead of paying full rent will only leave people in arrears, forcing them into smaller houses and even moving them out of their communities altogether. This could severely disrupt the tenants' jobs and even their childrens' education if the move takes them far from their current school.

"To exclude council and housing association tenants from any reform only confirms that the desperately required wholesale reform of a Housing Benefit system now in crisis, is still not on the Government's agenda."

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)