SOME were always sceptical about Theresa May’s speech on the steps of Downing Street about helping families who are just about getting by. The Prime Minister pledged to lead a one-nation government.
But the dubious reality of that is now becoming clear in the sheer cruelty of the Government’s latest welfare reforms.
Described as the Bedroom Tax Mark Two, a series of welfare reforms are set to level down the support on offer to those in social housing, in a spurious interpretation of “one nation”.
A benefit cap, originally designed to ensure people on benefits could not claim more than the average earnings of those in work, has now been arbritrarily reduced and will leave an estimated 11,000 Scottish families without enough to pay their rent. Meanwhile, because many under-35s in the private sector share tenancies, the Government says, the benefits system should no longer support single people under 35 who live alone.
Already, younger renters in the private sector and claiming housing benefit are only given enough to pay for shared digs – unless they are somehow able to top up their rent by making savings elsewhere. Now this policy will apply to the social housing sector too. But the change is ideologically driven rather than founded on any kind of logic.
The Government knows there is no tradition of shared digs in social housing, and the stock is not there.
Social housing is aimed at those on low incomes or with other vulnerabilities which make it a vehicle for greater fairness in society. Where it – unusually – costs more than the private sector, that is because it provides extra support for those with specific needs, such as homeless people or victims of domestic violence. So the outcome of these policies will simply be greater debt for social housing tenants, while the arrears will cause huge problems for housing associations, councils and other providers.
There is already evidence this is happening in areas where the introduction of Universal Credit is more advanced, even before the new measures come into effect in 2019. This is likely to leave more people homeless, while badly undermining new housing development and therefore the Scottish Government’s plans for 50,000 new affordable homes. Although the impact will be as bad in much of England there is undoubtedly a question here about why Scotland must suffer a policy which will undermine social cohesion, while addressing a problem with excessive benefit payments which is largely confined to London and the south east.
Neither should we be reassured by that 2019 start date. The impact will be felt now, as banks calculate the impact of arrears on the solvency of housing associations and the viability of new projects, before deciding whether to finance social home-building.
The Scottish Government has stuck to a policy of reversing the Bedroom Tax, at an annual cost of £35 million.
It is unlikely to be able to do anything meaningful to neutralise these latest reforms. But they are mean-minded and damaging and ministers at Westminster should rethink them.
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