Affordable Homes Private Members Bill The Ayes 306 The Noes 231 The Ayes have it. I was astounded by the magnitude of the victory. The Government defeated by 75 votes. Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs formed a coalition of support for my Affordable Homes Bill; by joining forces to defeat Conservatives in a Commons vote to largely overturn housing benefit changes referred to as the Bedroom Tax. The Bill will now move to detailed scrutiny at the Committee Stage in the coming weeks. As you may already know, I have been opposed to the contentious Spare Room Subsidy/Bedroom Tax since first mooted. The Government of course claim that it is cutting benefit to save money from families in social housing if they have more bedrooms than they need. But this doesn’t make it right, nor does it really save money. It is not the fault of those in housing need that successive Governments have failed to build enough homes of the right size. It would be nonsense to move disabled people from homes which have been expensively converted at taxpayers expense to only to have to do it all again in another. It is rare, in West Cornwall (and more so on Scilly) that a family could find a suitable alternative smaller home in their own community – thus meaning that they would have to move 20-30 miles or more and uproot themselves from their family, social circle, job prospects, church/local societies etc, irrespective of how long their family has been living in and associated with that community. Just because you are poor you should be as entitled to a stable family home as those who are better off. It appears to me that there is a sinister agenda, creating an environment in which poor families turn on their poor neighbours to blame them if they are living in overcrowded accommodation, rather than looking further afield to the real culprits. You have to see this in context. The last time the Conservatives were in power on their own they adopted a different approach to under occupation of property! One which involved subsidising the wealthy, through a 50% discount on their council tax, to enjoy the benefit of a spare bedroom or more in their second home hundreds of miles away. Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent each year subsidising the wealthy to have their second homes when thousands of local families couldn’t afford their first. The Bill also seeks to pave the way to help families get a toehold on the housing market through buying a share in a home – helped by the State. But the primary purpose of the Bill is to exempt as many people as possible from the impact of the Bedroom Tax. I will let you know how I get on...
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 07:10:21 +0000
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