Tag Archives: housing benefit

Well done, Ed Balls. He’s opened up space for a proper welfare debate. Lib Dems now need to claim that space.

By Stephen Tall | Mon 10th June 2013 - 3:45 pm

Ed Balls has done us all a favour. His announcement last week that if he were Chancellor he would put a stop to winter fuel allowances for well-off pensioners means Labour has joined the Lib Dems in saying we need to focus the welfare budget where it’s needed most, not keep on re-distributing from the worse off to the better off in the name of universalism. It’s why I chose him as my 38th Liberal Hero.

And yesterday he was at it again, highlighting quite how much of the welfare budget the state pension represents — some £74 …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bedroom tax, ed balls, legal aid, nick clegg, pensions, steve webb, triple lock, welfare, welfare reform and winter fuel allowance | 13 Comments

Independent View: Housing Benefit reform needs liberal principle of localism

By Graeme Cooke | Fri 20th July 2012 - 10:51 am

The Prime Minister’s recent suggestion that young people under the age of 25 might be barred from receiving Housing Benefit has re-ignited the debate about welfare reform. Talk of a further ‘benefits crackdown’ duly generated the positive headlines that Downing Street strategists were after, while opponents howled in apocalyptic objection to this latest attempt to control the benefits bill. Pretty soon, the political debate moved on, everyone having fulfilled their roles to perfection. Evil Tory bogeymen, tabloid headline writers, charity campaigners all did exactly what we would have expected them to do. Maybe the specific proposal will remerge in future …

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged ippr | 5 Comments

LibLink: Tim Leunig – David Cameron should know better than this Housing Benefit gimmick

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th June 2012 - 9:27 am

I wrote the other day that I wanted to see our party in general and Nick Clegg in particular come out and roundly condemn David Cameron’s ridiculous plan to stop under 25s from claiming Housing Benefit. Centre Forum director Tim Leunig did just that in an article for the Guardian on Monday.

His calm and forensic evisceration of Cameron’s argument put me in mind of the way Nick Clegg took apart the Tory Marriage Tax Break plan ahead of the 2010 election. This, of course, has been kicked into the long grass because of the Liberal Democrats. I’m also reminded of …

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged centre forum, david cameron, guardian, tim leunig and under 25s | 13 Comments

Nick Clegg needs to condemn Cameron’s welfare plans in the strongest language imaginable

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th June 2012 - 8:53 am

Many Liberal Democrats will have been choking on their Sunday Corn Flakes yesterday as they read, with horror, David Cameron’s plans to slash benefits even further than this year’s Welfare Reform Bill. If he had his way, there would be no Housing Benefit payable to anyone under 25. The critical part of the reports is, however, this sentence:

Downing Street said they were Conservative plans for after the next general election.

That’s all right then. This rubbish isn’t going to happen on our watch.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged david cameron, nick clegg and welfare | 47 Comments

LibLink: Tim Leunig – Housing benefit cap: can you live on 62p a day?

By Paul Walter | Mon 23rd January 2012 - 9:24 am

On Comment is Free, Tim Leunig reveals some alarming impacts of the government’s housing benefit cuts:

Imagine two sets of people, both renting from private landlords. One is an Islington couple who have never worked. The other is an Oldham family with four children, where the working parent has just lost his or her job. The Islington couple currently receive £250 a week in housing benefit, while the Oldham family gets only £150.

Times are tough, and the government wants to save money. Which family should have its housing benefit cut? George Osborne has chosen the Oldham family. He is cutting

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Posted in LibLink | 26 Comments

Nick Clegg unites with Lords in battle to alter benefit cuts

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th January 2012 - 8:29 pm

So reports tomorrow’s Observer:

David Cameron has been lobbied by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, on the need to rewrite the government’s flagship benefit reform to help children suffering as a result.

Clegg proposed a series of changes to the £500-a-week cap, including exempting current claimants, in an attempt to ameliorate some of the worst consequences of the change, which critics claim will make 40,000 families homeless by making their current homes unaffordable.

It is understood Clegg made his appeal during a meeting attended by the chancellor, George Osborne, and Danny Alexander, chief secretary of the Treasury. Cameron asked the Liberal Democrats

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Posted in News | Also tagged Danny Alexander, david cameron, george osborne and nick clegg | 13 Comments

14 Liberal Democrat rebels help defeat housing benefit cuts in the House of Lords

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th December 2011 - 9:26 pm

Fourteen Liberal Democrat peers, including the former party Chief Whip Archy Kirkwood and the former interim Chief Executive Ben Stoneham, joined a successful rebellion in the House of Lords today. The vote, on part of the Welfare Reform Bill, was over the proposal to cut housing benefit payments from people who have spare bedrooms in their property.

The peers voted to restrict these cuts to people who have two or more spare bedrooms, excluding the controversial category of people with one spare bedroom – which, under the rules as proposed, might in fact not have been that spare. Concerns had also …

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Posted in News | Also tagged archy kirkwood, ben stoneham, benefits and welfare reform bill | 31 Comments

Opinion: Under Occupation – The Catch 22 of the Welfare Reform Bill

By Terry Stacy | Thu 8th December 2011 - 12:26 pm

Most of the measures in the Welfare Reform Bill are extremely sensible. Designed to streamline a byzantine system where fraud was far too easy and anomalies like benefit recipients living in million pound mansions too common (though not as common as the Daily Mail would have you believe!).

During the passage of the Bill, the Liberal Democrats have managed to curb some of the worst excesses of our coalition partners. For example, we got rid of the idea that people on Job Seekers Allowance for more than a year would lose 10% of their housing benefit. It is measures like this …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged housing, terry stacy and welfare reform | 4 Comments

What Lib Dem members think about the Coalition’s spending and welfare cuts

By Stephen Tall | Sun 2nd October 2011 - 2:45 pm

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members responded, and we’ve been publishing the results in recent days.

Party members back Coalition spending cuts and welfare cuts by 2:1 majorities

LDV asked: Do you think the government has on the whole made the right decisions or the wrong decisions about where spending cuts should be made?

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged tim leunig | 5 Comments

Benefit caps and central London: how many children will be moving school?

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 12:54 pm

Many Liberal Democrats I’ve spoken to have mixed feelings about the proposed benefit cap and some of the housing benefit changes. On the one hand, they have very little sympathy with the complaints of people such as Frank Dobson that rule changes means he wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in his council flat. Count me in the camp who doesn’t think council housing should be used to let ex-ministers with decades of salary earning that puts them amongst the best paid in the country and with membership of a decent pension scheme live in one of London’s most …

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Posted in News | Also tagged council housing, housing, iain duncan smith, simon hughes and westminster council | 21 Comments

Welfare Reform Bill published today

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th February 2011 - 9:31 am

The Government’s Welfare Reform Bill is being published today and its measures are mostly as previously trailed. The big policy in it is the Universal Credit – a major simplification to a horrendously complicated benefits system – and a very Liberal Democrat policy.

Because of the heavy previous trailing of the Welfare Reform Bill’s measures there are no major surprises in what it proposes but there are three respects in which it shows the outcome of the at times very lively debate within government – mostly, though not always, Liberal Democrat versus Conservative – about its contents. In that respect, …

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Posted in News | Also tagged benefits, iain duncan smith, nick clegg, universal credit, welfare reform and welfare reform bill | 13 Comments

Housing benefit reforms set to be delayed

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th November 2010 - 10:11 pm

The BBC reports:

Millions of people who currently claim housing benefit are to be given more time before cuts are introduced.

Ministers had planned to introduce a cap from next April on how much housing benefit could be claimed.

But the BBC understands that existing claimants will now have until January 2012 to adjust their circumstances if needed before the caps are brought in.

The Department for Work and Pensions would not confirm the move, which it said was “speculation”.

Simon Hughes’s response has been:

If the reports about changes to the housing benefit proposals are true, then this will be very welcome. Many of

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Posted in News | Also tagged simon hughes and welfare reform | 14 Comments

Opinion: Are the poor going to be driven out of the south by the Coalition’s housing benefit reforms?

By Simon McGrath | Fri 12th November 2010 - 3:28 pm

A shocking story in the Guardian this week that, not content with driving the poor out of Kensington and Chelsea, the Coalition’s cap on housing benefit would force them out of southern England altogether. Worse, this came from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), who sound like they ought to know what they are talking about.

I rang up the CIH and asked how I could get hold of a copy of the study and was surprised to hear that there has been not actually been one. They are apparently ‘doing some work for a Select Committee’ which …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Chartered Institute of Housing and the guardian | 40 Comments

LDV survey: What Lib Dem members think of the Coalition’s economic policies, housing benefit, and the CSR

By Stephen Tall | Fri 12th November 2010 - 2:28 pm

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of the contest for the party presidency, the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Almost 600 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results over the next few days.

What Lib Dem members think of the Coalition’s economic policies

Which of these statements comes closest to your opinion about how the Coalition should go about reducing the deficit?

45% – It is important to cut spending quickly even if this means immediate job losses, because it will be better

…

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged comprehensive spending review 2010, economy and featured | 36 Comments

John Hemming MP writes… The Rent’s too damn high

By John Hemming MP | Thu 11th November 2010 - 5:22 pm

Why the housing benefit changes are not about social cleansing, but instead about getting rents reduced for all tenants.

In New York there is a political party named “The Rent’s too damn high”, founded by Jimmy McMillan. What he argues is that life is difficult in New York because rents are too high. It is important to recognise that private sector rents are also an issue in the UK as well as those funded by the state.

Since November 2008 private rents have gone down by 5% and private rents funded by Local Housing Allowance (LHA) have gone up by 3%. The government changed the housing benefit system for private landlords a few years ago replacing Housing Benefit with a Local Housing Allowance. As LHA will be paid regardless of how high the rent actually is, this has driven up the rents paid in this sector. In comparison to the rents on the old Housing Benefit an additional 10% is being paid through LHA.

It is worth noting that the upward pressure on rents from LHA has also driven up rents paid by people who don’t get Housing Benefit. This is neither helpful to the country, where money is being borrowed to overpay landlords nor is it helpful to the lower paid who are renting privately.

The government, therefore, has a number of objectives in controlling housing benefit:

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Posted in Op-eds | 55 Comments

The same policy can be good or evil – depends who thought of it

By Iain Roberts | Mon 1st November 2010 - 10:16 am

In May 2010, the Labour Party pledged to cap Housing Benefit. In their manifesto , they argued that the State shouldn’t be subsidising people to live in private rented properties that “ordinary working families” couldn’t afford.

Over 600 Labour parliamentary candidates happily stood on the pledge, not a whisper of opposition to the idea was heard from their ranks.

Fast forward to October 2010, five months later, and the Coalition Government come up with the same plan.

Not only was the Coalition scheme denounced by Labour in the strongest terms, with talk of “social cleansing” echoing the horrific Kosovan experiences, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged psychology | 70 Comments