I have to defend accusations my party is being ‘hypocritical’ over its stance on the Bedroom Tax.
Thanks to Liberal Democrats being in control in Stockport we were able to introduce a local policy with our hardship fund that meant our residents would not have to pay retrospectively if there was nowhere to move into. Therefore according to Chris Bryant or Labour’s definition there is no bedroom tax in Stockport.
In Stockport the Lib Dem-led Council used the powers at its disposal to reform the national policy at a local level. The Bedroom Tax has led to no evictions in Stockport due to the actions we have taken locally.
Lib Dems attempted to get Manchester and Derbyshire Labour Parties to introduce this policy but were voted down. This begs the question who is being hypocritical?
As someone who has been homeless a number of times and with a cousin who pays the ‘bedroom tax’ despite 2 children filling both rooms despite one having a qualifying disability, I get very disillusioned with politicians from all parties trying to claim a moral high ground when it comes to homelessness and housing policy and particularly the bedroom tax.
If I were still in social housing I would have gladly given up my flat for for a family desperate for a home.
Local Government needs to take its share of the blame for the bad implementation of the policy and I encourage all LGA colleagues to get their Councils to follow Stockport’s lead.
Here is the current figures on evictions relating to the ‘Bedroom Tax’ since the introduction of the policy in Stockport:
Number of those subject to the ‘bedroom tax’ – There are currently 1,057 Stockport Homes tenants subject to the ‘bedroom tax’
Number of those evicted for non-payment of rent (break down of those subject to bedroom tax) – 9 Stockport Homes tenants were evicted for non-payment of rent during 2013/14. Of this 9, 2 had arrears relating to the bedroom tax, however both cases had arrears and court orders outstanding prior to the introduction of bedroom tax, neither tenant had committed to downsize and the outstanding arrears were not being paid in line court orders but not solely relating to this tax.
Here are some more key figures:
- 42 households have used the scheme since it was set up. 20 of these were in the process of Court action, so may ultimately have faced eviction if they hadn’t committed to downsizing and been protected by the non-eviction policy.
- Under-occupancy charges totalling £6,367 have been written off using the fund.
- There are currently 29 under-occupiers on the housing register who have had their HB reduced by the under-occupancy rules but not yet had 2 reasonable offers of rehousing, so these could potentially qualify for the fund in future.
- We anticipate that pressure on the fund may increase when/if discretionary housing payments stop – especially if combined with the impact of Universal Credit after November.
Photo by Funk Dooby
* Patrick McAuley is a councillor in Stockport
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33 Comments
Don’t delude yourselves folks. The only reason the leadership want to abandon this policy now, is because there is an election coming up. That the party is being accused of being hypocritical’ over its stance on the Bedroom Tax is entirely justified.
Who’s being hypocritical?
Perhaps Clegg, Alexander and the rest of the LibDem parliamentary party. They had independent and credible advice from many interested parties telling them *exactly* what would happen if the bedroom tax went through. Regardless, your party voted for it to be enacted when they could have killed it stone dead.
They ignored it, and lo and behold, it came to pass that, as predicted, and predictably, the tax didn’t work, cost a shedload of money, failed to achieve its stated aim, caused massive hardship and stress for tenants (with at least one suicide directly attributable to it) and impoverished a large number of people, with increased rent arrears and evictions.
And you want to chuck the accusation of ‘hypocrisy’ at the Labour party?
A columnist with more self awareness might even be embarrassed to come out with an article like yours.
well done Stockport Lib Dems.
I do not suppose there is any chance we can get you into Parliament, Patrick
“Under-occupancy charges totalling £6,367 have been written off using the fund”
Fair play to you for that, but what’s happened is that Central Governemnt has cut that amount from its headline spending, and made you pick up the tab.
Labour aren’t in the national government.
Hi Chris Manners
Central Government did provide monies to Local Government particularly to help mitigate the effects of the policy many Labour Councils returned the cash including Manchester. What makes me angry is they shout against it on the one hand while being the most ruthless enforcers of it on the other. This is dishonest and wrong. (accepting tuition fees retort)
Thanks for replying, Patrick.
Do you have a link re Manchester, or the national situation with regard to returning unspent money? Why did they have to return it at all, I don’t understand. Sounds to me like the councils had to try and budget the whole year for what would be claimed. Not surprising that some would be a bit conservative in handing out the money surely?
Hi Chris
I’m sorry but as an executive member on my Council I have first hand knowledge of the competence of Housing Associations and Council Officers they are not daft. Realistic projections are easily made by professionals and slippage can be accounted for within an annual projection. Call me a cynic but I cannot accept Manchester where unknowingly conservative, especially given bad practice I have observed in other Labour controlled Councils. Given the extent Labour have been all over this I would have expected their politicians to do what we did as a matter of course in Stockport and take a sensible approach. Equally HRAs are generally very healthly just by their very nature. From my point of view there is no excuse I’m afraid.
Here is a useful article from the Guardian on underspends. My view on the Manchester response to its under spending is that it smacks of ruthless politics, because people will quiet believe the hear no evil, speak no evil rhetoric.
http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2014/mar/13/council-discretionary-housing-payments-underspend
:0) Very kind, Green Voter, I think the establishment would have a coronary if I were elected to Parliament. haha
From the piece that Patrick so kindly linked to:
‘Manchester had been “very careful” when issuing hardship payments in the first half of 2013, a spokesperson admits. It had “no idea” of demand. But far from returning funds, the city has received an extra £300,000 from government, after exhausting its original allocation of £1.9m.’
The bit where the underspend is mentioned it says:
‘Jeff Smith, the city’s executive member for finance, laments ministers’ decision to prevent authorities from pushing its £500,000 underspend into 2013, the year the bedroom tax hit. “The government ruled that we were unable to carry it forward to support claimants hit by welfare reform this year,” he added.’
It is not at all obvious to me how these statements square with the charges levied against Manchester above by the OP.
(Ex Labour & ex LD voter, not resident in Manchester)
Whether hypocrisy in reality or not, any volte-face between now and May 2015 will only serve to reinforce the perception in ex-Lib Dem voters’ minds that the Liberal Democrats are a party that will say anything for votes before an election and do anything for power after one. Any change of heart on the Bedroom Tax needed to come at least a year earlier and preferably before the policy saw the light of day. Now it is just too little too late.
The sour reaction to the Parliamentary Liberal Democrat party withdrawing its support for the “BedroomTax” reminds me why I am not a Labour supporter, and despite my great unhappiness with Clegg’s leadership have no plans to move that way.
First of all, it has been used by Labour to attack the whole of the Liberal Democrat party, all of us members, despite the fact that there was widespread opposition to the “bedroom tax” among Liberal Democrat party members. The fact that Labour attacks all of us over this shows that they are just playing silly party politics, it’s not policy they care about, otherwise they’d be showing their support for those of us who have been pushing throughout for the Liberal Democrats not to support the “bedroom tax”. Why should those of us who have persistently pushed the leadership to pull back from some oft he policies it has supported as part of the coalition be first attacked for those policies, and then attacked again when we are successful in getting the leadership to pull back? What have WE done to deserve those attacks?
Secondly, I would hope it is considered a good thing if leaders pull back from policies when they find those policies are unpopular or aren’t working well. Again, I am sick of Labour playing silly party political games, where first we attacked for not listening, and then we are attacked for listening. If they think the policy is wrong, then they should show that by being thankful our party leadership has withdrawn its support for it. Don’t Labour want leaders who listen? Their sour attacks suggest no they don’t. Their sour attack suggest they’d rather have leaders who blunder on making bad things worse because they are too stubborn to realise when they have made mistakes. Well, I definitely NEVER want to be governed by people who have that sort of mindset.
The reality is that there was a case for something like the “bedroom tax”. When I was a councillor, I did find it very hard to defend single people or couples with no children living at home insisting on holding on to their three-bedroomed council houses, and even having their rent paid for them out in housing benefit, while there were families with children in dire need of such accommodation, but squeezed into two or even one-bedroom homes as none would ever become available for them. So I could very much see the argument for encouraging under-occupiers to scale down. However, quite obviously this needed to be done with sensitivity, and the “bedroom tax” was the most horribly insensitive way of doing it. Also I did not realise myself the extent to which the three-bedroom council property is the norm outside London, so people in them cannot easily be moved to smaller accommodation. In the London boroughs where I have been active, three-bedroom council houses are like gold dust, two-bedroom and one-bedroom council properties are plentiful (and they are not really plentiful enough for those in dire need of them) compared to three-bedroom council properties. So I could see how someone naive and ill-informed could be persuaded of the benefits of the “bedroom tax”, but then withdraw support for it after seeing how damaging it is in practice. Well, I think if you call on people to think more deeply and oppose a policy they have supported, you should be thankful for them if they do move against it.
If in real life we called on someone to do something, and they did, and then we abused them for doing so, how would that make us look? I’d say it would be a shameful thing to do. Suppose, for example, I saw someone sitting down on the bus and refusing to offer their seat to someone elderly or disabled, and I told that person I thought they were being bad for not offering their seat. Suppose that person listened to what I said, and changed their mind, and offered the seat. Suppose then I carried on abusing the person, and said they only offered the seat out of hypocrisy. What would that say about me? It would say I am a nasty mean-minded person. Politics IS real life, and Labour’s reaction here shows then up to be nasty and mean-minded. Ugh, but thanks Labour for reminding me why I’ll NEVER vote for you.
I’m sick of the ridiculous British public; calling the Lib-Dems liars and saying they change their policies once in power. The Lib-dems are a minority partner in the coalition, does anyone actually understand that????? All they can do is force comprises on Tory policies, which have been crucial to the poor and needy in our country. I would love to vote Labour but they’ve been useless as opposition, and talk about a party which U-turns once in power. This leaves you 2 choices; either you pick one of the three parties who is the least worst, or you throw common sense away and vote for Ukip.
LOL. I remember well when the Lib Dems were refusing to use the term ‘Bedroom Tax’ at all, when it was all ‘ooh, there’s no such thing as the Bedroom Tax; refer to it as “removal of the Spare Room Subsidy” please…’
But now we’re all looking for the support of the general public, it’s ‘Bedroom Tax’ this and ‘Bedroom Tax’ that.
By your linguistic tics shall ye be judged 😉
daft ha’p’orth
LOL. I remember well when the Lib Dems were refusing to use the term ‘Bedroom Tax’ at all, when it was all ‘ooh, there’s no such thing as the Bedroom Tax; refer to it as “removal of the Spare Room Subsidy” please…’
I don’t. I myself made the point that it’s not a tax, it’s a withdrawal of a subsidy, so it should be referred to as a “spare bedroom subsidy”, but I don’t remember anyone else here doing that during the intensive discussion of the thing when it was first introduced, or at any point afterwards. It’s always been called the “Bedroom Tax”. If you disagree, can you show some weblinks which demonstrate your claim? Perhaps you can find quotes from government ministers who were using this terminology, but I don’t mean that. You wrote “the LibDems” not “LibDem government ministers”, which suggests you are saying that Liberal Democrat members in general were refusing to use the term ‘Bedroom Tax’. Well, ok then, if LibDems in general were doing that, it should be easy to find articles and messages from here is LibDem Voice which show that. So, if do it, daft ha’p’orth, or you will be exposed once again as a poseur who talks rot and cannot provide support for what he or she says when challenged.
When the bedroom tax was first proposed I read the White Paper and saw the obvious problems that would come about due to the lack of availability of smaller properties. This was evident to the Liberal Democrats at the time but senior politicians chose to ignore that fact. Also the initial legislation made no exemption for families who were fostering-How any Liberal Democrat could not see that financially punishing people who were willing to look after vulnerable children was not wrong simply had to have taken leave of their senses.
To complain now that it is ‘unfair’ to criticise this u-turn so close to the 2015 election is to ignore the fact that it was wrong in principle, wrong in its execution and morally wrong to implement it in the first place.
Does Danny Alexander need a DWP report before he can decide his own moral compass?
Sheesh, Matthew, read your own web site. You’re a computer scientist, do your own web search. Poseur indeed.
Government is still spending more than it receives in taxes. The “Bedroom tax” was an attempt to reduce spending and encourage downsizing. Labour did the same for the private rented sector. While I personally did not think that it would work particularly because it did not apply to pensioners who have the greater proportion of “spare” bedrooms. I never see people say “we will pay more taxes to scrap this”. Sure people are willing for others to pay more tax. Unfortunately the public want more services and less tax and for governments to stop borrowing!
I’ve never used the term ‘bedroom tax’ either because it isn’t a tax, never was a tax and those who have tried to give the impression it is have only made themselves look silly. The principle behind the benefit change is quite correct, the changes suggested by Lib Dems are sensible and Stockport’s handling of it laudable.
@Matthew Huntbach – the actual name of the legislation is “The under occupation penalty”. “Spare room subsidy” was made up my Shapps in an interview and doesn’t appear in any of the legislation.
I, and many other people, have interpreted the u-turn on the bedroom tax (too late to actually change anything) as confirming our opinion of the liberal democrats.
This is presumably not what the strategist who came up with this idea intended.
People tend to respect politicians and parties who stand for something, and stick with something, even the they, the voter, disagrees.
Something the strategist should have considered.
@Mike Drew – Labour may have introduced similar legislation for private rented accommodation, however the important difference is the Labour legislation wasn’t retrospective and didn’t suddenly penalisepeople who required the space for valid reasons (storage of equipment, a place for carers to stay etc…).
The legislation enacted by the coalition was a brutal, merciless act and the Lib Dems MPs have happily defended it up until this week, when all of a sudden there was evidence.
This policy of underwriting the bedroom tax for Stockport tenants who commit to downsizing was introduced by myself as the then Executive Councillor. We actively sought Labour party support within Stockport Council but was met with opposition. Labour councillors voted against it and then voted to abolish it as well.We did inform other Lib Dem groups across the country to to get other councils to develop similar policies .
I am pleased and amused to see this has now been adopted by both Lib Dem and Labour as their policies.Stockport Lib Dem were just way ahead of the curve.
Refitman (I wonder why people want to hide their political opinions behind pseudonyms) Sisnce a large proportion of private tenants have short tenancies the effect of Labour’s policy still hurt.
That was really an aside my main point was about the lack from all parties to explain to the public that they will have to pay for the services they want. It is because the government is raising a higher contribution towards it spending that people notice through reduced standard of lving. Labour keeps ignoring this and pretend that they can magic an improvement.
I’m waiting for Patrick to reply to John Brogglio – because, as John says, the article says that Labour in Manchester underspent in the year before the implementation of the Bedroom Tax (or whatever you want to call taking money away from those who need it on spurious grounds to help fund tax cuts for the wealthy) in the sadly mistaken belief that they would be able to use it to mitigate the bedroom tax policy’s damage to the needy.
Mike and John
DHPs can be used to mitigate the impact of the ‘Bedroom Tax’ and Stockport Homes tries ensure residents know what funds are available to them. What Stockport Lib Dems did through the HRA was go above and beyond in its duty of care for tenants.
Mike and John have both been quite selective with their reading of the Guardian article but to assist them, I think this paragraph says it best and illustrates the point I make about being disillusioned with political parties trying to take the moral high ground.
“Iain Duncan Smith said most authorities spent less than half their budgets in the six months following the introduction of the bedroom tax and other reductions in April 2013. Some councils, such as Manchester and Nottingham, spent less than a third. With these signs of the safety net’s strength, critics should be wary of “making political capital” from human tragedy”
daft ha’p’orth
Sheesh, Matthew, read your own web site. You’re a computer scientist, do your own web search. Poseur indeed.
Oh, so you make a claim but refuse to show the data on which that claim is based. I have, of course, already checked the discussion here at the time when the thing was already proposed, but I want YOU to prove your claim. If you can’t, then it shows you up as just what I said.
refitman
@Matthew Huntbach – the actual name of the legislation is “The under occupation penalty”. “Spare room subsidy” was made up my Shapps in an interview and doesn’t appear in any of the legislation.
Well, ok, but actually it’s a more accurate description than “under occupation penalty”, because it’s not a penalty or a tax, just a non-payment of rent subsidy.
It seems a lot of you still support the bedroom tax and don’t like it being called that. Perhaps you would like to explain it to Stephanie Bottrill’s family or to those at the food banks because of it? The LibDems in government were told at the outset that this would be the outcome and willfully ignored the advice. This is pure electioneering which we know will change at another whiff of power.
“First of all, it has been used by Labour to attack the whole of the Liberal Democrat party, all of us members, despite the fact that there was widespread opposition to the “bedroom tax” among Liberal Democrat party members. The fact that Labour attacks all of us over this shows that they are just playing silly party politics, it’s not policy they care about, otherwise they’d be showing their support for those of us who have been pushing throughout for the Liberal Democrats not to support the “bedroom tax”. ”
I’ve been pretty generous to LibDem activists who’ve opposed the bedroom tax. It’ s your parliamentary party and leadership that’s a complete disgrace in all of this. Still, if you’re silly enough to go along with your MPs who seem intent on destroying your party, then who am I to raise a dissenting voice? You’ve made your bed of this and the NHS and the astoundingly cruel welfare reforms, and never raised a mutter about all that, so you’ll have to excuse me if raise an eyebrow at your faux outrage. About as convincing as Clegg and Shirley Williams.
Doing the right thing whether it comes later than sooner is still doing the right thing!
“Ten reasons why the Bedroom Tax must go” as I highlighted back in September last year:
1. Bedroom Tax is targeted to victimise the most vulnerable members of society. Two thirds of the victims of Bedroom Tax were receiving Incapacity Benefit: over 440,000 nationally.
2. An extra bedroom is not an extravagance if you need additional space for medical equipment, a room for carers to sleep in or live in a household where an ill person is too unwell to sleep in the same room as their partner and to do so would negatively affect the health and wellbeing of both.
3. Bedroom Tax will not resolve the housing crisis. We do not have enough homes of the right size, in the right places at affordable cost. Local authorities’ housing stock has been smashed apart in the last thirty years through the Tory Right to Buy policy. Councils have been unable to build new homes because they have been inadequately funded.
4. Bedroom Tax is intrinsically unfair because it does not apply to every social tenant. Pensioners have been, cynically, exempt only because of the millions of votes they hold in their hands. But bringing pensioners under the tax is not the solution; that would merely spread the misery, fear, indebtedness and social upheaval.
5. Bedroom Tax wastes millions of already scarce public resources on making new adaptations and undoing perfectly good existing modifications. It can cost £30,000 or more to adapt one home to make it bespoke for a tenant with a disability. How can government justify this unwarranted and undesired profligacy?
6. Tenants have invested time, money and personal commitment in their homes, gardens and communities. In parts of the country where housing is expensive most social tenants cannot afford private rents so the only option is to ship out. Croydon Council suggests that tenants who can’t downsize move to the seaside. The Tory Centre for Social Justice reports these same seaside towns, have become “dumping grounds” for the vulnerable and those in poverty.
7. The social cost of the policy is incalculable. Family support mechanisms collapse when grandchildren are prevented from visiting. Fathers or mothers involved in a family breakdown no longer have acceptable accommodation for their children to visit. Unpaid friends and relatives who enable disabled families on an informal basis will no longer be able to provide respite for main carers.
8. The myth that no one will fall through the safety net must be exposed. Government double-speak reassures us that Discretionary Housing Payments, Hardship Funds and phased introduction will enable victims to gradually adapt to the changes. Why then have tenants around the country fallen into rent arrears for the first time in their lives? Why have applications for one-off grants rocketed? Why are Pay Day Loan companies rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of ever-greater demand for their reprehensible ‘services’?
9. Bedroom Tax is only the first in a raft of cuts thinly disguised as reforms. We have yet to discover the impact of slashing Council Tax Benefit, introducing Universal Credit, increasing the shared room age limit from 25 years to 35, the benefit cap and changing the direct payment of Credit to tenants rather than straight to landlords.
10. The changes massively increase the potential for fraud. By imposing online management of the forthcoming Universal Credit along with centralised processing the vast pools of local knowledge are negated at a stroke and the scope for fraud balloons colossally.
Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera
Liberal Democrat English Party Diversity Champion
Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrat (EMLD) – Vice Chair
Liberal Democrat South Central Region Executive – Diversity Officer
Newbury Town Council – Councillor for Victoria Ward & Deputy Leader
I just want to add a link to Ruwan’s original article to make it easier for people to find:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-ten-reasons-why-the-bedroom-tax-must-go-36190.html
The whole reaction to the bedroom “tax” u-turn has illustrated what is wrong about our political system. I am not happy with the principle of the spare room reduction, but it’s been clear that the leadership who defended the system on principle are not hypocrticial.
It’s not an “apparent u-turn”, it’s an actual, open and honest u-turn. It’s not being two faced and saying “we didn’t really mean it” because the principles are still being defended.
The big problem is that we treat people who pay attention to the detail as wonks and pedants, rather than the nice thoughtful people we actually are and we make out noisyextreme reactions by people who half-listen are “perfectly understandable”. And our political system is broken because our politicians are chasing people who base their views on “impressions” and ignore those who actually sit and think about things.
ErnstRemarx
You’ve made your bed of this and the NHS and the astoundingly cruel welfare reforms, and never raised a mutter about all that, so you’ll have to excuse me if raise an eyebrow at your faux outrage.
What do you mean “never raised a mutter”? I was at the party conference in Gateshead, where the NHS changes were the major topic of debate, and there was a great deal more than a “mutter” about them.
The argument about this and much else in the coalition is to what point can the Liberal Democrats oppose Conservative policy, and to what point is it more productive to come to an agreement which is somewhere between what the Liberal Democrats would regard as ideal and what the Conservatives would regard as ideal. Some seem to naively suppose that the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs could just snap their fingers and get the 306 Conservative MPs to drop all their policies and principles and adopt those of the Liberal Democrats, using the line “but you hold the balance of power, so you can get what you want”. However, exactly the same applies top the 57 most right-wing Conservative MPs – they could just as well bring the government down by refusing concessions to the Liberal Democrats.
Discussion on these lines has gone along since the Coalition was reformed.You could try looking at past threads on this website going back over the years. So when people like you come along and say that that the Liberal Democrats have just accept Conservative policy “without a mutter” or similar words, implying there has been no discussion or dissent, every single one of us in the party just accepted it, you are talking utter nonsense.
I’ve been very critical of the party leadership since the coalition was formed, and have done a lot to try and push it back to where the party was before that. However, I really would appreciate it if people like me got some support from outside, rather than words like “without a mutter” which deny our very existence.