Labour loses housing benefit vote
By Ian Dunt
Labour has lost its challenge to housing benefit reforms by 61 votes following a fiery Commons debate.
Iain Duncan Smith attacked the opposition for “manic rabble rousing” over the issue, suggesting it had briefed the press with genocide- and Holocaust-related messages.
“Encouraged by a nod and wink from his front bench colleagues, one of their supporters in a national newspaper talked of our ‘final solution’ for the poor,” the work and pensions secretary said.
“I want them to chew on this. They knowingly used terminology such as the Holocaust which they knew would frighten rather than inform.
“Shame on them for scaring all those people in London. London has social housing embedded in its heart and that is not going to change. They must have known they were selling a complete pack of lies and nonsense.”
Speaker John Bercow interrupted the session to encourage MPs to debate in an orderly way.
“Perhaps we can just calm down,” Mr Bercow urged backbenchers.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Douglas Alexander replied: “Can I invite the minister to get off his high horse?”
Labour’s motion called on the government to revise its plans for people who are on unemployment benefit for over 12 months to lose ten per cent of their housing benefit.
It also called for the reform to take place at a slower pace, to alleviate its effect on tenants and councils.
Interestingly, the government had not put forward an amendment to the motion – a typical ploy utilised by ministers in order to win the day during opposition day motions.
The absence of a government amendment had led some Labour MPs to assume that the Tories and Lib Dems are still fighting behind the scenes over the policy and cannot agree on a particular line to take.
“The government seems to be running scared of their own MPs over their rushed housing benefit plans,” Mr Alexander said.
“They have so far been unable to get their own backbenchers to agree a position on housing benefit and have therefore been forced into the highly unusual position of not tabling an amendment that explicitly endorses their present proposals.”
Previous exchanges on the issue, notably between Chris Bryant and Nick Clegg or Ed Miliband and David Cameron, have become heated and colourful as the opposition attacked the government for “social cleansing”.
Deputy Lib Dem leader Simon Hughes, who is thought to be deeply uncomfortable with the government plan, called on Mr Alexander to refrain from that type of rhetoric today.
“Can I ask him to be his usual self and use calm language?” Mr Hughes said.
“Yes there are issues, but moving people forcibly from where they are is not necessarily the case, nor is there any evidence that it will be the case.”
The debate around housing benefit reform remains high-pitched, especially after the Chartered Institute of Housing found that large swathes of southern England would quickly become out-of-bounds to housing benefit recipients, triggering a wave of south-to-north migration.
London’s commuter belt would become too expensive for any housing benefit recipient within 15 years, the study found.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, joined those speaking out against the plans over the weekend.
“My worry there is that people’s housing is part of their sense of stability, part of their sense of having a secure future, and I’m also a bit worried about the way in which this could lead to a kind of social zoning, where middle-class areas get more solidly middle class and other people are pushed out to the edge,” he said in an interview with the BBC.
Neither David Cameron nor Ed Miliband was in the Commons for the debate. The prime minister is on a trip to China while the leader of the opposition is on paternal leave following the birth of his second child yesterday.
Meanwhile, further evidence emerged of a slow-down in the housing market.
The latest Rics UK housing market survey saw new buyer enquiries drop for the fifth consecutive month. Supply also fell for the first time since January, when heavy snowfall prompted many people to hold back from moving house.
Sentiment over house prices continued to worsen, the survey found, with 49% more surveyors reporting a fall in October.
“It is also worth noting that a subdued housing market is not good news for an economy which requires a high degree of mobility to take advantage of job opportunities,” commented Rics spokesperson Jeremy Leaf.
