Parliament has recently spent a great deal of time considering changes the Government is making to the welfare system with the objective of making it fairer to the tax payer and to make it work for those it was designed to help. Regrettably, in many cases the present system simply does not work. There is often little incentive to either find employment or return to it after absence as people face losing up to 96p of every £1 they earn. The aim of the Government’s Universal Credit reforms is to ensure that work pays and to support those able to work back into work.
It is a fact that under the last Government workless households increased dramatically with nobody working in 1 in 5 households. There were 2 million children living in these workless households which was a higher proportion than any other EU country. Also between 2003 and 2011 Government spent a staggering £170 billion on tax credits, which contributed to a 60% rise in the welfare bill. All of this led to the creation of a dependency culture.
For most people work is the most sustainable way out of poverty. We must never again return to the situation where 5 million people were on out-of-work benefits. We must ensure that those that can work are supported back into work in a practical way. Fundamentally we must ensure that the system is fair. Fair for those who need the support it offers but also fair for the hard working families up and down the country whose taxes fund it. This is why from next month the Government will introduce a benefit cap meaning that those out of work are never better off than those in work. It is simply not fair that presently the system allows thousands of people to claim up to £50,000 to live in large houses out of reach of the typical hard working family.
It is with this spirit of fairness in mind that the Government is also reducing Housing Benefit for those occupying spare bedrooms within the social housing sector. I know from my own casework that many families are living in over-crowded conditions and there are almost 2 million households on the social housing waiting list in England. Because of these facts it is unfair that the tax payer is subsidising nearly 1 million extra bedrooms through Housing Benefit payments. This support is not available to people in the private rented sector and should not generally be available to those in the social housing sector. There are, of course, exemptions on this reduction particularly for disabled people who need over-night care, those who receive state pension credit and those in ‘supported’ accommodation. This week the Government has also signalled further support for foster families and families with disabled children.
Reform is essential and the Government is right to do all it can to get Britain back to work, whilst protecting our most vulnerable citizens.