Shuffling the deck

Posted: July 16, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Civil service, Housebuilding, Planning, Universal credit | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

So housing seems to have kept the politicians who should have gone and lost the one who was making a difference.

Speculation ahead of the reshuffle suggested that Eric Pickles and Iain Duncan Smith would leave their posts as part of the cull of middle aged men in the Cabinet. True, some of the stories seemed a bit thin (a woman with a posh accent overheard talking on the phone didn’t seem like much to go on) but I lived in hope. I also looked forward to the DWP press release arguing that it proved that universal credit is ‘on track and on schedule’.

Instead it’s business as usual at the top of their two departments with a shake-up lower down the ministerial scale. After just over nine months in the job, Kris Hopkins is now the former housing minister and is shunted sideways into local government. Brandon Lewis moves from that job and gets a promotion to minister of state for housing and planning. Penny Mordaunt comes in as junior minister responsible for coastal communities.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Frank words on welfare reform

Posted: April 9, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Poverty, Social housing, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: , | 5 Comments

Getting the same criticism from different people is usually a sign you’ve got something wrong. How about for IDS and the DWP?

Three different reports published this morning amplify earlier warnings about the implementation of the bedroom tax, the wider impact of welfare reform on tenants and landlords and the prospects for universal credit. But it would surprise nobody if the work and pensions secretary saw them as yet more evidence that his reforms are a success.

Two of them come from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). Steve Wilcox finds that what he neutrally calls the ‘housing benefit size criteria’ has affected fewer people than expected but that half of those are in arrears and 100,000 who want to downsize are trapped and unable to move. Anne Power concludes that welfare reforms may end up making tenants more, rather than less, dependent and are making them more vulnerable.

The third is from the work and pensions committee and warns that it is still not clear that universal credit will work. The MPs on the all-party committee think that implementation will be delayed even further and have some strong words about Iain Duncan Smith’s attitude towards their scrutiny.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Many unhappy returns to the bedroom tax

Posted: April 1, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: , | 3 Comments

Stop carping, you lot. The removal of the spare room subsidy is a success.

Today is of course the first of the month as well as the first anniversary of the introduction of the bedroom tax and a wave of other welfare reforms. But I am paraphrasing Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey rather than making a token effort at an April Fool.

 

Yesterday’s work and pensions questions brought inevitable attacks on the policy that has caused so much controversy since its introduction a year ago.

Labour’s Kate Green quoted last week’s reports from the BBC that just 6 per cent of households affected by the bedroom tax have managed to move and from Real Life Reform that eight out of ten are in debt and their borrowing is increasing by £52 a week. ‘Rather than preaching about careful budgeting, why do Ministers not just scrap this hated and unworkable tax, which is sending people spiralling into debt? Read the rest of this entry »

Does the welfare cap fit?

Posted: March 26, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform | Tags: , | Leave a comment

The debate about the welfare cap seems to be all about the politics. It should be about the contradictions at the heart of the policy too.

The coalition parties and the opposition are all supporting the measure that will place a legal restriction on most welfare spending from 2015/16 so, despite an expected Labour rebellion, it seems more or less certain to go through.

The cap started off as a political trap set by the Conservatives and Labour support reflects a determination not to fall into it.

Judging from his appearance on the Today programme this morning, Iain Duncan Smith seems determined to act as though Labour doesn’t really mean its support. But the example he chose says much about his priorities and the way the cap will operate.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

The hardest word

Posted: January 14, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: | Leave a comment

A remarkable thing happened iyesterday: Iain Duncan Smith used a five-letter word beginning with S.

Apologising for a mistake is just about the last thing any minister wants to do, but IDS got his chance when Labour’s John Healey asked him at work and pensions questions about the DWP’s bulletin admitting the pre-1996 under-occupation penalty error. Healey quoted the latest survey from the Northern Housing Consortium that ‘nearly half of all frontline housing workers have dealt with someone who has threatened to commit suicide’ largely because of the government’s welfare changes. ‘Will he apologise this afternoon to those people for the concern and chaos that he is causing?’

Duncan Smith replied: ‘I said it all right, and I say it again: the Department is, and I am, absolutely sorry that anybody may have been caught up in this who should not have been.’ So not just an apology but a double ‘sorry’ from both the secretary of state and his department. But before anyone gets too excited, he went on:

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

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