Housing Benefit Changes

EDM number 309 in 1996-97, proposed by Lynne Jones on 04/12/1996.

This this House notes that when the rent acts regulating private rents were repealed, the Secretary of State for the Environment stated that housing benefit would be available for tenants who could not afford the market rent and that a key component of Government policy was to ensure that deregulation did not price lower-income households out of the market; further notes that the cost of housing benefits was growing last year at a rate of ú7 million per week; believes that this has been the direct result of Government policy; therefore condemns the budget proposals to restrict housing benefit payments to an amount equivalent to the average local rent for a suitably-sized home, which, by definition, will affect 50 per cent. of all applicants, as well as the proposal to define a suitable home for single people aged under 60 years as a room in a shared house, thus forcing single people into houses in multiple occupation, which the Government has recognised represent the most unfit, unsafe form of housing; calls on the Government to recognise that these proposals will make their policies on homelessness unworkable, will put in jeopardy rent deposit guarantee schemes such as those in Birmingham, where rents for over 90 per cent. of claimants are above the local reference rent, and to withdraw them; and suggests that, in line with the new policy of spend to save, the Government should also reverse the cuts in local authority and housing association housing that have been a feature of each of the Chancellor's budgets.

This motion has been signed by a total of 68 MPs.