Unfairness Has A Home With The Tories

I recently wrote about the increasingly nasty tone of the present Government.  Events of recent weeks have shown no change in that tone – in fact it’s just about the only thing on which they’ve not performed a U-turn.

Leaving aside (for the moment) the disgraceful performance from Ian Duncan Smith in the Commons on Monday, the policies being pushed through at present represent little more than the indebted bully taking dinner money from the most vulnerable children in the playground in order to appease their friends.  Take, for instance, the ‘Spare Room Subsidy’, which everyone else refers to, quite rightly as a ‘Bedroom Tax’.  Essentially, anyone who claims housing benefit for Social Housing will have to pay extra if they have a spare room.  This, the arguments go, is to reduce under-occupancy.

According to the Government, there are a huge amount of social houses that have spare rooms and if the occupants of them claim Housing Benefit, they will have to pay more.  If they can’t afford it, they have to move to somewhere with fewer rooms.  It may have escaped the Tories notice that the Social Housing stock has decreased over the last generation, ever since the ‘Right to Buy’ was introduced by, erm, the Tories.

Of course, if you live in Social Housing and need to claim Housing Benefit, the chances of you having extra cash to pay this tax are fairly slim.  So you have to move.  Where to?  Well, not within the state sector, that’s for sure.  So you will have to go private.  And, of course, such restrictions are not being applied to private landlords.  If you claim housing benefit in the private sector, you can have as many spare rooms as you wish, which means a cut for money staying in the public sector, but plenty of money flowing from the public purse to private landlords.

You may think that this sounds crazy.  You would be right.  But it’s all part of this Government’s ploy to help those it likes at the expense of those it doesn’t.  It just so happens that those it likes are rich and those it doesn’t like are poor.  What else could possibly explain the Tories forthcoming tax cut for those earning millions at the same time as they introduce a real terms cut in maternity benefit?

The best way to tackle the huge housing benefit bill would be to introduce private sector rent controls.  The average rent has increased by over £100 a year in the last twelve months, and is now heading towards four figures.  Whether Housing Benefit contributes to this inflation, as the Government claims, is a moot point.  However, forcing people out of social housing and into the private rented sector is not going to cut the benefit bill.  All it will do is swell the pockets of private landlords at the public expense.

The idea of rent controls would have many on the Tory right in paroxysm of rage about interference in the market.  But the market is being interfered with anyway, just that it is the wealthy that benefit.  The playing field is not level; everything is weighted towards those who have. 

A last word for Mr Duncan Smith.  Calling people childish names, as you did in the Commons on Monday, says several things.  Firstly, it suggests that you have lost the argument.  Secondly, it shows a complete lack of gravitas.  Whether the behavior of others was bad is not the point.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  You are a Minister and should be setting an example.  Shame on you.

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