Jenny Jones AM, leader of the Green Party on the London Assembly, exposes the reality of Boris Johnson's claim to be a champion of those hit by Housing Benefit cuts.
By Jenny Jones AM, leader of the Green Party on the London Assembly
New evidence emerging from Westminster City Council and Eric Pickle’s office has further undermined the government’s case for its benefit caps and cuts.
Boris Johnson’s ambivalent posture is now untenable, and as Mayor of London he needs to intervene more forcefully on behalf of his low income constituents.
The likely impact of the reforms on Londoners described by this new evidence isn’t surprising. Academics and campaigners have been warning about hundreds of families having to take their children out of their schools, tens of thousands of households becoming homeless, and the bill to the Treasury rising ever since the reforms were announced.
What is surprising is where this new evidence comes from – champions of the reforms.
A report for an informal meeting of Westminster City Council’s cabinet apparently predicts the caps and cuts could force 4,000 school-age children out of the borough, including 500 primary school-age children from one ward alone. In all, 81 per cent of the 6,234 households in receipt of housing benefit renting in the private sector in the borough will be affected.
According to Nico Heslop, Private Secretary to Secretary of State Eric Pickles, the total benefit cap of £26,000 and the housing benefit caps could make 40,000 households homeless. The extra cost of handling these homelessness acceptances and arranging temporary accommodation for people, he wrote, will probably “generate a net cost”, wiping out any savings they might have made by picking the pockets of the poor.
Of course the Mayor of London should know all this already. His submission to the work and pensions committee concerning the housing benefit changes in isolation, written in September 2010, painted a similar picture.
His officers estimated more than 9,000 London households may have to move, with 14,000 children having to leave their local area. There would be some 5,000 more homelessness acceptances, with rises as high as 337% in Camden, 268% in Westminster, and 178% in Kensington and Chelsea. All of this would cost an estimated £78 million a year.
The revelations from Westminster council and Pickles’s office simply echo the Mayor’s own evidence; but in spite of this, all three remain firm supporters of the reforms.
Of course most people think the Mayor stood up to the government, warning of “Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing” and promising that would never happen on his watch. He has been fighting London’s corner on this, right? Wrong.
The story arose from an interview on BBC London radio in which the Mayor followed a guest who made the “Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing” allegation. As the Mayor’s subsequent statement makes clear, he fully supported the reforms and does not think they will lead to social cleansing.
The Mayor has pushed for some welcome concessions, but they are minor tweaks to slightly soften the blow, and there is no sign the government is going to adopt them. When I asked in June for an update on one very specific tweak, which would save vulnerable young people being forced into flat shares, he revealed his last meeting with a minister was in November last year and was only able to say “discussions” between his advisor and officers and the government “are ongoing”.
A genuine attempt to mitigate the impacts of these benefit cuts would involve the London mayor bringing together all of London’s councils to discuss a substantial transfer of funds and staff to match the flow of children, pensioners in need of care, problem families, and vulnerable adults who will be dislodged from inner London.
Instead of work being done to deal with this major disruption in the lives of poor people with difficult lives, the government and Mayor are ignoring their own advisers and downplaying or denying the scale of the problem they are creating.
The Mayor should also know that a better way to reduce the housing benefit bill is to provide homes that people on low incomes can actually afford. As I laid out last November in my “myth busting” briefing (pdf), for every pound we spent building new social housing in the past few years we spent five on housing benefit payments.
His housing advisor agreed with me that social housing would “clearly help reduce the housing benefit bill”, but the Mayor has made little noise about the government cutting off all future money for social housing.
Nor has he made a loud public call for reform of the private rented sector to slow the above-inflation rise in rents.
With such a weight of evidence pointing to a devastating rise in homelessness, thousands of households leaving their schools and communities, and a rising bill at the end of it all for the government, it is time that the Mayor came out forcefully against the benefit cuts. Never mind his small concessions, these caps and cuts are ill conceived and the government needs to go back to the drawing board.
46 Responses to “Boris fighting London’s corner on housing benefit cuts? Really?!”
Ed's Talking Balls
Well said, Anon E Mouse.
Labour won’t be able to convince the public that the status quo is fair. It isn’t.
Anon E Mouse
Ed’ Talking Balls – Cheers fella.
I really do not understand why Labour activists keep promoting ideas that will only appeal to a few Champagne Socialists fresh from college with their media degrees or some members of a dinosaur Trades Union.
The days when Labour cared about the poor and not appeasing the wealthy seem long long gone…
Leon Wolfson
Anon E Mouse – You put words in my mouth which I never said. It’s YOUR plan to keep stuffing money into landlords hands, not mine. *I*’ve called for rent boards and taxes on unoccupied properties. Solutions allowing for mixed communities, not your rabid hatred of the poor.
It’s quite clear from surveys that only a very small percentage of landlords will accept lower rents (and a significant percentage will raise them), most will evict their tenants when the government makes living near places which actually have jobs unaffordable over the next few years. This is, unfortunately, not hyperbole but the natural consequence of the changes, which are a band aid: they only slightly reduce the bill, have many other costs and will cause mass migrations to poorer areas.
But no, somehow in your twisted mind, opposing that is “sucking up to the wealthy”. You believe in your own Tory propaganda, apparently. Incidentally, the 30% market rate cut and CPI link is going to do a lot more damage outside London than the cap. There is, strangely enough, people who live there.
Oh, and a significant percentage – and rising – of housing benefit recipients are in-work. Many of those will have to move, losing their jobs. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll spin a way that’s fair as well.
Anon E Mouse
Leon Wolfson – I have hatred for no man and considering I work for the equivalent of minimum wage (less for last two months) I am one of the poor in this country. Please don’t patronise me from your ivory tower.
There are certain areas where only social engineering would allow a mixture of rich and poor, for example Primrose Hill in London where Ed Miliband lives. There is not a god given right to live in an expensive area and if you are being provided for adequately by the state so what is the problem?
I want to live in a penthouse overlooking the Thames with two blond Playboy bunnies but somehow it isn’t going to happen, which just goes to show how unfair life can be. The world is a very unequal place.
Furthermore you have no idea if the greedy landlords and spivs, featherbedded with our money, would accept a lower offer of rent because, despite scaremongering by increasingly desperate Labour activists, it hasn’t happened yet. And as for surveys the line; “They would say that wouldn’t they” springs to mind.
If the workers in houses are living beyond their means, the state should not use poorer people’s money to give to greedy landlords.
All Labour seem to care about is big business – look at the bankers knighthoods or Mandelson, the business secretary, saying he was relaxed at people getting filthy rich.
Anyway you didn’t answer the central point of fairness, which I suppose considering the normal line you take in this blog shouldn’t surprise me…
Leon Wolfson
I’m patronising nobody, your *own* words are what are showing your Tory-centric views.
There is survey after survey with consistent results showing what will happen when housing benefit falls, saying “let’s try it and it won’t be a trainwreck, really” is a transparent way of saying “I believe the negative effects are acceptable”.
This isn’t about primrose hill. This is about vast swathes of the country rapidly becoming entirely unavailable to those on housing benefit. London and the South-East very rapidly, but to only the poorest third of the country being “affordable” (and in many cases, barely) inside a decade.
The “savings” – which in many cases will be costs, when people are displaced and families broken up – are not proof against future rent rises, and it’ll create ever-bigger ghettoes, sinkholes where few will escape.
The policies *I* advocate (you are consistently saying “Labour”, as if I am the avatar of the labour party…your inability to separate them is again telling), would tackle the root causes of the problem. With them, rents will become far more rational(house prices are falling, rents are rising!), and people will find it in their economic interest not to leave houses empty.
But you’re condemning that, and poorer people. It is not “adequate” that only 30% of accommodation – and because of the lax regulation, the vast majority of the lower-end accommodation in this country fails miserable to meet even the basic Government housing standards – will be available, decreasing rapidly because CPI is well, well below rent increases. THAT is what you’re supporting: poor quality, geographically limited (to low-job areas) accommodation for the poor.
Again, I don’t advocate your policy of keeping stuffing private landlord’s pockets. I advocate rent boards, building affordable housing and taxing unoccupied property. THAT is going some way down the grounds to fair.
Further? Okay, higher taxes on unearned income like rental, wealth redistribution from the rich so people get fair value for their labour… (I’m a mutualist, squeaky!)