To date, while stating that it would not have introduced the bedroom tax and condemning its effect on the vulnerable, Labour has stopped short of pledging to repeal the measure if elected. But as I recently reported, it will almost certainly promise to do so before 2015.
The clearest signal yet that an announcement is likely in the near future came today from the party’s Scottish welfare spokesman Jackie Baillie. Asked on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme whether “a Westminster Labour government abolish the bedroom tax?”, she replied:
We are very clear. Labour rejected this approach when it was put to them in government, for social landlords. We have campaigned for its abolition.
Yes we will abolish it. My understanding is that you can expect an announcement relatively soon.
In his recent speech on social security, Liam Byrne described the policy, which reduces housing benefit by 14% for those deemed to have one “spare room” and by 25% for those with two or more, as “the worst possible combination of incompetence and cruelty”. He noted that “96% of those hit have nowhere to move to” (which means higher arrears and homelessness) and that it was “costing the public an extra £102.5 million to implement”, concluding: “It should be dropped, and dropped now.” If Labour can demonstrate that the policy is likely to cost more than it saves, it will be hard for the coalition to object to its potential reversal.
At the Lib Dem conference on Monday afternoon, delegates will debate a motion (Making Housing Benefit Work for Tenants in Social Housing) calling for “an immediate evaluation of the impact of the policy, establishing the extent to which larger homes are freed up, money saved, costs of implementation, the impact on vulnerable tenants, and the impact on the private rented sector.” The motion also calls for “a redrafting of clear housing needs guidelines in association with those representing vulnerable groups including the disabled, elderly and children.”
Until new guidelines are in place, it argues that there should be no withdrawal of housing benefit from those on the waiting list for social housing which meets the current guidelines and that there should be an exemption for those who “temporarily have a smaller housing need due to a change in their circumstances, but whose need will predictably return to a higher level (e.g. whose children will pass the age limits for separate rooms within that period)”.
While Nick Clegg and other Lib Dems ministers have defended the measure on the grounds that it encourages tenants to downsize, freeing up houses for those in overcrowded accomodation (the problem being the severe shortage of one bedroom properties), delegates are likely to back the motion, with a significant number calling for the immediate abolition of the policy. On the fringe, Shirley Williams has just been greeted with thunderous applause after describing it as “a big mistake”.
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