Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
What exactly is the point of the bedroom tax? Its ostensible purpose is to
free up accommodation from those who don’t need it to those who do. Just about
everything is wrong with that argument. If that were really the rationale, the
obvious way to solve the problem would be to build more social housing when the
total build last year including all tenures was just 98,000 houses, the lowest
level since 1923 and less than half the average annual house build over the last
40 years. And if that were the real motive, why confine it to social housing
and exclude private tenancies, let alone owner-occupied housing where surplus
rooms (to use the government’s phrase) are far more prevalent? So is it to
save money? If so, the bedroom tax is particularly ill-suited because if
tenants are forced to move, there is nowhere near enough one-bed social housing
available to accommodate them and they will be forced into private tenancies at
market rents which will cost the State more in local housing allowance than the
saving in housing benefit.
Even on the government’s estimate the bedroom tax will only save less than
£0.5bn. Put that against the write-off of £10bn of taxpayers’ money from the
government’s recently reported massive IT failure in health care. Put that
against the £35bn lost each year through tax avoidance over which the government
has only shed crocodile tears and made no serious effort to reverse. Put that
against the £50bn being laid out for HS2 which despite PR puffs about improving
‘city connectivities’ will only reduce journey times by little more than 30
minutes. Put that against the £50bn being essayed for Boris Island to replace
Heathrow or even the more modest £20-30bn being eyed up for increasing yet
further the urban monstrosity of Heathrow? Or even put it against the low
billions that Cameron was eager to spend on bombing Syria and likely starting
another Middle East inferno.
So the bedroom tax won’t actually save money, but even if it did, it would
pall beside the colossal mountains of money that the government can instantly
lay their hands on for breathtakingly risky or unnecessary ventures whenever
they want. No, the bedroom tax is a gratuitously nasty little impediment
thrown into the path of some of the most helpless members of society, including
two-thirds who report a disability, of whom even after just 3 months half have
been forced into rent arrears, and a quarter of these had never before in their
lives been in rent arrears. In London owner-occupiers and private landlords
are having a ball from rising house prices, while in the rest of country the
under-class are being deprived even of the little that they possessed. The
bedroom tax is the monument to the Coalition’s values and mentality.
