UK Austerity Nation: Protest the bedroom tax: defend welfare benefits

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Protest the bedroom tax: defend welfare benefits

In more than 30 locations across Britain people opposed to the Bedroom Tax will be gathering in city centres to protest against the policy on March 16 at 1pm, reports Andy Richards. Foster parents, disabled persons, single parents and families with a recently bereaved member are the people whom this policy hurts the most.

The Bedroom Tax works by reducing the Housing Benefit (HB) of a household which is deemed to be “underoccupying” a council or housing association dwelling according to a draconian set of criteria. Two children of the same sex are expected to share a bedroom up to age 16, as are a couple, even where illness or disability makes this impossible. Two children of different sexes are expected to share up to age 10.

The reduction is 14% for one bedroom “too many” and 25% if it is two or more.

The stated justification for the policy is the need to “free up” larger dwellings for families by encouraging people to downsize. But the policy applies across the country whether or not there is any appreciable unmet need for accommodation for families, and irrespective of whether smaller accommodation is even available to people, and regardless of any special needs of the household.

In any case, statistics show that social tenants make five times more efficient use of their accommodation than owner occupiers, and it is unfair to tax bedrooms when 700,000+ houses lie empty. Regardless of the fact that some social tenants may arguably have a “spare” bedroom, the far lower rents in the social sector mean that the HB spend on these tenants is far less than it would be if they were renting privately.

All of the main parties attack the rise in the housing benefit bill, as though it was some random occurrence, or based on the greed of individual tenants. In fact it is the inevitable consequence of the Tories’ deregulation of the private rented sector in the 1980’s, as they themselves acknowledge.

On 30 January 1991 the then housing minister Sir George Young was asked in parliament what the government was going to do about unaffordable rents. ‘Housing benefit will underpin market rents – we have made that absolutely clear,’ he said. ‘If people cannot afford to pay that market rent, housing benefit will take the strain.’

Today the majority of working age HB recipients are in fact working, as wages are squeezed ever more and rents and food prices, fares and fuel cost rise.

But the bedroom tax is not the only attack which the ConDems are imposing on the poorest. They have also abolished Council Tax Benefit (CTB), which reduces the amount of council tax which people on a low income have to pay. The replacement for CTB is a local scheme for which local councils can make up their own rules – but with 10% less funding. The result is a patchwork of rebate schemes which vary wildly from council to council, and even the poorest residents will have to pay some council tax from meagre benefits which have already been cut in real terms.

While tenants are being hit with the bedroom tax and paying more council tax, benefits and tax credits are being “uprated” by just 1% this year and for the next two years.

Later this year, all of the means-tested benefits and tax credits are being subsumed into Universal Credit, which will mean more cuts in entitlement for many and harsh new conditions for receiving anything at all. People are expected to claim UC online, even though access to the internet is at its lowest levels at the bottom of the income scale.

Also lurking in the background is the gradual replacement of Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments. Disturbing evidence is already emerging that PIP will have more onerous conditions and is designed to reduce the number of recipients.

Underpinning this is an expansion of workfare – free labour at the disposal of big business, and substituting for permanent jobs.

One of the ways in which the ConDems have been able to attack benefits with relatively little opposition so far is by whipping up a shocking climate of scapegoating, demonization and disinformation, aided by the tabloid media.

So successful has this been that TUC research has discovered that much of the public support for benefit cuts is based on completely false beliefs about the levels of the benefits, the ease of getting them and levels of fraud.

For example they found that -

On average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent.

On average people think that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently, while the government’s own figure is 0.7 per cent.

On average people think that almost half the people (48 per cent) who claim Jobseeker’s Allowance go on to claim it for more than a year, while the true figure is just under 30 per cent (27.8 per cent).

On average people think that an unemployed couple with two school-age children would get £147 in Jobseeker’s Allowance – more than 30 per cent higher than the £111.45 they would actually receive – a £35 over-calculation.

Things we should be doing

Support campaigns against the bedroom tax – oppose evictions and call upon councils not to evict tenants in rent arrears caused by it

Back people who cannot pay council tax against the bailiffs

Continue to support campaigns against workfare, such as Boycott Workfare – take the fight into the unions and ensure that unions boycott workfare schemes

Argue against demonisation of claimants – be they unemployed, disabled or in work.

Call for statutory rent controls in the private rented sector

Abolish the bedroom tax and the “right to buy” in the social rented sector

Coalition of Resistance Against Cuts & Privatisation