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Housing Benefit (Wales)

My point is that the OBR’s figures indicate that the Government will not achieve their objectives with the bedroom tax. If the objective is to bring down the housing benefit bill, the only way to do that is via rent control in the private rented sector. I welcome that the leader of the Labour party made a case overnight for some of the reforms for which I have been making a case for a number of years. Rent caps would drive down artificially high rental costs, and they would also curb boom and bust property speculation, which is a cycle we have seen far too often in the UK economy in recent decades. Rent caps would also help working people to remain in the cities, rather than being forced out, as they are in inner London. They would

also stop the current policy’s social cleansing, through which people are forced to move from where they have lived for many years.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

We also need to consider supply issues, which many Members have highlighted. The recovery of the 1930s following the great depression was largely driven by a massive public housing building programme. Rents paid for public housing provide a steady stream of revenue, so it is an ideal vehicle for drawing down private sector funds to deliver economic growth and address some of the social problems that we face.

I will now quickly return to the local indicators in Carmarthenshire, and I will finish on this point. Applications for discretionary housing payments have rocketed in south-west Wales. Between 2012-13 and 2013-14, the budget increased by 64% in Carmarthenshire, by 106% in Pembrokeshire and by 118% in Swansea. There were only 327 discretionary housing application payments in Carmarthenshire in 2012-13, but between April and May 2013 there were 534 applications. That is a 63% increase in the first two months of that year, compared with the whole of the previous year.

Nearly 2,000 people have had changes to their housing benefit entitlements in Carmarthenshire since this policy was introduced. As I mentioned, this policy only makes savings if people stay and pay.

I finish on a point made by my colleague, the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). He mentioned the work of Paul James, a Plaid Cymru councillor for Llanbadarn Fawr, a veteran of the UK Army and also a servant of the French Foreign Legion, so he is not a man to be messed about with—[Interruption.] He has the Minister’s number! He is upset about the impact of the bedroom tax on veterans and their families, who were under the impression that veterans would be exempt full stop from the bedroom tax. Yet it appears that only people on active service are exempt. If that is the case, obviously, military personnel from Wales in barracks or in training would be outside Wales and not exempt, because our regiments are not held domestically. Our servicemen are not home-based; they go to barracks in England. Yet their families are being hit by the bedroom tax. The Minister must look at that. I should be grateful to hear his remarks at the end of the debate.

2.51 pm