'Welfare Reform', with a Bedroom Tax Flavour

A blog predominantly about things to do with bedroom tax, by Rob G - @Simplicitly on twitter. A full-time carer for my wife's Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis.

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I, Daniel Blake: This, that and The Other

Anyone who has ever had a hobby they truly loved might understand the sublime feeling they get when they're in the zone. It doesn't have to be one of those gruelling or trendy sporting hobbies that you take up to impress other people on social media. It can just as easily be something you really love doing. It speaks a bit to some of my privileges that my favourite hobby has always been videogames. I love watching films, I used to put 'Driving' on my CV under leisure interests and at one point I used to run and enjoy it.

There is a point at which what you're doing can take on a feeling of the sublime. There was a happy juncture where I used to run; a combination of pace, exertion and being able to see, smell and hear the things I was running past that triggered the right endorphins to lull me into another place. Videogames can sometimes be an act of lining up your senses with your skill levels, and when it goes right, it feels a grinning sort of right. Before the roads became occupied by other people at all times of the day or night, I experienced a gleeful mix of speed, the feeling of the road and a selfish enjoyment in finding how much uncertainty your tyres are prepared to accommodate.

Some of my film-watching can feel a little bit academic There are forms and skills and techniques in film-making that people who are more dedicated viewers than I am would pick up while I'm still giggling at visual jokes. I'm not focussed enough to be a film critic, but I have a half-decent grasp of the concept of the referential. I can also be pretty annoying about pointing out what other things actors have been in. It properly annoys Mrs Gershon, especially when I'm wrong.

I, Daniel Blake is not that sort of film. There are no obscure nods to Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress here. Nevertheless, I experienced that feeling of things fitting into place while I watched it. A feeling of getting the balance of pace and breathing and touching on reality just right. The film is infuriating, but only because of the issues it highlights.

What struck me most, as I watched the film and then swore loudly in the car while I drove home, was just how much the problems for the film's protagonists are caused by their housing situations. Much of the detail isn't spoon-fed through lazy exposition, but we learn it from snippets of telephone conversations Daniel Blake is forced to have with the ever-present monster of the entirely inhuman Department for Work and Pensions.

There have been a few suggestions already from people who ought to know better that the film is a work of fiction. That they peddle this myth demeans them. Unlike the demeaning of people having to engage with the DWP around issues of work and housing, the politicians who have come out to defend government policy only demean themselves.

Before the film's release, Kwasi Kwarteng, who might have learned more from the time he spent with the Work and Pension Committee on “Support for housing costs in the reformed welfare system” if he had not been apparently playing games on his shiny new iPad, claimed that it would be wrong to suggest there were no problems with the system, as sometimes he had to deal with problems from his own constituents. On BBC's Question Time, former Secretary of State for the Department of Local Government Greg Clark made exactly the same assertion, almost word-for-word.

Much like the obtuse media output of the DWP over their provenly dysfunctional policies, government ministers and MPs appear to have been fed a line that they must repeat in the media to discredit the premise of I, Daniel Blake as if it was pure fiction.

Except it isn't. As the other people from the packed cinema screening quietly left the cinema I shared with them, I blinked back my own tears as I pondered the very real points of reference the film held for me. I was reminded of my own Dad, who having survived cancer for much longer than his consultant had believed possible, kept being hassled by automaton DWP staff who implied that as he had not died as soon as they were expecting, he must be a fraud.

At a time when he should have been concentrating on getting better, we were comparing notes about how much work is required to claim the pittance of various UK benefits. He had to fight continuously to retain his DLA, essentially his only way of paying his mortgage, by organising repeated correspondence from his oncologist at I was compromising care arrangements for my wife so that we could fit into the narrow exemptions for bedroom tax. It was enormously frustrating for each of us to hear tales of the other, I'm sure.

We may even have drawn some solidarity from each having to put up with the monotonous, heartless phone operators the DWP employs, or from the bait-and-switch of local tax and benefits officers who were powerless to do anything other than send threatening letters on behalf of the DWP, but this, like the support of immediate acquaintances of Daniel Blake, was not the plucky, community-spirited kind of solidarity it is painted as under the auspices of any Big Society, it's a desperate and frustrating clutching at any bit of flotsam in the shipwreck of deliberately cruel conditionality imposed from policies decided by ideological beliefs that deal with social security claimants from the default position that they must be criminals, liars, or out to game the system.

I felt a sense of guilt at the people I haven't been able to help. The couple I know who were charged bedroom tax even though both disabled and unable to share one of their two rooms. I tried to get them help, but they were exhausted as a result of their conditions and feared the repercussions of challenging their local authority landlord. After being found fit for work, shortly after a kidney transplant and awaiting a hip replacement, they were cowed into a submission I couldn't seem to help them with.

I attended a Work Capability Assessment with my friend and witnessed the industrial processing of people that was portrayed so vividly and accurately in the film's Kafkaesque JobCentre Plus, where an institution that once helped people find work has been re-purposed to stop people claiming money they are entitled to.

I thought of one of my neighbours, who was sanctioned for the most trivial of reasons, in ignorance of the fact they have Type 2 Diabetes controlled by diet. They went without food while their foodbank referral took place, and offered me some tins of food that they didn't like shortly after, pretending that they'd bought them in error because they couldn't bear to admit the situation they'd been pushed into by people at the other end of a phone who wouldn't listen.

I thought of another person I know found fit-for-work when they clearly aren't, and what's really happened is that my faith in housing providers as rational and helpful enablers for their tenants has been shaken. I've always been a big supporter of associations, ALMOs and councils who have schemes genuinely geared towards helping people find training and employment that's suitable for them, but something has changed.

I've also been a detractor of the sort of comms-led, jargon filled fantasies that some housing providers have in the past peddled. Conditional tenancies where not signing up to an unregulated equivalent of a Claimant Commitment means some people will not be offered tenancies. The same impersonal gatekeeping that the DWP employs that ensures poverty is something blamed on the individual rather than understood in its real context. Providers going along with organisations whose use of what has become known as “workfare” haven't even raised an eyebrow.

Jules Birch highlights the way that language has been used to dehumanise the very real issues that people are facing, as represented in I, Daniel Blake. The prevalence of words like 'Client, Customer and Service User' have become excuses to stop seeing the people that need houses as human beings.

The slightly rabid adoption by the National Housing Federation of Conservative Party policy, flying in the face of any of the plethora of evidence about how to address both supply and affordability of housing, now stands as a prime example of how the machine of government segregates its imaginary shirkers from the deserving people who are wealthy enough to afford homes that are not by any reasonable description affordable when taking household income into account. All the arguments about people being workshy, about the efficacy of sanctions, about the reasons that houses are not affordable, about the need to provide accessible homes as an environment where people can thrive, have been swept aside to support an ideological drive for more homes at any cost, of any tenure.

There has been a lot of focus on 2016 being the 50th Anniversary of Cathy Come Home, but I can see why Ken Loach didn't want to make another film in the same mould. There's no point. Little has changed for people who need housing support. They are still vilified and blamed and seen as 'the other'.

Where once the broader housing association movement was thought to step in where councils have had the resources to deal with this need taken away, now those housing associations in a position to build are building homes for rent, private sale, rents that are not affordable or shared ownership packages that are not affordable. The idea that the profits from these developments can support the provision of homes people can actually afford is demonstrably untrue.

Somehow this makes it right that Ken Loach has taken the opportunity to highlight ordinary working people, or ordinary people who can't work, and the dehumanising abuse they receive at the hands of faceless, corporate bureaucrats. It would have been pointless for Loach to have made another film about housing when so much of the abuse people who need homes but can't afford them face is wrapped up in the commercial, corporate culture of the new political reality. Organisations that openly baulked at commenting on campaigns around food poverty and the senseless cutting of vital support to disabled people because they were 'too political' are now happily propping up a purely political ideology based around home ownership as an aspiration that people who aren't successful enough can't attain.

I know that there are housing organisations out there that are still on the side of their tenants. Some are quietly and diligently increasing the amount of money that their residents are entitled to in social security, but had never previously thought to claim. Some are offering support for people to get involved with their landlords, or to get training and work, without ramming it down anyone's throat as a crude indicator of worthiness. But the overall message has become one that only values people when they have full-time paid employment, and much of the celebrations of housing providers to highlight this is to pander to the system within government, specifically the DWP, that judges and deliberately fails people

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Bedroom Tax Year Two: Through personal, legal and political.

As the policy that has still failed to achieve any of its aims reaches two years old, I do a bit of soul-searching and stock-taking about where it, and I, now stand.

Four months before the bedroom tax was introduced I spent a distressing week and a half travelling every day to and from hospital to visit my wife. In the second episode of this nature, she’d woken up one morning inexplicably confused, and by lunchtime had forgotten who she was, where she lived, who I was, and confused the cat for a dog.

I can smile about it now and we joke about her incredibly loud announcement to the rest of the hospital ward that the woman in the bed next to her “looks like Margaret Thatcher, and I ****ing hate Margaret Thatcher”. This may have been genuinely funny, however unimpressed that poor lady and her family seemed with this proclamation at the time, but it still wasn’t typical behaviour (outside our home!).

Despite this hospitalisation, my care role seemed to become even busier. it wasn’t a good hospital stay. I had great difficulty conveying her care and medication needs to the staff. I kept telling them what they were, but with each change of shift they seemed to be forgotten. During the daytimes I was in near constant attendance to oversee the care, and at night I worried about not being there to make sure the standard of care was maintained.

At the end of each day I would come home to our bungalow and ring various friends and relatives and the people involved in my wife’s medical and social care and then I’d fret myself to sleep. Throughout this and despite my constant worrying, the cornerstone of my own stability during this time was that even though the bungalow wasn’t the same in the absence of Mrs G, it was a quiet piece of sanctuary against whatever was happening outside.

As I’ve covered in some detail before, not least in my Year One blog last April, the bedroom tax changed that security. What had been our home changed, with no physical rearrangement, into a collection of bricks that we were generously being allowed to remain in at the whim of the Department for Work and Pensions.

A further year on, and this pervasive feeling has not changed. Despite our exemption as a result of needing regular overnight carers to stay in our, somewhat laughably titled, ‘spare’ bedroom, my view of the bungalow won’t return to it being our home until the policy is gone. Although there has been a small legal victory this week that will potentially redress the balance for some disabled tenants so that they might be entitled to Discretionary Housing Payments they were previously denied, the bulk of the legal challenges mounted to the policy have found in favour of the DWP and the policy because DHPs exist. Other challenges wait in limbo, with Supreme Court dates set well into the next parliament.

The only way to get rid of the policy now is political. As the May 2015 election approaches, there are two kinds of parties in the race. Those who want to do the right thing, and get rid of bedroom tax - Labour, The Green Party, Plaid Cymru, UKIP and probably the SNP.

Stood against them are the Conservatives, who remain staunchly in favour of the policy despite the DWP interim report concluding that it’s not working, and the Liberal Democrats, whose continual support for the policy while in coalition will forever leave them associated with its unfairness and iniquity. Some elements within the party finally tried to do something about it through Andrew George’s Affordable Homes Bill, but this approach was not thought through, and was never likely to succeed.

My wife’s memory has definitely taken a turn for the worse during this last year. We’re a long way from having to write things down, but when she asks about bedroom tax and other welfare cuts, I sometimes have to remind her that we are now seen as a burden on society as a result of our housing situation in a way that we weren’t before April 2013. As plans to scythe further support from carers and disabled people are being drawn up in secret by Conservatives who’ve dropped any pretence at being compassionate, and the next generation of Liberal Democrat apologists prepare to stand by what they’ve stood by since 2010, these are dark times for the people being punished for a housing crisis they didn’t create.

Something has changed in my outlook, though. I’ve become involved with the campaign for social housing - SHOUT. Before I was a full time carer, I was a decent systems analyst amongst other things, and what the damaging impacts of stupid policies like the bedroom tax and the benefit cap have taught me is that they wouldn’t be necessary if we did something effective about housing supply and affordability. The Housing Benefit Bill is only so vast, and therefore only fair game because of a collective failure to provide the homes that people need. Getting involved in spreading this sound economic and moral message has been part of my response to the bedroom tax.

The other major part of that response has been all the people I’ve met and interacted with over the internet - you people. I would rather that we hadn’t got connected under these circumstances but I still can’t quite articulate how important all the support and solidarity has been over the last couple of years. We’re so close to being able to bin this ridiculous policy and move on to challenging the other cuts that are aimed at the wrong parts of society, or to having to accept that  the policy is going to stay and resolving to fight it harder. If bedroom tax remains after the election, we’ll have to fight in ways that may not promote collaboration between tenants, landlords and local authorities. That approach hasn’t really worked over the last two years to protect tenants, as the unstemmed flow of stupid decisions made by landlords and the DWP continues to show.

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How Conservative Freemasons invented the Bedroom Tax

There must be something innately cheering about being a Freemason, judging from the beatific smile on the face of Sir David Austen Trippier. Former Conservative Minister, Knight of the Realm and His Most Worshipful Provincial Grand Master of Freemasons in East Lancashire. His darkest achievement, however, may be that he is the true architect of the bedroom tax.

To what degree the modern legislation rests in his power may not seem at first entirely clear. Contemporary Members of Parliament vie to offload responsibility for the bedroom tax, with coalition MPs wrongly suggesting that the previous government brought it in for Private Tenants. Some commentators wrongly believe that the policy was trialled in 2001, though this is also a grand falsehood.

At a time before ordinary people were allowed on the internet, the 1989 "Size Criteria" went on to permeate the bedroom tax, Labour's failed Local Housing Allowance (LHA) of 2008 and the underlying principle of a 2001 policy to pay people to downsize that never materialised.

Just over a year before the foundations of the bedroom tax were laid, in the February of 1988, Channel 4 ran a three hour discussion programme on whether Freemasons were above the law. This was in the days before Channel 4 churned out relentless, ill-informed, cunningly edited bilge like Benefits Street, and actually invited people involved in issues to come into the studio and talk them over from their own perspectives in a rational manner.

Although broad details of the pillars of Freemasonry are available in the public domain, the discussion concluded that Freemasonry was a messy, inexact set of organisations that, although seemingly secretive, weren't deliberately conspiratorial. This was decided by the four out of seven guests present, even the one whose on-screen title read "Housewife", but who turned out to be Eileen Grey OBE, Freemason.

But what do meetings of ageing, predominantly white men in suits possibly have to do with the way that social housing and its policies are operated?

It's impossible to tell whether it was a pantomime handshake that led David Trippier to seek to protect reasonable private rents from any reduction within the 1989 Rent Officers (additional functions) order;

"Housing benefit will be available to qualifying tenants paying rents up to open market level. Let there be no doubt about our total commitment in that respect."

Eleven years before the introduction of the Local Housing Allowance, Mr Trippier ceremoniously presaged what would eventually be written into that later legislation;

"We do not believe that the Exchequer, which provides up to 97 per cent. direct subsidy on housing benefit, should be expected simply to underwrite any rent that the landlord demands."

However, as a member of an organisation squarely interested in matters of community, Mr Trippier was keen to engage in some truly compassionate Conservatism. When queried by opposition MPs Tony Banks and Jeremy Corbyn about how vulnerable people would be accommodated, he replied:

"Although, as a general rule, we do not believe the taxpayer should subsidise spare accommodation, we fully accept that some housing benefit claimants may need a spare room. No benefit restrictions can be placed on the elderly, the sick, the disabled or people with children."

Although there was an expectation that the needs of these groups would be assessed locally, Mr Trippier went further still to assure The House that the reasonable needs of claimants, provided that their rent was 'within reason', would be met:

"We aim to safeguard the Exchequer against paying for benefit on rents which are unreasonable. It does not represent a back-door form of rent control. It in no way dilutes our commitment that housing benefit will be available up to market rent level; on the contrary, it offers a guarantee that the housing benefit system will genuinely keep pace with the market and that claimants will have their reasonable needs met."

Behind the apron of respectability, the evolution of this policy has come to be manipulated to blame social housing tenants for the rising rents in that sector, and to suggest that the ever-rising rents of recipients of Housing Benefit in the private rented sector are somehow the fault of tenants. It is tenants, ultimately who are paying the financial price for these prejudices, and thirty years of failed housing policy.

And so, finally, to the notion that the Labour Government piloted the Bedroom Tax in 2001. It doesn't seem to matter to those that share it, who stem from the Conservative, Liberal Democrat, SNP and UKIP parties, that no pilot ever took place, and that no such policy was ever introduced.

I've been unable to track down who made the Malcolm Wicks image, and nobody seems to have been forthcoming about claiming credit for it. Presumably because it isn't true.

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The Minimum Rage

“You don't wallow in self pity”, one of my friends explained to me, when I wondered out loud why people had ever read anything I'd written about my experiences with bedroom tax or any of the other gumpf that has followed since.

Maybe my wallowing in self pity is just the stuff I keep really quiet. It's Living Wage Week, though. For ages I've been trying to write something that talks about Carer's Allowance and Caring, about the system of mistrust on which 'Personalised Budgets' are founded and about how enraging it is that despite cursory political engagement, carers are safely ignored in fiscal policy.

There's a long-standing statistic that 6.5 million people are “family carers” and that they save the economy £119 billion per year. It's difficult for these big numbers to reflect the individual circumstances of the carers behind them. Some of us have jobs, and some of us do not. Some of us work 35 hours or more per week as a carer, and qualify for Carer's Allowance. Some don't, for a variety of reasons.

That notion of 'working' 35 hours or more per week is a little bit misleading. It's certainly work, although Carer's Allowance isn't anything like a wage. Neither is '35 hours or more' enlightening. It's often variable for carers, but from personal experience it can quickly stretch to 50 hours a week, or 70 hours, or when things go wrong, as many as 100 hours or more. For some carers, three figure working weeks are the norm. Some of us are lucky enough to employ other carers through a 'personalised care budget'. This means that instead of Social Services, or increasingly the NHS managing the supply of carers, we recruit and employ, and train where necessary, ourselves.

Every month, I prepare the timesheets for our carers. This is where I wallow in self-pity. The personalisation budget allows me to pay in the region of £8 - £8.50 per hour, for other people to come in for a set number of hours each week to do the care job that I do for next to nothing. There's no difference in the roles that I am awarded £61.35 for a minimum of 35 hours work, and the 7-and-a-bit hours of care during which paid carers earn the same amount.

I'm jealous about it. I grind my teeth a little bit and I wonder why I can't be trusted to be paid a decent hourly rate for my care work. There's no real provision to use the money which an assessment has deemed necessary, to pay family carers who do most of the work. This is almost entirely an issue of trust. Family carers can't be trusted to earn £8.50 an hour – it's such an attractive proposition that surely everyone would immediately opt for days filled with misery, incontinence, physical exertion, depression, the absence of any sort of health and safety standard for physical labour, blood, toil, tears and a constant state of awareness and worry.

There are good days. Of course there are good days, and caring can be rewarding and empowering and all the other twee bullshit that's trotted out by carer charities, and lets people think of us as noble characters and then go back to ignoring what we actually do, or what that actually costs us all.

I often feel guilty about whether this is an issue of my own aspiration. Maybe if I was a little bit better motivated I would also have another job running alongside my 35 hours or more of care. Duncan Smith, the hapless Secretary of State for Work and Pensions never talks about carers, except when he's explaining how some aspect of his disastrous welfare reforms is supposed to be making things 'better' for carers. Specifically, he means carers getting a job so that his department doesn't have to begrudgingly pay them £61.35 a week.

I've already made enquiries about what getting a full time job would mean for my care situation. To cut a long story short, the cost of the care that would need to be provided in my absence is so great that it wouldn't be financially tenable to provide the care at home. This would mean my wife would have to move into residential care. Nobody really wants that.

That is to say that I don't want it to happen, and my wife doesn't want it to happen. Increasingly I wonder whether the rhetoric about personal budgets and using more “community services” (unpaid local volunteers and charity workers) to provide professional health and social care is just a bit of a smokescreen. Whatever rhetoric is regurgitated, the truth seems to be that enabling people with care needs to live independent, or even decent lives is increasingly deemed too expensive. The real results of brutal government cuts to social care provision at a local level speaks far more loudly than the laughable premise of the 2014 “Care Act” that all carers are entitled to an assessment.

I don't feel like I need an assessment, I feel like I need to stop having the value of the work I do as a carer continuously undermined by the DWP and the Treasury and the Care Minister. In many ways this uncertainty and sense of worthlessness isn't about the money, but at a time when frightened middle-class people with no care responsibilities chew their fingernails over the Minimum Wage, the Living Wage, and the comforting thought of a Universal Basic Income, it's increasingly galling to be part of a group of people who will continue to be ignored in any discussions about what the value of a person's work is.

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An open letter to Matt Allwright and the Housing Enforcers.

An open letter to Matt Allwright.

Dear Matt,

I wanted to apologise for using Housing Enforcers as a vehicle for a cheesy parody, which appeared recently on the 24Dash.com website. I wrote my first episode before I'd seen Housing Enforcers, although I did have a quick run through of your first programme before submitting it to be published. After I'd watched, I tried to be less critical of the show and more about the issues I wanted to cover, in episode two, and the third and perhaps final episode.

Before it had aired, I had a sense of worry that Housing Enforcers would fall so easily into the pattern of other programmes dealing with issues around housing. Although Housing Enforcers is based around the work that Housing Officers do in making sure that landlords and tenants are both playing by the rules, things like Benefits Street and How To Get a Council House have led to a degree of apprehension whenever anything new surfaces.

The real reason I'm writing this letter is to thank you for making Housing Enforcers – despite my fears, it did a really good job of showing a balanced view of the work of Housing Officers. I felt as if I should watch the show, at first because I wanted to ground my parody in reality but as I went on, I found myself appreciating the way that you'd put each episode together. I think you chose some good subjects to cover – homes that don't meet the Decent Homes Standard, breakdowns in relationships between Tenants and Landlords, and issues which tenants face in their lives which can make it hard for them to find the right place to live.

My own experience of Housing Law is incredibly limited, and I rely on experts I've met on Twitter to point me in the right direction when I'm mulling over issues relating to it. I hope you will forgive my gentle mockery of Housing Enforcer's coverage of the legal aspects.

I used the show as a vehicle to highlight some issues where the interpretation of housing law breaks down, such as Sandwell Council's imposition of residence requirements for council tax discounts, and their current policy of including Disability Living Allowance as income when calculating eligibility for Discretionary Housing Payments for bedroom tax.

These issues are serious, especially to tenants, and as I've seen you appreciate in the show, the law isn't always obviously on their side. With access to legal aid forever shrinking – especially for Housing cases, the role of Housing Officers becomes ever more important if tenants are to continue to be protected. As a result, I came to respect the way that you presented what was right, and in some cases how this didn't always chime exactly with what is legal.

An apology and a thank-you, and I hope that you did not find any of the things I wrote offensive.

Many thanks,

Rob.

p.s. I hope you were joking with Max Salsbury about all that 'legal responsibility for publishing' stuff on Twitter and don't feel that any further action is necessary.

p.p.s Sorry for all the Michael Barrymore jokes, you must have heard them all.

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Not so fast! What do Liberal Democrat proposals for a reformed Bedroom Tax mean?

In today's Daily Mirror, there are two articles relating to the Bedroom Tax based on the seemingly welcome news that Liberal Democrats, previously responsible for the implementation and retention of the "Social Sector Size Criteria" legislation, have decided that they aren't going to support the policy any longer.

Not like that time at the beginning of April 2014 when Tim Farron said the party would withdraw their support for the policy and he didn't mean it (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/02/lib-dem-president-withdraw-party-support-bedroom-tax) but a move to reconcile the stance of parliamentarians with Libdem party members, the majority of whom realised some time ago that the policy doesn't work.

Ostensibly, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg have seen the DWP's Interim report on the hamfistedly politically titled "Evaluation of the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy" (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/removal-of-the-spare-room-subsidy-interim-evaluation-report) this week. This report was coincidentally released at the same time as there was a cabinet reshuffle. Somehow Danny and Nick still found time to read it, and realised that with climbing arrears, mounting debt, tenants unaware of discretionary housing payments, the majority of the burden falling on disabled people and carers, nowhere to downsize to, nobody downsizing, some tenants moving to expensive private sector rents, nobody taking on lodgers, hardly anybody being able to find work or more work, people requiring support networks, carers and in most cases not realising their spare rooms were spare, something might, possibly be wrong with the policy.

If only there had been any housing professionals to hand, to have warned these outcomes were likely when the policy was introduced last year. All this could surely have been avoided given how highly regarded the expertise of the sector is in political circles. They even have a Lord who works for the National Housing Federation, you know.

It is wonderful that some actual evidence has surfaced to highlight the teething problems of the policy. It's possible to have missed Aragon Housing and later Grand Union & associated HA reports, NHF reports, CIH findings, Shelter analysis, JRF, Oxfam and Trussell Trust findings on tenant hardship, concerned charities and disability rights groups, stories in national newspapers based on detailed FOI requests, every housing professional who has ever commented on bedroom tax, alongside every housing writer or website or blogger, and even normally meek and pliable tenants speaking out about it. In the DWP report, finally were some official data on which official decisions could be made.

Headlnes would suggest that the LibDems are to step in and protect the tenants who, the report suggests aren't really in a position to bear having their money taken away and being threatened with eviction, or to change their circumstances so that they can find this meanest of levies.

I don't "Care" minister Norman Lamb, speaking about who makes a decisions in tricky dignity in dying cases on Newsnight, took time out to proclaim that there aren't enough smaller homes to downsize to for the majority of people affected who were also predominantly disabled, in need of carers, or carers. He quickly trotted out the oft-repeated lie that the legislation just 'brings into line' the way that tenants in the social and private rented sectors are treated. Whether this is genuine ignorance or willful politicking one cannot be truly sure. His nose became increasingly red as Kirsty Wark quoted Nick Clegg as saying the policy has been "a catastrophe that punishes the poor", but he had the good grace to say the new Lib Dem position was just based on evidence.

In his mirror article, Danny Alexander made the LibDem case for bedroomtax thus;

"Our aim was to give people a reason to downsize if they live in a home larger than needed". Danny adroitly skirted around the finer details, that the "reason" people would be given to downsize was the threat of poverty followed by eviction from their home,

"Second, to end the unfairness of people in social housing getting housing benefit on better terms than private tenants who for years have received it based on the number of rooms they need". Danny seems completely ignorant not just of how the two policies were implemented differently, but how LHA is calculated locally, and bedroom tax is a blanket deduction applied to the predominantly disabled people affected. He also failed to take the opportunity to highlight how his Coalition has reduced the value of Local Housing Allowance through welfare cuts, with the burden once again falling on tenants and possibly Fergus Wilson.

"Third, to change the system as part of our wider reforms to make sure working pays and we have a welfare bill the country can afford. Our benefit reforms are working, resulting in many more people re-entering work" IDS-speak; this isn't borne out by the DWP report on bedroom tax, but when did pesky facts get in the way of a good soundbite?

Danny then swiftly moved on to the glowing solutions to the problems he's created by not understanding what he's voted for:

"Our revised proposal is that new tenants in the social rented sector would receive housing benefit based on the number of rooms they need." As with LHA, he's suggesting only new tenancies will be subject to room restrictions

"But those already in the social rented sector would only see a reduction in benefit if they are offered a suitable smaller home and, crucially, turn it down." Oh, not like the LHA after all. In the private sector you only get assessed for a new tenancy. Danny is determined to carry on hounding existing social sector tenants. There's no detail here about what constitutes a 'suitable' smaller home, and it's hard to see how this will be practiced in legislation.

"Disabled adults should be treated the same as disabled children, by permanently exempting them." In what is probably Mr Alexander's most grueling error, he seems to suggest disabled children are exempt from the bedroom tax. Perhaps this is what he told himself every time he voted for it previously, but this statement is troubling because it invalidates the promise to make disabled adults exempt, and shows a fundamental ignorance of the basic functions of the policy he repeatedly voted for. Without any detail of what constitutes a disability in the eyes of Nick, Danny and Norman, and given the amazing success of work capability assessments and personal independence payments, it's currently impossible to guess who will be exempt, and who won't.

"And we would introduce new measures on social landlords to manage their stock more effectively so more people get put into the right home." Everybody knows how bad social landlords have been at managing their stock more effectively before the bedroom tax came in. Just look at how easy it must be, with such a broad choice of properties available in a country where there's no shortage of housing and no affordability issues for anyone.

Finally, "I want everyone to have the chance to live securely in a decent home.

That’s why I’ve driven through measures that will deliver record numbers of affordable homes to help tackle the root cause of our housing problem, lack of supply.

And it’s why our manifesto will set out plans to go further and deliver 300,000 new homes a year".

Yeah, right. "Affordable"

It's impossible to tell what form this political opposition to bedroom tax will take, as the next likely test of today's fleeting assertions will be when Andrew George's Private Members Bill on making similar modifications to the legislation is debated on September 12th 2014, so we're very much in a situation where we'll have to wait, and see.

[notpaying-blog]

Home, Security?

I met Paul and Sue Rutherford and their grandson Warren Todd in February of 2014. This year I've decided to use some of my respite care time to go and meet people I've talked to about bedroom tax and other housing issues on the internet. Before the policy came knocking at our door with a Notice of Seeking Possession in hand, I knew almost nothing about social housing, the legislation surrounding it, or the people that provide it.

Warren's house has been extensively adapted to make it just right for him. Paul and Sue also live there, but until you've seen how imaginative, personalised and ingenious the layout is, it's difficult to form an opinion about what the rather dry descriptions of 'adaptations' mean. I'd go as far as to say that the property would make a really good model for a home intended to allow independent living for many people with disabilities, not just children. The house hasn't so much been adapted for Warren, as specifically built around his needs. When I compare it to the more modest adaptations we've made in our home, it makes me reflect on how some of the most important principles of social housing are about taking individual circumstances into account.

So it was a little baffling to read the High Court judgement in Rutherford vs. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that made the Rutherford's situation seem like something that could be dealt with without taking proper account of their individual circumstances.

Although the case was assumed to be a test case to decide whether any family looking after disabled children who require an overnight carer are entitled to a bedroom for that purpose, in the end the Court took the opinion that this was an individual judgement rather than an examination of whether DHPs are actually working as intended. Paragraph 60 of the judgement does refer to the postcode lottery of the scheme, which from the early available data appears to be awarding DHPs in fewer cases to disabled tenants than those who do not have a disability, undermining the DWP's assertion that the money is available for those who need it most.

What really struck me was Paragraph 59:

"I do not doubt or belittle the evidence of Mr Rutherford that the initial application and subsequent sense of uncertainty caused the Claimants anxiety. However, none of the detriments that have been suggested show "a serious flaw in the scheme which produces an unreasonable discriminatory effect." Much of the anxiety will have been caused by the initial rejection and the uncertainty it engendered. On the information available to me that was an error on the part of Pembrokeshire, which it later recognised and rectified: it was not attributable to a serious flaw in the scheme, which should have been capable of proper operation from the outset."

This opinion sidetracks one of the biggest problems with the bedroom tax, and that is how tenants are made to feel. When I sat with Paul and Sue in their kitchen, I sensed a pervasive sense of fear in their home. It wasn't about the ongoing case, and hopefully wasn't because I was visiting, but it was the same sense of fear that my wife and I felt last year. The fear you have because the sense of security we used to have in our own home has gone. We all talked a lot in the brief time that I was there, and it's difficult to describe how valuable, and how powerful it is to share those fears and that upset with somebody else who understands what it means. It's how I know that however technically legal the Rutherford judgement is, it won't resolve anything for other people in need, who are affected by the policy.

It's fear that I've been unable to shake off in my own home. The underlying principle of the bedroom tax assumes that all social housing tenants who are living in a home that the DWP deems to have too many bedrooms are being subsidised by an amorphous block of 'hardworking taxpayers' so beloved of politicians. Any situation where people might actually be lucky enough to be judged worthy of a spare room by the Department for Work and Pensions is an anomaly.

So, while everyone celebrates not paying bedroomtax, perhaps by being made exempt by dint of having a room for an overnight carer (but only for a disabled adult), or while local authorities, housing associations and support groups celebrate the awarding of a Discretionary Housing Payment or the winning of a First Tier Tribunal, none of these thing can abate the gnawing fear that my home isn't my home any more. I can expect at least annual phone calls from our local authority, in case we've dared to treat our 'personalised' care budget in a way that doesn't include regular, overnight care, or in case there's been a cure for Multiple Sclerosis that nobody has told us about.

We're an anomaly now, temporarily deemed worthy of not having our already precarious income reduced further by having to pay for a room that can't be considered spare in any meaningful sense.

So, for all the hope that the entire bedroom tax policy might be further eroded after the Rutherford's Judicial Review by its reliance on DHPs - as detailed in this excellent blog post by Giles Peaker, and despite my friends regularly trying to assure me that our situation is stable now that we have our exemption, I can't help but feel that in Warren's house, the feeling won't be that of relief, or even settlement. The underlying fear that a really badly thought out policy can undermine your home, and your sense of home, won't go away until better exemptions are made, or the policy as a whole is disposed of.

Tenants aren't helped by exemptions, DHPs or FTTs other than in a superficial sense. We've got to stop looking at them as long term solutions. Underneath those sticking plasters, for us the wound of fear is still fresh. The underlying principle of social housing - a safe, secure, warm, dry, welcoming home, cannot be maintained while the burden of proof for bedroom tax lies with the tenants affected. The default position of the policy being that you're living somewhere that you shouldn't be. That's the feeling we're left with, and it's precisely that feeling that commentators from their own homes often can't appreciate.

Bedroom Tax hope wasn't improved by the National Housing Federation voicing the same appraisal and analysis of the failure of the policy that they've always maintained, earlier in the week. Somewhere along the line, the people responsible for implementing it have stopped listening to the evidence, however overwhelming it is.

You can read all the latest data here, but the implications were summarised by David Orr, CEO of the NHF;

The evidence is crystal clear. This measure does not work. There is no rational way to amend it. It must be repealed, and the sooner the better. Just for once, in a time where anti politics sentiment is tangible, wouldn’t it be great if the government was to say “we got this one wrong”?

David's full statement is a conclusive rebuttal of all the aims of the policy, described by the CEO of an organisation that represents many of those organisations at the front line who deal with the tenants affected. No matter what evidence is produced or what heart-wrenching case studies are written about and discussed, the policy remains in place, and as each day passes, the idea that it might ever go away, giving tenants their sense of security back, seems more distant.

But hey, it's not fair on all those hardworking taxpayers, right?

---------------------------------

You can follow Paul Rutherford on Twitter: @PaulRutherford8

The @nearlylegal blog on First Tier Tribunal cases for bedroom tax is here.

David Orr, CEO of the National Housing Federation, is quietly on Twitter here: @natfedDavid.

[notpaying-blog]

How can Liberal Democrats be so wrong about Bedroom Tax?

And how on earth did his piece get published at the end of this link on LibDemVoice?

I have spoken a little to Patrick about this on twitter, but I wanted to elaborate slightly on some of the points he's made that are incorrect.

I understand that, as Amalric mentioned in the comments, there's the seed of an idea about bedroom tax being 'socialist' because of the nebulous idea that a theoretical socialist state would freely re-allocate property based on perceived 'need'. The problem with mixing theoretical models and the bedroom tax is that the policy doesn't take individual needs into account. Even Patrick's heartwarming tale of how Stockport residents don't have to pay bedroom tax if there is nowhere to downsize to only really raises the question of why a local Liberal Democrat-run council has had to spend so much time, effort, and money from its Housing Revenue Account to combat a policy introduced by the Liberal Democrats at a national level? We'll put aside how this is 'fair' on people not lucky enough to live in Stockport, or whether money from the Rent Accounts might not be better spent on housing.

Chris Manners, in the comments, makes a very valid point about the difference between socialism and social housing, too. Patrick casually mixes up these two concepts, but somehow ignores the entire history and purpose of social housing in doing so. More research might benefit him, here.

But it's not some none-existent model of "socialism" I really want to address here, it's how wrong Patrick is about all his 'facts'. I did ask Patrick through Twitter if he'd take the article down, to perhaps have a chance to address some of these issue, and If I'm honest I'm a bit disappointed in libdemvoice for allowing such inaccuracy to be published here - I appreciate that there are political points to be made I suppose, but this piece is problematic in many ways.

"Of course most commentators accept New Labour introduced the Bedroom Tax through the Local Housing Allowance policy from 2003 to 2008. The mistake commentators make is that they believe LHA to be an ideologically compassionate conservative policy, instead of democratic socialist one."

- Patrick is making the common mistake of conflating the 2008 Local Housing Allowance with bedroom tax. This was made legislation in 2008, but the element that came to pass in 2008 wasn't the restriction on a number of rooms that tenants were entitled to. Those restrictions have been in place since the 1989 Conservative Government. Here is the legislation pertaining to them: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/590/schedule/3/made

The Local Housing Allowance in 2008 actually tied these restrictions to the values of local average rents in an attempt to stop private landlords from abusing the Housing Benefit system by raising rents unchecked, knowing HB would pick up the tab. Framed in this way, the 2008 policy rather spectacularly failed. I go into some depth about other differences in the policies here: http://notpaying.tumblr.com/post/55537295011/how-the-bedroom-tax-differs-from-the-local-housing

"Where the policy has got into trouble is in its application."

- This is disingenuous at best. The reason that the application of the policy is troublesome isn't because of the application, it's because of the constraints and stipulations of the policy. Patrick is very much putting the cart before the horse here, to draw out his rather laboured point about local discretion. It is broadly accepted by the providers of social housing - be they Local Authorities or Housing Associations, that the bedroom tax is an unworkable policy. Repeated statements from the National Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing and other bodies make this clear. Charities connected to housing - Shelter in particular, are unequivocal that the policy should go. A Cross-Party Work and Pensions committee found the same thing - that it isn't the "application" or "implementation" that is causing all the problems, it is the policy itself: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/news/support-for-housing-costs/

"The policy on its own does not make the vulnerable suffer as they do, Councils are making that choice." - This would take too long to explain here why this statement is wrong. The Work and Pensions Committee report, above, is a good place to start - they collated evidence, in a public committee from lots of different sources that suggest it is the policy making vulnerable people suffer. Patrick is again getting the issues the wrong way round. Councils have a choice, from that default position of the policy affecting disabled people, carers, disabled children who need carers, domestic violence victims and people who have nowhere to move to. Local Councils only have discretion, which itself should adhere to guidance laid down by the Department for Work and Pensions, here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/discretionary-housing-payments-guidance-manual

The notion that vulnerable people are not affected by bedroom tax is clearly untrue, given that even the DWP Impact Assessment has detailed analysis of how they will be, and that the policy finds itself continuously in First Tier Tribunals, Judicial Reviews and in the various courts of the UK, where vulnerable people have no other recourse than to be dragged through the legal system for the opportunity to protect their dignity and fundamental rights.

"In Glasgow, the City Council has been so ruthless as to agree to their housing associations raising the age at which children should cohabit to age 9 meaning some families are paying the bedroom tax even with all the rooms filled."

- Patrick is wrong again here - the Policy itself dictates that two children of either gender must share up until the age of 10. There are no exceptions for a family that has children of 8 and 9, who might be forced to downsize now, and then be eligible for the house they've been moved out from a year later.

I won't dwell again on the idiocy of Lib Dem Stockport council devising a strategy to negate a policy from Westminster where the approach that Stockport has taken was specifically voted against by Lib Dem MPs. It makes you look very silly.

The only thing Patrick is correct about is in his last paragraph, when he talks about housing supply. The problem here is a lack of housing, and the bedroom tax does nothing to help that. There simply aren't enough available houses, and it is this issue that should be at the forefront, not the bedroom tax - a policy that hits the poorest in society, makes no allowances for individual circumstances, and in the case of homelessness, which Patrick touches upon, is actually making the situation worse as pressure from people being forced to downsize by bedroom tax is making properties available for homeless people, and those living in expensive temporary accommodation, even harder to find.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation had a guest blog on Lib Dem Voice, with links to their evidenced findings on the outcomes and implications of the bedroom tax policy. Patrick would do well to read that, before launching onto any future attempts at political grandstanding. The challenge in that guest post was whether the Lib Dems were prepared to stand up and combat the unfairness of the policy. On the evidence of this column by Patrick, it seems as if the answer is a resounding No.

I remain, until they can sort this policy out at a national level, very much a former Lib Dem voter

[notpaying-blog]

Cutting the grass.

I cut the grass last week.

Of course, it's mundane, and we all have to do it, it's not remarkable nor special... and anyway, what has cutting the grass got to do with council houses?

Well, these are my thoughts about community and social housing, which naturally contain a (mercifully short) moan about bedroom tax.

-

It was a gloriously sunny day when I went out for the first grass cut this year. There had been a few sunny days beforehand, and many neighbours in the street had already cut theirs, but I had to wait for somebody to buy me a lawnmower before I could start.

Not only that, I had to make sure that there was somebody in my home with my wife before I began, and I also needed to ensure I'd had something to eat and tested my blood sugar levels. Additionally I had to make sure at least two of my neighbours were in, so that I could plug the lawnmower into their power outlets.  All eminently manageable.

Our little corner of the street we live in is made up of half a dozen bungalows, owned and maintained by our local authority as social housing. When they were built, sometime around the end of the 1970s, the interior doorways were made slightly wider, and the layout designed so that they'd be navigable by people in small wheelchairs, or easy get around for older or disabled residents whose mobility is an issue. I'm pretty sure that all the other properties in the street that were once all social housing, are now privately owned, so this quite specialised corner of council housing is all that remains of immediate social housing provision.

As a result of sticking to this sensible allocations policy, predominantly all the tenants here have needs that are being met by living in truly affordable 'council houses'. They have illnesses, disabilities or mobility needs. As a result, cutting the grass isn't really practical for most of them. So I do it. One of my neighbours, a man who has spent his entire life working, and even in retirement cares for his wife, bought the lawnmower because he feels that's his contribution now that he can't maintain his garden himself, and would otherwise have to pay a gardener. Another neighbour sometimes splits the grass cutting and hedge-trimming duties with me, but with variable health conditions isn't always able to do so. A third neighbour doesn't have any legs, but in order for me to get around both sides of her property, I need to plug into the mains in her home to reach all the lawns. It's a team effort, and it is just one of the things that binds us together in a loose community.

This isn't a blog about me cutting the grass, even though I hurt my arm a bit and could feasibly pout for internet sympathy. This is just one example of how council houses are about more than cheap rents and taxpayer 'subsidies'. We have formed a little community here that goes a bit beyond waving and saying hello to our neighbours. The higher level of needs that these tenants have mean that collectively the whole community is dependent on help, but in many ways we look first to help each other.

So, the bedroom tax epilogue. Not all of our micro-community pay it, some still pay their rent. Not all are expected to - whether through adaptations, living arrangements or outright poverty, some members of our community shouldn't, and don't have to pay it. Prior to the Welfare Reforms, none of my neighbours had to use foodbanks, but now some do. One of my neighbours receives care from the Independent Living Fund, and now faces uncertainty about how their care will be provided. I try and help out with keeping them up to date, as neither has the internet. But it's me, caring full time for my disabled wife, who is most likely to fall foul of the bedroom tax. All it would take for my household - Me, my wife and the garden waste recyclnig bags - to be removed entirely from the community is a tiny decision about overnight carers.

Who would cut the grass then?

[notpaying-blog]

Labour must stop punishing tenants with bedroom tax. Today!

I do try and leave the politics out of my bedroom tax discussions where possible. Not today, though!

Let's get one thing straight. The architects of the Bedroom Tax are the coalition government. It's arguably a Conservative policy, but at no point have their coalition partners opposed it in any meaningful way. There were votes before the policy was implemented that would have exempted vulnerable groups. There were more votes after implementation that intended to exempt people; where tenants have nowhere to downsize to, or where households contain disabled people, and more generally to allow leniency where only one 'spare' room was deemed to exist, in line with long-standing definitions relating to under-occupancy and overcrowding.

The seven unique votes where Lib Dems had a chance to intervene and protect vulnerable people from their policy (but didn't) can be found by clicking this link. It is for this reason that I confess to holding Liberal Democrats responsible for the inception and continuation of the policy. They ought to know better. Frustratingly, they do know better, but aren't doing anything about it.

The fact that the bedroom tax is a coalition policy does not excuse the failure of numerous Labour Local Authorities to protect tenants from it. There are clear cases defined by the DWP where tenants can be exempted from having to pay bedroom tax. There is also clear guidance on the broad powers Local Authorities have to grant Discretionary Housing Payment (DHPs).

I'm fully behind the Labour Party's stated aim of repealing the bedroom tax should they become government in 2015. I find it both disingenuous and infuriating that in the meantime, their Local Authorities are not acting in the best interests of tenants. I would hope that this was not a political game, played to publicise the obvious failings of the policy at the expense of the tenants involved. The only way to not reach this conclusion would be through the national party educating their local authorities in order that they no longer persecute the vulnerable people affected.

Repeatedly, tenants under Labour Local Authorities have not only been exposed to the indignity of the bedroom tax, but have then had to go through the distress of fighting their cases, often through court. This makes a stressful, punitive experience even worse, and it's not good enough for Labour MPs and councils to trot out their assertion that the party will repeal the policy in 2015, if they're not doing all they can to help people who are affected by it now.

There are DWP guidelines on exemptions, using the coalition's made-up name, the "removal of the spare room subsidy" [sic] which can be found here: Outline and Guidelines for exemption. Similarly, there is a detailed document here on Guidelines for Discretionary Housing Payments. They're both a bit dry, but feel free to corroborate my interpretation of what the Local Authorities have done incorrectly for yourself.

In brief, Local Authorities have the final say in whether any of the rooms used in a home potentially affected by bedroom tax fall into one of these categories. For each room that does, entirely at the discretion of the Local Authority, nothing has to be paid. 

It sounds simple, but confusion around these criteria, and about other situations, has spawned a raft of appeals at tribunals where Local Authorities have decided people aren't entitled to the rooms.

Discretionary Housing Payments are a separate mechanism that also give Local Authorities the choice of who to help out. The 2014 DWP guidelines are quite convoluted, but there is provision for any Local Authority to make an unlimited, lifetime award where the circumstances of a claimant are unlikely to change. As an example of how flexible the DHP scheme can be, the Scottish Parliament has promised to pay the shortfall for every household in Scotland affected by the Bedroom Tax, by covering any and all DHP monies required by Local Authorities to make up the rent shortfalls for their tenants.

The worst thing about all of this is that the people affected are just like anyone else. All they really want is security in their homes. That they are predominantly disabled people or people with more pressing housing needs is als important, but ultimately they're just people, who used to be secure in their homes, with a feeling of their rented properties perhaps even being their home. All of that has been smashed to pieces, and for these few cases made worse by being thrust into legal actions just to have a chance of holding on to some of that sense of security.

There are more examples than the five I have listed here. You can refer to the excellent nearlylegal or speyejoe blogs if you want to spot the names of more Labour local authorities involved in pushing vulnerable tenants into an impossible situation.

In the first case, Labour-run Fife council had an opportunity to exempt a disabled lady and her ex-husband from paying for at least one of the rooms, because they didn't take the time to properly find out the circumstances of the tenants. Rather than establish the truth of the case, and provide an exemption from the April 2013, the council subjected the family to a year of worry about financial hardship, the threat of losing their home, and being forced to take their case through the court system, which might seem like an everyday occurrence for a council, but is a distressing prospect for any tenant, let alone one who already has to deal with the day to day issues relating to living with a disability. This case was reported in The Courier.

On to Labour-run Camden Council now, where once again the council failed to take into account the possibility of an exemption for a person in receipt of Disability Living Allowance who receives regular overnight care. The reasons of the case, which once again found in favour of the tenant, can be found on the excellent 'nearlylegal' blog, by clicking here: 

The next case might not be a clear cut case for an exemption in the same sense that rooms for overnight carers are, but each Local Authority now has the power to make long term, or even indefinite Discretionary Housing Payment awards where the circumstances of the tenant are unlikely to change. It would even appear that Labour-run Derby Council is attempting to help the tenant with their case at tribunal (it's hard to tell from the article) but there is no excuse for them not to have stepped in and prevented the tenant having to go through this pressure and uncertainty. The details were published in the online version of the Derby Telegraph.

It is similarly difficult to see why Labour-run Sefton Council, in Liverpool, felt it necessary not to allow provision for Jayson and Jacqueline Carmichael, whose well-publicised battles with the DWP have meant a failed but convoluted Court of Appeal hearing, and more recently a First Tier Tribunal in which they were successful in overturning the decision that they'd have to pay for their allegedly 'spare' bedroom. The DWP will indubitably appeal this decision, details of which can be found in this Daily Mirror link.

Labour-run Islington council also sidestepped their responsibility to their vulnerable tenants when they failed to use their discretion in the case of a lady who cares for her disabled son for just part of the week. This tribunal also found in favour of the tenant on a separate issue of room size for a box room deemed by the policy to be a 'third bedroom' but it is difficult to see why Islington council did not exercise their power to prevent another case of a family with particular needs having to traipse through the tribunal system. Inside Housing reported on the case here.

[notpaying-blog]

Mike Thornton MP: My part in his BBC Radio Solent appearance.

After I blogged about our first year of bedroom tax, I was asked to appear on BBC Radio Solent to talk a little bit about our experience of it, our exemption, the fact that there might still be people who don't realise that there are a number of reasons why they might not have to pay, and a little bit about the policy itself.

The show will be on the iPlayer until Sunday 13th April, or thereabouts, and you can listen to it here. My section starts at 41m30s, and Mike Thornton's around 1h41m15s.

In the course of the discussion the host, Julian Clegg, and political correspondent Jessica Parker, talked a bit about the recent BBC report that found the policy was not meeting its aims for reducing under-occupation or overcrowding, and a rise in the number of people now in rent arrears for the first time.

We also discussed the Work and Pensions Committee report into housing costs under welfare reform. which was released on the 2nd April 2014. I've been over the recommendations of the policy in slightly more detail in my translation into human of the recommendations pertinent to the social sector size criteria. The key points of the committee report were outlined by Mike Thornton himself, who appeared later on BBC Radio Solent to answer my points:

He explains it like this: " The Committee feels we should widen the area for exempt people to those in receipt of DLA - not just someone who someone to look after them, but who needs extra help... also for people who are willing to move but can't find anywhere 'suitable' to move ".

The Committee also recommended exemptions for people with adapted properties, and that because the bedroom tax doesn't measure rooms, a proper study of room sizes should be done before people are deemed to be under-occupying. These failings have been at the heart of the policy since before it was introduced on the 1st April 2013, and the vulnerable people the Committee wants to exempt have already had to pay for a year, or worse still have already been forced to move from their homes.

Recommending change isn't good enough, and a commitment needs to be made that people who have been forced to pay throughout 2013-14 will have their arrears nullified, and any money they have been made to pay in rent, returned. In Mike Thornton's own words " To make the whole policy fairer, because the Committee feels it isn't fair. "

Julian Clegg asked Mike Thornton about DHPs, which Mr Thornton inaccurately called "Direct Housing Payments". There have been many problems with DHPs, as the MP pointed out: " a) you don't know if you're going to get it, and b) different councils apply [the rules] differently to others, some will take into account DLA "

Mr Thornton is correct to mention that DLA is often taken into account, the DWP is facing another Judicial Review over bedroom tax, because DLA is a benefit intended to meet the additional costs of having a disability, not the additional costs of retrospective and unfair government policy. Sadly, Lord Freud and the ministerial team don't understand this, as I've blogged about before.

Mr Thornton briefly mentioned the issue of overcrowding, stating of his MP's surgery that " People come every week because they need more space for their family but there's just nowhere to move to. ", but he failed to mention that the room size standards he talked about implementing for the rooms affected by bedroom tax in calculating overcrowding. When room sizes are counted differently between under- and over-occupancy, it makes it impossible in practice to compare the two things.

Then, Mr Thornton said what everyone else has been saying all along; he declared that the;

" Policy should be fair, properly administered and not treat people with genuine problems and genuine difficulties the way they have been treated - this was the view of the whole committee ".

Yes, Mike - everyone involved around the policy already knows this - most of us have known this all along, but despite repeated representations, the government hasn't listened.

Click Here for a list of all the votes in Parliament where MPs had a chance to do something about the unfairness of the policy. That is a list of 9 separate House of Commons votes. It is only fair to say that Mike has only been an MP since 2013, so would have only been available to vote in the most recent 4 votes, but his record shows he wasn't present for three of them, and voted against tenants in the one he did manage to attend.

Bafflingly in his interview, Mike Thornton claims not to be a member of the government, claiming he's " Not actually a member of the government, I'm a backbencher ". It's easy to see how he might think that he couldn't influence the outcome. However, the truth is that he had a number of opportunities to protect the vulnerable groups that he claims the policy is unfair towards, and he chose not to take them. By being absent from the votes, Mike ensured that disabled people, people unable to move and other vulnerable groups like victims of domestic violence and people whose needs mean they must live in supported accommodation have been forced to pay or move, or throw themselves at the mercy of the postcode lottery of Discretionary Housing Payments.

In every Commons debate, the only reason that vulnerable groups went on being persecuted were that the Liberal Democrats voted with the government to ensure this unfairness.

This seems completely at odds with Mike's understanding. Perhaps because he didn't turn up for the votes, he believes

" I think the thing to look at is that a coalition government is made up of two different parties, we came third, we can't get through everything we want, but the interesting thing about the committee is that this was universally agreed - Labour, the single lib dem on there, myself, and the conservative members on the committee all agreed that this was the right thing to do. Now I think when you have a cross-party agreement I think the pressure on the government to do the right thing will be pretty strong ".

This simply isn't true, and whilst he correctly identifies that the party membership of the Liberal Democrats does support repeal or heavy modification of the policy, and has done for a long time, this view has not been represented in parliament by the majority of Liberal Democrat MPs, who are collectively responsible for the policy being passed, and for being as punitive as it currently is.

Mike also seemed confused about how the policy is intended to work " We're probably moving away from the idea that the country can provide everyone with everything that we once felt was right, and I think that when public funds - your and my taxes - are helping to pay someone's rent, perhaps that person should only have as much rent as they need to live properly... and I do mean properly, I think the way the policy has been implemented and has caused hardship is unnecessary, but I do think that if I'm paying towards someone's rent then perhaps they should be paying the rent or living in the house that is necessary for them to live comfortably, not more than they need "

This argument restates the political rhetoric of the Tory party, that Housing Benefit recipients are somehow responsible for the makeup of UK Housing, His assertion that the policy allows social tenants to live 'properly' is ignorant of the very improper treatment that tenants have had to face since its implementation a year ago.

In response to my On-Air pledge never to vote LibDem again, Mike said: " We came third [laughter], we sometimes have to make compromises that perhaps we find uncomfortable, but we didn't win the majority of the votes, therefore we don't have the democratic right to put through the majority of our policies "

As I hope I've shown above, in Hansard evidence of Libdem votes, Mike's party has had a much bigger effect on this policy than he thinks - ensuring that it has been implemented, that it disproportionately affects disabled people, that it takes no account of forcing people from their homes of many years. None of this would have been possible without the Libdems, however modest Mike appears to be about their contribution to this pernicious policy.

Finally, seeking to absolve the government he is a part of, of some responsibility, Mike pipes up about a scheme where bungalows were built to allow pensioners to downsize: " When we've built a bunch of bungalows for elderly people and pensioners where people say they won't want to move out of the house they've moved in all their life, they've jumped at it - they were desperate to get into these smaller houses that suited them better, so if you build the right houses for people, then people are happy to move "

Pensioners are, of course, exempt from bedroom tax, and housing associations and local authorities have not been given this option to incentivise downsizing by building new properties for those working-age tenants who actually are affected. Again, Mike seems a little unclear about the scope of the policy, and it's a particular cruelty to use this example of jolly pensioners, when the reality for those affected has been fuel poverty, being forced into foodbanks, or into the hands of payday lenders to pay for the very bare essentials of their existence.

As I wasn't previously able to get a right to reply to the things Mike said, this blog will have to do.

[notpaying-blog]

Bullet points from the Work and Pensions Committee report on housing costs

It's pleasing to see today a report from the Work and Pensions Select Committee into Housing costs under the reformed welfare system.

Wow, what a mouthful. Let's call it "The Report".

The committee called upon people involved in all aspects of housing to discuss a wide range of areas -

Broadly these were

Changes to Housing Benefit. This discussion took two parts - firstly the "Social Sector Size Criteria", or bedroom tax. Secondly changes to the amount paid in Housing Benefit to tenants in the private rented sector, which have also been reduced under the coalition's cost-cutting welfare reforms.

The benefits cap. Because the majority of 'benefits' paid to people affected by the £26,000 per annum 'benefits cap' isn't paid to the claimant at all, but to the landlords who are charging them rent, the benefits cap has a pertinent part to play in discussions of housing costs.

Supported Accommodation. Where people are not able to live without the assistance of other individuals and services, reasonable people might expect those in need to be protected from the worst effects of cuts under welfare reform. However, these people have not been protected in any way by the DWP in the roll-out of their reforms, and this extends to them no longer being able to expect any security in having a roof over their heads.

Localised Council Tax Support. Because the money paid to Local Authorities has also been cut to the bone, the emergency funds, and provision for relief from council tax payments for the poorest people has also been cut away, meaning lots of people will now have to find money to pay a portion of their council tax, with the funds to support them through this now, essentially, removed.

Transitional Protection. The DWP has set in place a Discretionary Housing Payment framework to help people affected by the changes to their benefits, especially with regard to housing costs.Reports of the postcode lottery of DHPs has been widespread, with no certainty for disabled people that they can get support for their rent, even in adapted properties. Whilst the DWP has pumped extra funds into the DHP in the short term, there is no long-term planning for how the fund should be allocated, and how much money will be available for it in future.

Universal Credit What can be said about Universal Credit that hasn't been said before? Suffice to say, the planning that has gone into the housing elements, and provision for Housing Benefit, is a mess. In future, all Housing Benefit claims will be processed by new staff at Jobcentres, rather than long-term experts in Local Authority tax and benefits offices. That's going to go about as well as you'd expect it to, provided the project ever actually starts working anywhere in any serious capacity, which seems unlikely, given who is at the helm.

For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to ignore most of that stuff, and focus on the Housing Benefit changes that we all know as bedroom tax. Well, almost all of us. Those wags over at the DWP insist on tripping over a range of names they have for it in an attempt not to look like buffoons. That doesn't work, either.

Here are the key recommendations on bedroom tax from The Committee. To summarise, these are all pretty good news from the point of everyone who has been affected by the bedroom tax up until this point. Whilst the committee doesn't go as far as recommending repeal, that is certainly an opinion expressed by the majority of organisations who offered evidence. A range of individuals (Oh yes, including me!), Charities, Local Authorities, Housing Associations, Professors, Legal people - all sorts of people involved in housing, all basically said the bedroom tax should be repealed or heavily modified. The only organisation that submitted evidence not in line with that view was, unsurprisingly, the DWP itself. Derp.

Recommendations

We are concerned that the number of bed-spaces per bedroom is not taken into account when assessing whether people are considered to be “under-occupying” within the regulations governing the SSSC policy and that, therefore, in some cases, two children are being expected to share a room that was designed for one child. We recommend that the Government use the Department for Communities and Local Government standard of bed-spaces rather than the number of bedrooms in order to determine whether a household is under-occupying under the SSSC

Translation:

The bedroom tax policy deliberately doesn't seek to determine what a 'spare bedroom' is, and this includes ignoring industry-wide size standards of what constitutes a bedroom. This is why First Tier Tribunal cases are already finding in favour of tenants whose rooms are too small to be classed as bedrooms: http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/bedroom-tax-ftt-decisions/

If your policy is designed to help overcrowding, at least make sure it adheres to the same bedroom standards as those used to determine overcrowding, otherwise what's the point? Your policy would end up looking stupid!

In some parts of the country, overcrowding is not a significant issues, so designing a policy that tackles under-occupancy is a bit silly, when there's nobody who needs to move into a bigger home. It's often said the bedroom tax was a policy hatched in Westminster, and this is just one of many pieces of evidence to the committee that bore this feeling out.

Next we get to the bit that I made a written submission about, how bedroom tax affects people with disabilities.

We note that the SSSC is affecting many people with disabilities who have adapted homes or who need a spare room to hold medical equipment or to accommodate a carer. We are deeply concerned that the policy is causing severe financial hardship and distress to people with disabilities, many of whom will not easily be able to move. We do not believe that Discretionary Housing Payments are able to provide effective support to these households because of their short-term and temporary nature, the variability in award and the distress that having to re-apply can cause to affected households. We recommend that disabled people living in a home that has been significantly adapted for them should be exempt from the SSSC. We also recommend that the Government exempt from the SSSC households which contain a person who is in receipt of the higher level mobility or care component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the equivalent in Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

If the Government is unwilling to use DLA and PIP entitlement to establish a right to an exemption from SSSC for disabled people, then we recommend that it extend to adults the exemption already applicable to households containing disabled children who are unable to share a room because of their severe disabilities, as assessed by local authorities. This exemption should include those whose disability means that a room is required for medical equipment, or for a carer, including a partner who is also a carer, and part-time carers

Translation: It is time to provide exemptions for people who have adapted homes from bedroom tax. Everybody knows this makes financial, moral and organisational sense. Everyone except the ministers at the DWP, who.... who just don't understand what social housing is, or what it is for, or how it works. This ignorance is especially keenly felt amongst disabled people and their carers, and the Committee has here tried to intervene in the cause of common human decency. Also, exempt people on higher rate Disability Allowance or the new, replacement benefit for that called PIP. Because surely taking money from seriously disabled people and causing them trouble with their rent isn't how we can make a fairer society.

We recommend that the Government produce, by March 2015, a full cost-effectiveness analysis of the SSSC policy, taking into account the funding for Discretionary Housing Payments and the additional costs incurred by local authorities and social housing providers as a result of the SSSC, to assess the overall impact of the policy on the public purse.

Translation: Only four people in the country believe that the bedroom tax is saving the money it is supposed to. These are: Iain Duncan Smith, Lord Fraud, Esther McVey and Sir Chris Patten, Director General at the BBC. The figures simply haven't added up at any point during the lifetime of the policy, and the Work and Pensions Committee - and everyone else, needs to know just what the truth is.

We note that, as a result of the SSSC and other reforms, local authorities and housing providers are having to provide extra support to affected tenants, and are also having to invest additional resources in chasing arrears, dealing with evictions and managing re-allocations. We are concerned that this diversion of resources is having a detrimental effect on local authority and housing provider budgets and the ability of providers to build social housing. We recommend that the Government consider allocating extra funding to social housing providers in areas where the additional costs arising from the SSSC are identified as significant, to mitigate the impact and ensure that their ability to build new social housing is not compromised

Translation: Managing the negative effects of bedroom tax is expensive, and it doesn't feature in the alleged savings. Who is picking up the tab for the additional costs, and where are they falling? Early indicators are that Housing Associations, Local Authorities, Health Services and other support services are picking up the bill, and that this can lead to pretty stark consequences, like money for building new houses not being available. That doesn't really help with the policy aims.

As I type this, I note that the Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron has said he's going to withdraw his party's support for the policy.

I'm hoping that that is not a conditional promise, because it might be the best outcome from the Work and Pensions Committee report if it is.

[notpaying-blog]

Intentional Tremor - Our year of bedroom tax

I'll be honest, I wasn't really prepared for it.

Although there had been general information in our tenancy newsletters, I'd been complacent and assumed that like other welfare reforms, the bedroom tax wouldn't apply to us.

My wife has secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis, and while I'm not overly big on sharing, it's at a pretty advanced stage such that, as I joke with her, she can't be trusted on her own. This means that somebody has to be here all the time, and for the majority of the time, that somebody is me. I could wax lyrical about the money that full-time familial carers save hard-working taxpayers, but it'd be through gritted teeth. Seeing as it's not a financial cost, nobody pays any attention to that amount anyway. Suffice to say that I've never previously had reason to regret giving up my lucrative career in IT contracting in exchange for my £59.45 Carer's Allowance, to cover weeks that frequently mean 100 hours or more of care, sleepless nights, gruelling emotional support and physical graft. Most carers don't look after family members for the money. I do it because I love my wife.

Her spasms and shaking, while managed by medication, are continuous, the shaking especially pronounced whenever she tries to do something. This is referred to repeatedly by the medical tribe as "Intentional Tremor". Some of the caring professionals who are tasked with helping us assure me that I'm the last person to notice how her condition changes because I experience the changes on a tiny incremental basis. That might even have been true once, but over the last couple of years I've been the first to notice her diminishing physical strength, an increase in her discomfort and pain. Most disconcerting of all are the signs that her cognitive functions are beginning to unravel, just a little bit.

After we'd moved in to our modest two bedroom bungalow, we couldn't wait for the amount of time it takes for a Disabled Facilities Grant to address the problem of our inaccessible bathroom, so happily paid to have it converted into a wetroom. We paid for a new kitchen. Even when the disabled facilities grant arrived, we had to argue with the budget-holders about each required element, so that the cost of modifying the hallways, floors and providing independent access for an electric wheelchair was shared between us and the Local Authority. This, we did happily, even knowing that we do not own this home, and that one day these modifications may well benefit somebody else, as my wife has very strong and definite end of life plans.

Before the bedroom tax was introduced, we were fortunate enough to be allocated a number of hours of self-directed care, which means that we act as an employer for a carer to come in and make time for me to do other stuff - sometimes in the day, and sometimes at night. I hadn't appreciated that this overnight care might exempt us from paying, and as a result, within two weeks of April 1st 2013, we were in our first ever rent arrears. We received a letter to let us know that we were in about £27 of rental debt - our first ever arrears.  I decided I wasn't going to pay it, and so the letters kept coming. I stopped opening the letters, and having apprised the local authority of our situation I assumed they'd leave us alone. Having chosen this property for us, and helped us to adapt it, and provide the services and equipment we need, it seemed unthinkable that we were now receiving letters threatening to possess our goods, and then raising the prospect of our eviction. A man came to our door and served me a notice of intention to seek possession of our home.

Eviction! Where, precisely, would we go if we were made homeless? I didn't want to think about it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. My wife couldn't stop thinking about it. We'd gone from a situation where we were supported, to one where we were being threatened with the loss of what we thought of as our home. All the rhetoric around the policy was about working-age people, the inference being they could get a job, get more hours, take a lodger. 'They' could downsize, find the money from cutting back on tattoos, massive f***ing TVs, dogs and other inane, profligate symbols of wealth pedalled by government ministers.

As my own ability to stay cheery about it disappeared, I couldn't console my wife's fears any longer, and 2013 became the unhappiest year of our lives. It's hard to think about the days of shaking in anger. It's hard to think about the days of shaking in fear, and the effect this had on the way we looked at the value of our lives. Suddenly I wasn't a carer, saving money by lovingly providing the help a vulnerable disabled person needed, but I was a lazy benefits scrounger, under-occupying a property with an economically inactive waste of space. We were suddenly blocking a property that could be used by some fictional family trapped in a fictional one-bedroomed home that wasn't big enough for them.

I didn't know what to do. I started reading about it on the internet, I started blogging about it on the internet. Nobody seemed to be in support of the policy in its actual form. There was a lot of talk about 'making better use of social housing' and cutting the welfare budget, but all I could see was poor people being asked for money they don't have. I wrote to the council again, explaining our situation again, and this time I got a very helpful letter explaining that if our care sounded as if it contained elements that were regular and overnight, and that this would make us exempt. I wrote another letter carefully detailing our situation, with witness statements from our overnight carers, and we were indeed exempted.

I learned more than I ever really wanted to know about housing, social housing, welfare reforms and benefit entitlements. Initially through a sense of resentment, I started to actually take advantage of the respite care we're entitled to. I didn't do it specifically to increase our cost to the state, but the nagging sense the bedroom tax gave that the care I provide has no value did angrily drive me on to get as many of the services we're entitled to as I could. I'm not really proud of how embittered and entitled that sounds. I made some friends, though - people involved in social housing, in the law around it, people who know about social security and politics and mental health. I drew a lot of information and support from selfless people who may not know how important their help has been to me.

I thought for months that the bedroom tax wasn't political. To me it seemed that the policy had accidentally been imposed on people unable to do anything about their situation. Decades of under-investment in building has left the country in a housing crisis putting extreme pressure on a limited supply, and to exact money from the people at the brown end of the housing stick seemed unthinkable and unconscionable. My lifelong voting pattern for the Liberal Democrats was finally shaken apart as I realised that they repeatedly failed to understand the effects the policy is having. They repeatedly voted to retain the policy, through its tortured and pernicious first year.

The coalition as a whole, and to some extent many members of the opposition benches, still don't have a grasp of what the outcomes of the policy mean for real people. For people poor enough to qualify for housing benefit. For sick and disabled people. For victims of domestic violence. For people whose needs are so great that the must live in supported accommodation, For people who have no choice but to stay near their support networks. For people who don't want to disrupt their children's education. For people who haven't been able to meet the imposition of this tax without sacrificing food, or warmth, or who have had to pay with the loss of their homes.

The policy hasn't met any of its intended aims. Despite reassurance and rhetoric from DWP ministers, and misrepresentation and statistical inaccuracy from across government, the real cost of the bedroom tax is being understood only by tenants and those supporting them. There's a huge additional burden on front-line services as the policy forces affected tenants to contest a tiny pool of one-bedroomed properties with other demands, like homelessness. Affected tenants who move into the private rented sector cost more in Housing Benefit. Many local authorities and housing associations have properties standing empty as the national profile of supply and demand doesn't meet the criteria laid down for a policy that was, at best, designed to address some issues in a small part of London.

Our exemption was a great relief, but I don't feel any less disgusted at the policy. Now, I'm helping other people I know who are affected to appeal against paying. The courts have been very busy - some disappointing Court of Appeal decisions deciding that it's acceptable to discriminate against disabled people because of the laughably inadequate Discretionary Housing Payments fund. First Tier Tribunals have been holding the policy to the same bedroom standards that are used in calculating overcrowding - something carefully avoided by the DWP. Other considerations about human rights are being fought and won in the lower courts, even where the higher ones are discarding them.

Every month there are new statistics showing how the policy doesn't work. New stories showing how the people affected aren't to blame for their circumstances, and in reality have no choice but to pay up. Gradually it feels a little more like the policy is coming apart. Some days it feels as if the bedroom tax is shaking and close to being put out of its misery, but for many people affected, one year on, there's still no light at the end of the tunnel beyond a promise from the Labour party to repeal it.

And that simply isn't good enough.

[notpaying-blog]

Local Authorities break the law, taking DLA/PIP into account for DHP allocations

Before I start, a quick guide to some TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) DLA/PIP - Disability Living Allowance, a benefit for disabled people. DWP - Department for Work and Pensions. LA - Local Authority, currently responsible for; HB - Housing Benefit, and; DHP - Discretionary Housing Payments. A fund to help meet rent shortfall in cases of financial hardship

Lord Freud and the Department for Work and Pensions have issued advice to Local Authorities suggesting that they break the law, going specifically against the legal rulings of a case the DWP has previously lost in the Court of appeal.

Freud's ignorance of the law can be summarised in this quote from the Work and Pensions Committee Hearing into Housing Costs under welfare reform:

"What we have put out in guidance there is, where someone is using their DLA/PIP for care specifically, it should not be considered.  Where they are not, it may be considered.  That is where we have got to."

Quite where Freud thinks they have "got to" is neither here nor there in terms of what the law says, as I'll attempt to demonstrate. You can Click Here for the full text of the Burnip/Gorry Court of appeal judgement, from which I've tried to draw the pertinent legal points

Findings by the Papworth Trust (Here) suggest that three quarters of Local Authorities are acting in contravention of this Court of appeal ruling. "Guidance" from the Department for Work and Pensions has suggested that Disability Living Allowance (DLA/PIP) should be taken into account as income in the calculation to determine whether disabled tenants qualify for Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs).

From the Burnip/Gorry Case, Mr Justice Henderson made a clear judgement on this issue when he specified:

First, I think it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the benefits which Mr Burnip was entitled to claim for his subsistence, and those which he was entitled to claim in respect of his housing needs. His incapacity benefit and disability living allowance were intended to meet (or help to meet) his ordinary living expenses as a severely disabled person. They were not intended to help with his housing needs. This is demonstrated, in my view, not only by the availability of HB and discretionary housing payments as separate benefits with separate rules applicable to them, but also by the way in which HB is structured.

So despite Freud's opinion, and the resulting actions of Local Authorities, the Court of appeal has already made a legally binding definition of which benefits should be taken into account as 'income' for the purposes of whether disabled tenants are eligible for a Discretionary Housing Payment.

To remove any ambiguity, in Mr Justice Henderson summed up the position clearly, including reference to subsistence benefits which can be included as income when calculating Housing Benefit (HB) and specifying that DLA cannot. I must apologise for this being the most technical legal bit I've included - this was part of a larger calculation over entitlement to a full amount of Housing Benefit in this case, The conclusion was that DLA should not be counted as income for either DHP or HB which are benefits awarded specifically for housing expenses..

Mr Burnip's applicable amount included the three disability premiums which I have mentioned, while the whole of his disabled living allowance was disregarded in the calculation of his reckonable income. Thus it was only if (in broad terms) his incapacity benefit and student loan together exceeded his applicable amount that any reduction would fall to be made in the amount of his HB; and to the extent that there was such an excess, the HB rules themselves prescribed how it was to be taken into account.

It would therefore be wrong in principle, in my judgment, to regard Mr Burnip's subsistence benefits as being notionally available to him to go towards meeting the shortfall between his housing- related benefits and the rent he had to pay

For some reason, Local Authorities have not been appraised of this in any of the many bulletins previously issued by the DWP as they struggle to overcome legislative and regulatory issues that arrive from the ill-informed, chaotic manner in which the Under-Occupancy Penalty has been implemented.

In fact, Lord Freud and the DWP guidelines still have not taken on board what the Court of appeal ruled, and seem to be operating as if the law does not apply to them. Thanks to some details I was provided by @nearlylegal on Twitter - a solicitor - it's clear that this precise issue, the treatment of DLA as a payment in the calculation of housing costs has actually been approved for a Judicial Review, outline details of the case can be read here.

Finally, at the risk of over-extending this analysis, and tangential from the core issue of DLA consideration for DHP: Freud's approach should be taken in context with an ill-defined desire that he and the DWP have started to express, to redefine the entire Discretionary Housing Payment structure. DHPs have traditionally been a fund of money paid from central to local government to offer people temporary, short-term help with their housing costs. The difficulties of implementing welfare reforms have meant that the DWP are increasingly relying on DHPs as a solution to numerous problems they've been unable to foresee or deal with. When asked by Committee Chair, Dame Anne Begg, about the necessity for disabled people to be put in a position where they must continually re-apply for help because DHPs are temporary, Freud stated:

Perhaps, but we have just put in guidance to make sure it is not on a temporary basis

Presumably he's referring to vague new definitions of DHP given on the DWP website, which don't appear to have been regulated for, discussed with LAs or given any specific context in relation to DLA. Neither do they help define how long DHPs would actually be applicable for.

The problem with the DWP's reliance on the DHP approach, is that the Burnip/Gorry judgement states specifically that DHPs are not appropriate unless they provide security: 

Before undertaking such a commitment [Housing], therefore, a disabled person needs to have a reasonable degree of assurance that he will be able to pay the rent for the foreseeable future, and that he will not be left at the mercy of short term fluctuations in the amount of his housing-related benefits. For the reasons which I have given, discretionary housing payments cannot in practice provide a disabled person with that kind of assurance.

So, I'm going to write to my MP, and complain to the Local Government Association about the actions that LAs who are going against the law are taking when refusing disabled people DHPs. I'm going to write a letter to the Ombudsman about the implications of DWP Guidance in light of the previous Court of appeal Judgement.

Predominantly, these things need to be done because the upshot of what is happening is that, as has happened with so much of the implementation of the bedroom tax, vulnerable groups of people, already poor enough to qualify for Housing Benefit, are essentially now being penalised for their illness or disability. Which means I might also write to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

I'd appreciate it if you could find your way to sending one of these bodies a message, too.

As a disclaimer, The Law is not my area of expertise. Prior to the introduction of the bedroom tax, I didn't really know anything about broader issues of housing, benefits and welfare reform either. What follows is therefore my interpretation of the intentions of the Court of appeal, although I'd like to thank Janette Canlin for helping me understand (I hope) some of the legal nuances. Similarly, in the refinement of my blog entry I'd like to thank @nearlylegal for looking over my piece and providing the link to the Judicial Review relating to DLA/DHP matters. Nevertheless, the emphasis here is are all mine, and I'm always happy to take corrections from people more knowledgeable than I.

[notpaying-blog]

Why has Norman Lamb MP hijacked the #carersweek campaign?

As a full-time carer for my wife, I'm keenly aware of some of the issues that face carers and their charges in the modern world. All of our stories are different, and it's often difficult to establish a template for providing care that meets the needs of sick and disabled people, let alone one that accommodates the needs of their carers, too.

So it was with some consternation that I read of Norman Lamb's continued involvement in "Carer's Week", over at the MS Society website.

Recently, there has been the suggestion, backed by Lamb, that health and social care can be 'integrated', although nobody seems to be drawing up any practical plans to address exactly how a service that combines care for medical needs and social needs can be designed. Indeed, actions so far seem to be throwing money at local authorities and hoping that they, along with charities, can reduce the care bill by getting family members, friends, and community groups to bear the brunt of required care, so that dwindling budgets allocated to NHS and Social Services care don't have to. Clearly there are a number of issues around this approach. Familial carers often have to give up, or compromise on their own work and careers. This has an additional cost to the economy of their potential productivity, and whilst carers are seen as noble and an invaluable resource, policy affecting carers, especially under the Welfare Reforms of the coalition, haven't done anything to improve the lot of carers, or the people they are caring for.

Which brings me to Norman Lamb MP, one-time 'Minister for Care'. Since the formation of the coalition, he has voted repeatedly and vehemently to undermine the support given to disabled people and their carers. Some of his votes were to directly reduce the services available to them, some of his votes have been to reduce the monetary value of the social security support that they receive. Some of his votes have been to prevent an examination into the damaging effects that Welfare Reforms are having on disabled people and their support networks.

Here are some choice trends from the summary of Norman Lamb MPs voting record, taken from Hansard, and presented in an easy-to-understand manner. In each example, I've put a link behind the word 'Voted' to show how he deliberately chose not to support disabled people or carers.

Voted very strongly against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices.

So, at a time when foodbank use and fuel poverty are rising exponentially, Norman Lamb voted to prevent disabled people and carers from being able to keep up with rising food and energy costs.

Then: 

Voted very strongly against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability.

Here, Norman Lamb specifically moves to curb the support given to disabled adults and children. Following the inaccurate government assertion that the cost of social security is the reason for the deficit, Lamb votes repeatedly on issues that will punish people who need help the most.

Voted very strongly for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits.

Another more general set of votes, Lamb again undermines the security that disabled people and their carers rely on the most: Housing Benefit, and an ideological drive to reduce Disability Living Allowance payments based on a desired percentage saving, not on the needs of disabled people, amongst others. As with his other votes, he places monetary value ahead of the support that carers need.

Voted moderately for reducing central government funding of local government.

Whilst this seems innocuous, Local Government is responsible for the provision of Adult and Child social care, and there are many examples of Authorities all over the UK having no choice but to cut funding to these services as a result of Central Government reducing their budgets.

Voted very strongly for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the "bedroom tax").

Yes, my own personal bugbear, the bedroom tax. With each piece of evidence that emerges about the devastating effects it has on the lives of those affected, Norman Lamb seems oblivious to the financial hardship and mental distress he's causing for something like 400,000 disabled people, and 60,000 carers. Nothing has undermined my ability to be an effective carer, and my wife's mental state, quite like the repeated threats of being evicted from our adapted home, or having our property taken away to pay for the failure of government to adequately deal with the housing supply. So my question is simple. Why is Norman Lamb MP, who has repeatedly been responsible in his role as an MP for taking support away from carers, associated with what should be an apolitical campaign to raise awareness for the issues facing carers, and the people that they look after?

[notpaying-blog]

Lord Freud and Kris Hopkins don't know what they're talking about.

During a Work and Pensions committee hearing on Wednesday 12th February 2014, Ministers representing the government were called to give answers about welfare reform in the provision of housing. Lord Freud and Housing Minster Kris Hopkins gave telling testimony about how they view the law, how they view disabled tenants affected by bedroom tax, and their own ignorance around these issues.

I'd recommend that you watch at least some of the Work and Pensions committee session for yourself. You can find it here:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14890

The pertinent bits start around timestamp 10:40:00. Debbie Abrahams, PPS to the Shadow Health Secretary, puts to Lord Freud and Kris Hopkins the suggestion that disabled people, who make up the majority of people affected by the policy, are struggling to meet the costs of the bedroom tax.

As context, on the same day, the National Housing Federation published damning figures concerning bedroom tax, focusing on the facts that two thirds of social housing tenants are in rent arrears, and 38% are new arrears attributed just to the burden of bedroom tax. Furthermore, 1 in 7 tenants has received a Notice of Seeking Possession - a letter threatening to take away your property and then to evict you if your debts remain unpaid. These figured are despite huge efforts by Local Authorities and Housing Associations to manage and mitigate the worst effects, although these efforts are patchy and inconsistent across the UK.

Lord Freud spends several stilted minutes attempting to break down the percentage of disabled people who are *really* deserving, and those others who only qualify under the Disability Discrimination Act. Decent people might find this distinction a little curious. To Lord Freud, it's important that he specifies that only some 180,000 disabled people are being asked to pay money from their already inadequate 'benefits' to subsidise a generational governmental failure to build houses, take control of resultant rent rises and the inevitably increased Housing Benefit bill this produces.

On the subject of those deserving disabled people in receipt of benefits, Freud offers a confused argument suggesting that the bedroom tax policy is not designed to force people in adapted properties to downsize, and that even people in receipt of Disability Living Allowance who don't live in adapted properties but require the full time care of a family member, or require their 'spare' room for equipment, should not be expected to move or to pay. He suggests that Local Authorities award Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) - a form of payment that has traditionally been intended to be short-term and temporary. Many LAs expect applications for DHPs to be repeated as regularly as every three or six months. Despite repeated questioning, Freud seems to think that exempting disabled people is a task beyond the ability of his department, and that instead this group should be made to repeatedly re-apply for DHPs.

The disabled people that Lord Freud jauntily consigns to these constant reassessments often have conditions that are never going to get better. Lord Freud doesn't seem to mind this. He points out that DHPs are the way the government has decided to deal with disabled people, and to him, that is the end of the matter. He doesn't mention the intended decrease in the DHP budget for the next financial year and to his credit, nobody on the Committee asks him about it. At one point, Freud attests, without any way of explaining how it would be implemented, that rather than define exemptions for any group, temporary, short-term DHPs could be made a permanent solution for some tenants. This suggestion is made without irony.

Contrary to a ruling in a High Court case that the DWP has previously lost, Freud goes on to suggest that people in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, or the newly-coined Personal Independence Payments, who do not use this money in the commissioning of care, should have this benefit taken into account as 'income' for the purposes of deciding whether they qualify for a discretionary housing payment. It's difficult to imagine that the welfare reform Minister could be so ignorant of the court cases that he's already lost that he'd make this claim, but he just goes right ahead and suggests enforcing a means test that's already been deemed illegal.

Freud goes on to look a bit befuddled about bedroom tax exemptions for carers. DWP statistics show 60,000 carers are affected by the bedroom tax, but even though they are entitled to only £59.45 per week in Carer's Allowance, Freud doesn't seem perturbed that they're expected to pay an average of between £14 and £25 per week from this for bedroom tax. Freud also doesn't trouble himself with the money that carers save the public purse.  In the context of bedroom tax, to him carers are simply a drain on public funds.

So the debate passes to Kris Hopkins, the housing minister who can't seem to make a comment without stumbling over his own unpreparedness for the role. Whilst giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, Hopkins disingenuously intimates that homelessness is in decline, even though in order to reinforce this he claims he doesn't have figures from before 2013, which are available from Shelter, here.

Hopkins also argues, in complete opposition to evidence, that the cost of private rents are 'effectively' decreasing, though again he is forced to ignore historical data from the Office for National Statistics in order to make this claim.

Dame Anne Begg repeatedly points out that Hopkins' claims are at odds with all the other evidence the committee has received. Answering a question from Debbie Abrahams about how the DWP intend to protect vulnerable tenants from financial hardship brought about by welfare reforms, Hopkins ploughs into the most distasteful part of his presentation, the summary suggestion that disabled people aren't really that disabled.

"There's no doubt that the cultural change, the behavioural change of tenants, and the way that housing associations work, y'know, um, requires a huge amount of intervention to be able to correct that, and there are, you know, vulnerable people, there are individuals who are set in their ways about the way that they spend and they use their monies".

There is consternation from the committee, and Hopkins changes the subject, talking about evidence that he can't back up, suggesting arrears aren't as bad across the sector as the data that has been presented by the National Housing Federation (what would they know?) suggest. Then, just in case there was any doubt that he wasn't suggesting disabled people could improve their situation by a cultural or behavioural change, he goes on to voice his ignorance once more:

"What's not happening is the introduction of a policy, to a group of individuals, which obviously are very different in many different ways with different demands, and you've mentioned disability was one of those issues there, How do we actually change the culture, and the behaviour, and one of the issues....."

Debbie Abrahams interrupts:

"Minister, I was specifically asking about disabled people. Now to suggest that behaviour change will alter a disability is quite shocking. So I am asking specifically about how the disabled people who are affected by the bedroom tax, the most vulnerable group in society...."

Hopkins interrupts in response

"Can I just respond to it then, I think first of all people who are disabled make a huge contribution to society, and wherever we can, we need to support them to do that, and part of this process is enabling some of those individuals to do that".

Clearly Hopkins isn't talking about any of the documented welfare reform outcomes, where evidence suggests that this is the opposite of what the government is doing. He goes on to pluck incorrect DHP figures of £445m over two years out of thin air, and swiftly moves on to repeating the familiar Department for Work and Pensions mantra about people being 'trapped on benefits'. Hopkins seems to imagine that somehow taking money from the poorest people in society to pay for properties they've been allocated is some great scheme. He infers that this will prompt disabled people who are too unwell to work, and who rely on social housing, and the system of social security that they've often paid into to rise up and work themselves out of poverty. He suggests that disabled people have chosen the relative poverty of a life on social security, with disabilities and illnesses presented by the minister as nothing more than a convenient way of claiming benefits.

The infuriating ignorance of the real lives of disabled people affected by the bedroom tax that was displayed by both Lord Freud and Kris Hopkins gives a pertinent insight into why the government feels comfortable pursuing draconian policies that financially, societally and emotionally punish those groups of people:

They simply don't understand what they're talking about.

[notpaying-blog]

Five reasons to vote for a repeal of the "Under-occupancy Charge"

I realise that MPs are very busy people. Somewhere between voting not to be briefed with more information on parliamentary debates, and making rushed claims for energy bills that turn out to contain errors, it must be very difficult to also keep up with the nuances of the effects of government policy.

So, ahead of Tuesday the 12th November's Opposition Day motion, which will include a vote on repealing the 'Bedroom Tax', 'Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy' or 'Under-occupancy charge/penalty', I thought I'd try and compile a handy checklist of facts, without drilling down into full detail, about why MPs should vote based on their conscience about the actual outcomes of the policy, rather than getting involved in any of the ideology or rhetoric that surrounds it.

I shall of course provide links to researched data that has often been analysed by some of the greatest and best minds in UK Housing. Some of it has also been looked at by various DWP Ministers.

One: The policy is not going to save any money.

The primary intent of this policy was to suggest that a saving would be made "to the exchequer". Unfortunately, those claimants affected are already poor, as you must be before you can claim Housing Benefit. Asking them to pay money has unsurprisingly lead to sharp increases in rent arrears.

The idea the Houising Benefit bill 'doubled' to £24bn is an attractive soundbite, but this rise is predominantly attributable to increases in private sector rents, as per this article. The under-occupancy charge can not address these rises.

In a recent inquest into meeting housing costs under the 'reformed' welfare system, many of the housing associations, charities, support organisations, local authorities and statistical authorities polled pointed out that the policy is resulting in a great deal of 'cost shunting', so that there are increased costs to local authorities, housing associations and local economies, and those organisations that support them.

Two: The majority of people affected are disabled, and disabled people are not exempt.

Despite some attempts to break statistics on sick and disabled people down into various levels of worthiness by DWP Ministers, Factcheck again comes up with the figures from the DWP on this. Roughly 420,000 of the 660,000 claimants affected have a serious sickness or a disability.

On the 31st October 2013, Some disabled children were finally exempted from having to share a room, but only where they were in receipt of both elements of DLA / PIP benefit. Otherwise, disabled people are not exempt from the policy. This creates particular problems for the 100,000 homes that have been adapted to their disabled tenants, where the average cost of adaptations is £6,000 (Source). Simply to relocate all the disabled people affected would incur a cost of six billion pounds. (see reason One).

Although disabled adults are entitled to an additional room where they require poorly defined 'regular, overnight care', this does not apply to children that require a carer.

Three: The policy has not taken into account available housing stock to enable downsizing.

An article in The Independent suggested that only 4% of those affected can downsize, and although Factcheck ran an analysis of this, in many areas, particularly rural but also many urban, the possibility for downsizing is non-existent for a high percentage of tenants due to an acute shortage of housing, particularly properties with one or two bedrooms.

The additional demand for smaller properties is also having a detrimental effect on other groups of people looking for them, whether pensioners looking to free up space by downsizing, or homeless people, or young working people seeking social housing to enable them to locate near to work. Where claimants move into smaller properties in the private sector, the cost to the Housing Benefit bill frequently increases (see point One).

Four: The policy does not make the way that social sector tenants and private sector tenants are treated 'fair'.

There is plenty of independent evidence that shows that the 2008 LHA is very different to 2013's under-occupancy charge. The policies are designed to do different things, apply to different groups of people, and have been implemented in a very different way. Five: Repealing this policy does not mean Housing Benefit cannot be reformed.

Everyone agrees there is a case to be made for better use of social housing and repealing this policy will not prevent a more tenable policy being designed and rolled out, to tackle the Housing Benefit bill. Any future policy should be more away of the people it will affect, the hardship and misery that it will cause, the pressue that it places on unofficial support networks that many people rely on, and the dismantling of communities that may have been built up over many years.