The campaign against the “bedroom tax”, with over 660,000
households due to start losing significant amounts of housing benefit from
Easter Monday, has exposed the duplicity of a Labour leadership that has tried
but failed to hijack the protests.
Labour is not actually opposed in principle to the ConDems’
punitive cut in benefit for those in social housing of working age deemed to be
over-occupying by having a spare bedroom. In fact, New Labour introduced the
criteria for private-sector tenants in 2008. The Coalition uses this fact to
justify extending the policy into social housing.
Shadow works and pensions secretary Liam Byrne has actually
linked a fake opposition to the bedroom tax to plans for
tougher workfare. He was roundly booed at a recent
rally in Birmingham. Byrne was behind the abstention by Labour in
parliament last week over the vote on retrospective
laws to enforce workfare.
By contrast, left MP John McDonnell was cheered at the rally
for declaring that Labour councils should refuse to implement the policy. His
is a lone voice.
If tenants are deemed to have one spare room, the amount of
rent eligible for housing benefit will be cut by 14%. If they have two or more
spare rooms, the cut will be 25%. This will mean an average loss of about £14 a week for
council tenants. Those who rent from housing associations are facing an average
loss of about £16 a week.
In Scotland ,
the Scottish National Party has said the local authorities the party controls
will refuse to evict people who get into arrears as a result. No doubt the SNP
has one eye on encouraging people to vote “Yes” in next year’s independence
referendum. Whatever.
Meanwhile, not a single Labour council in Britain has made the same declaration (Green-led
Brighton has, however). In Dundee ,
the SNP led-council was the first to pass a policy to stop evictions, but this
was opposed by Labour councillors.
Just as Labour councils have busily gone about implementing
ConDem cuts in local spending, destroying jobs and services en route, they will
enforce the bedroom tax. Labour leader Ed Miliband has no intention of
instructing them to do otherwise, although if he did the tax would become
unenforceable.
For Labour, it’s about people moving to smaller homes as a
“solution”. As shadow
cabinet member Helen Goodman said: “We’ve said that the bedroom tax should
only apply if people have been offered a smaller place to live and turned it
down because, obviously, it is better to use the housing stock more
efficiently.” Yet all the figures indicate that smaller properties simply do
not exist in the required numbers.
In Liverpool , where 6,700
tenants of Riverside Housing Association alone face severe benefit cuts, senior
staff acknowledge that the “impact on communities could be profound”. They,
naturally, intend to carry out their orders should evictions become necessary.
Tenants groups across the city have come together to
spearhead the national campaign against the bedroom tax. Labour set up its own
“campaign” in a bid to limit the protests to petitions and pleas. Tenants saw
through this and are planning their own Assembly on April 6 to plan further
resistance.
Ultimately unaffordable rents are the reason for a housing
benefit bill of £23 billion a year. This huge sum is, in effect, a subsidy to
landlords of all types. With social housing rents due to rise further – thanks
to New Labour’s policy of “convergence” across different sectors – the attack
on tenants is certain to increase.
The obvious alternative is to slash rents, build more homes
at affordable rents, requisition empty properties, socialise land ownership and
create an economy founded on decent wages for ordinary workers. Labour’s
policy, by contrast, is to encourage “responsible capitalism”, a society that
only exists in dreamland. As we have said many times, what is the point of
Labour?
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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