Jim Grant: We need to tackle the root causes of rising welfare costs

This week Swindon residents may have heard about two policy announcements on welfare that may spark their interest.

On Thursday, Ed Milliband, the Labour Party Leader announced that he wants the next Labour Government to put the country’s high housing benefit bill on a sustainable footing by tackling its root causes.

This week Swindon residents may have heard about two policy announcements on welfare that may spark their interest.

On Thursday, Ed Milliband, the Labour Party Leader announced that he wants the next Labour Government to put the country’s high housing benefit bill on a sustainable footing by tackling its root causes.

There are two key ways we can do this. Firstly, we will do this by tackling private landlords who charge rents that are sometimes nearly twice as much as a home provided by the council or housing association. According to figures produced by the House of Commons Library, the current Conservative-led government are spending an average of £8.75bn per year on private rented sector tenants, even more than the previous Labour Government.

By giving local councils the ability to negotiate with private landlords who accommodate tenants with housing benefit in their local area, rather than councils just being the administrators of the government’s housing benefit policy, council’s will be able to drive a better deal for taxpayers without affecting the housing benefit recipient’s tenancies.

The second thing we need to do is start to build far more affordable homes, which will again reduce the need for expensive private rented homes to accomodate the working and non-working poor.

The billions we pour in to supporting low income households- in and out of work- in private rented accommodation is the result of a decades old policy to switch housing subsidy from house-building to Housing Benefit. In Swindon this is shown by the fact that the number of affordable homes being built each year has been cut by two-thirds in just three years. And then there are the economic benefits in expanding affordable house-building, with all leading economists concluding that house-building is one of the best ways the government can boost economic growth. 

That is why Labour in Swindon will set a target to build 300 council homes per year when we take control of the council.

In contrast, Swindon Council’s current Conservative administration have announced that they wished to use the rents paid by a small group of council tenants on modest incomes to subsidise the rents of other tenants struggling to pay their rent because of the government’s bedroom tax.

Notwithstanding the fact that welfare spending should be the responsibility of all taxpayers, including the wealthy, not council tenants on a modest means, by diverting money that could be used to pay for council-housebuilding toward subsidising rents only reinforces the root causes of why Britain has a high housing benefit bill in the first place.

These are the battlelines for forthcoming elections in Swindon. A Conservative Party that continues to follow an unsustainable philosophy of increasing housing benefit spending while overseeing huge reductions in affordable housebuilding in Swindon and attacking the poor through the bedroom tax because they wish to be seen as “tough on welfare”. While the Labour Party will pragmatically tackle the root causes of the country’s high welfare bill, ensuring that we all play a role in housing and protecting the working and non-working poor, while continuing to relentlessly focus on bringing growth back to the economy.

Cllr Jim Grant
Swindon Labour Group Leader