Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-05-04
Topic: Housing
Richard Best (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I rise to speak to Motion F1. I was grateful indeed to noble Lords throughout the House who secured a majority of over 100 votes for the pay-to-stay amendment now rejected by the other place. Our amendment would have reduced by half the penalty incurred by council tenants with household incomes of more than £31,000 per annum, or more than £40,000 in London, as a surcharge on their council rent. This levy—this rental hike—for two adults each earning £20,000 in, say, Brighton, would have been set at 20p in the pound for every pound over the £31,000 threshold. It would have meant an extra £2,000 per annum or £40 extra per week for a couple who are not terribly well paid The amendment that we passed would have halved this rental surcharge so that the family in Brighton, who barely get the national living wage, would pay an extra £20 per week not £40 per week. This is still a mighty increase, but it is half as much as the Government seemed determined to extract from people who, by definition, are hard working. We might all agree that those like Bob Crow, who earn way over £100,000 per year, could contribute significantly more for a council home. But I really wonder what we would be achieving by seriously penalising those on a third of his income The Chancellor has explained that the extra rent raised by councils will go not to the local authority, not towards meeting housing needs, but to the Exchequer, exclusively to reduce the deficit. By my rough calculations, it would take over 100 years for the receipts from the rental surcharge to reduce the nation’s deficit by 0.1%. It does not seem worth upsetting the lives of some 350,000 council tenants to make an infinitesimally modest reduction in the deficit. Of course, extensive administrative costs will be involved in assessing tens of thousands of tenants’ incomes and then collecting the rental surcharge. These costs will absorb a major part of the funds raised from the tenants We are where we are: the Government did not accept your Lordships amendment to reduce by half the extra burden on these hard-working council tenants, who, frankly, deserve our respect, not a financial penalty. As a compromise I have tabled in lieu the amendment before us, which proposes retaining the halving of the penalty—10p in the pound, not 20p—but just for those in the band of £10,000 above the threshold: that is, those earning from £31,000 up to £40,000, or in London from £40,000 up to £50,000. However, as of this afternoon the Secretary of State has proved willing to change the arrangements, as the Minister has explained. This is a helpful intervention. At this stage of the Bill, in the middle of ping-pong and with a substantial government majority in the other place voting against our amendments last night, I am realistic enough to know that if the Government offer any concessions, they should be accepted. They have offered a double-headed compromise of a rental surcharge of 15p in the pound for everyone with household earnings over the threshold, with no limit, and an annual uprating of the £31,000 threshold—£41,000 in London—that is in line with the appropriate index, CPI. Therefore, we have a levy of 15p in the pound, which is not as helpful as 10p but better than 20p, plus helpful indexation of the threshold. Of course, this pay-to-stay rental surcharge remains an entirely unwelcome imposition on hard-working council tenants, and I do not like it one bit. However, we have come a long way from the original proposal whereby any household over the threshold would immediately have had to pay a full market rent, meaning a ridiculously penal increase of £100 a week, sometimes £200. We are in a better place today. On the basis of the progress that has been made, for which I am indeed grateful to Ministers, I shall not move this amendment.