It's time for the Liberal Democrats in Government to call for the abolition of the "Bedroom Tax"

Point 1. If anybody says I should call it the "spare room subsidy", that argument was lost months back.

Point 2. An international housing expert representing not just any international organisation, but the UN, for goodness sake, has recommended that the Bedroom Tax should be abolished. And this is not just the Guardian doing its thing. Raquel Rolnik was interviewed on the Today programme and she said that the testimony she had received from hundreds of people and Councils had convinced her that this measure was a retrograde step in the "protection and promotion of human rights to housing". She didn't mince her words:

I was very shocked to hear how people really feel abused in their human rights by this decision and why – being so vulnerable – they should pay for the cost of the economic downturn, which was brought about by the financial crisis. People in testimonies were crying, saying 'I have nowhere to go', 'I will commit suicide'."

This is serious stuff. The correct response to any government at being found wanting by an international organisation is to be mortified. Then they should basically do what is recommended. I was furious in 2011 when Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill's reaction to being pulled up by the European Court of Human Rights was to get nasty both about the judges involved and the complainants. I must therefore expect any government that contains Liberal Democrats to react appropriately and do what the Special Investigator recommends. Sadly, the response from the DWP suggests otherwise.

It is surprising to see these conclusions being drawn from anecdotal evidence and conversations after a handful of meetings – instead of actual hard research and data. Britain has a very strong housing safety net and even after our necessary reforms we continue to pay over 80% of most claimants' rent if they are affected by the ending of the spare room subsidy.

Now, I know that Willie Rennie and Michael Moore have done good stuff in securing extra funds to help with the unintended consequences of the measure and they deserve credit for it. I also know that we do need to address under-occupancy. The obvious answer is to build a lot more houses of the right size. That doesn't happen overnight, but it isn't going to happen at all unless we properly put our minds to it.  What is clear, though, is that the Bedroom Tax is the wrong way to go about it. It hits too many vulnerable people.

What is not clear, though, is whether Ms Rolnik looked at the private sector. It's relevant because Housing Benefit funds the rents of people who rent privately. Labour imposed the private sector equivalent of the Bedroom Tax in 2008. I do accept that people in social housing tend to be in greater need and therefore more vulnerable, but too many are being forced into inadequate private sector accommodation simply because they can't get a council house.

The motion up for debate next Monday at Conference suggests a possible way  make Housing Benefit work for tenants in social housing. If Conference passes it, speakers in support should make clear that the Government needs to go back to the drawing board, suspend the Bedroom Tax immediately and come up with a new system along the lines suggested in the motion.

Letter from the Leader - Nick Clegg focuses on housing

When I worked for an MP as a caseworker, the main problems I dealt with were tax credits, benefits (where the Government departments concerned were never quick to admit their mistakes) and housing. Every week, we'd have several new cases of people not just wanting a better or bigger or in fact any house at all, but desperately needing it. Four children in a two bedroomed flat doesn't go. And don't get all sniffy about how people shouldn't have children if they can't afford them. What are poor people supposed to do? Forget the hope of family life?That's mean.

Nick Clegg has thus far talked about mental health and childcare in his new series of letters to Liberal Democrat members, two issues of critical importance to people in their everyday lives. This week, he chose housing, writing about his new garden city initiative. I like that while the Tories squabble about Europe, Nick's focussed on making people's lives better.

Here it is in full:

Dear Caron,

I'm writing this as we come to the end of an incredibly hectic week in politics.

The negotiations over the budget in Europe, securing of a much needed ceasefire in Gaza, rising speculation about the upcoming Leveson report. And Ed Davey's important announcement of a landmark coalition deal on low carbon energy that will deliver billions of pounds of investment in clean technology and create thousands of jobs.

But in this letter I want to focus on an issue that wasn't so high on the radar screen, but matters enormously to me: housing. I gave a speech to the National House Building Council (the people who issue guarantees for new homes) on Thursday which brought the numbers into focus for me and made me determined to step up our efforts.

As a country, we have built too few homes for far too long - and the economic and social consequences are massive. Prices out of reach of too many young families. Our economy vulnerable to boom and bust in the housing market. The housing benefit bill spiralling. Homelessness and overcrowding.

All these problems are solvable but only if we think big.

We've been talking about housing in the coalition for well over two years. At every budget and autumn statement we've brought forward new measures. We've reduced red tape and regulation for house builders. We've supported mortgage lending with products to help first time buyers. We're backing housing associations with £10bn of treasury guarantees.

And yet it isn't enough. This year we will probably build just 110,000 homes. If that sounds like a lot to you let me put you straight: it's one of the worst years since the Second World War. When you realise that the population grew by about 270,000 households it's clear it's nowhere near enough.

No wonder prices are out of reach for so many families. The average first time buyer is now 35, and home ownership is falling for the first time in a generation.

The only way out of this crisis is to build our way out.

This week I announced funding of £225m to kick start development at eight sites, each with plans for over 5,000 new homes. But I want to think bigger - much bigger. We can't go on building a home here and a home there and hoping it's enough.

I want us to go back to some of Britain's proud heritage of urban development and build a new generation of "garden cities" - places that will grow, thrive and become part of the fabric of the nation.

Of course development is always controversial. It's right to protect our precious rural landscape and not let England be concreted over. But the point I've been making in government (and there have been some lively debates) is that planning big new settlements is the best way to protect our countryside because the alternative is endless urban sprawl.

Instead of eating away at the green belt, we can build big and even designate new green belt around new towns and cities. I think that’s why even the Telegraph was supportive of the plans I outlined this week.

We could easily build new garden cities totalling a million new homes in the next ten years without building on any green belt, National Parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. And by doing it we could deliver homes people can afford in places they want to live.

We can't do this overnight. Scale and ambition take time. But I believe if we put aside partisan politics and think collectively about the housing needs of the next generation, we could set Britain on track for a major wave of new development, new jobs, and new hope.

Best  wishes,


Nick Clegg

Ps If you want to help our party campaign on this and other issues you can do something to help.  A donation of just £10, or whatever 

Hume reveals heartbreaking homelessness statistics

I've long said that I want a Government to decide that it's going to sort out housing. During my years working for Willie Rennie as his caseworker, by far the biggest tragedy I could see unfolding before me was housing. Every week we'd have around 5 new families wanting, no, needing to be rehoused.

Maybe their family had grown or two families had amalgamated meaning a current property was too small. Maybe they'd had to take a private let, sacrificing their priority on the local authority list, but paying out more than they could afford in rent. Maybe a relationship had ended or they'd been put out by family. Maybe illness had meant that their current home was impossible for them. I remember returning once from holiday to the awful news that one person who'd been waiting for a long time to be rehoused had actually died.

The problem is, of course, that the supply of social housing has never recovered from Margaret Thatcher's "right to buy" policy. Forcing local authorities to sell houses at knock down prices and not letting them build any more has had horrendous consequences for people needing affordable housing today. There simply is not enough to go round.

In Scotland, the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition between 1999 and 2007 passed legislation aimed at ending homelessness by 2012.  Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament show that we are still some way from meeting that target.

It's horrifying to think that a minimum of 2000 families are living in temporary accommodation. This might, if they're lucky, be a flat, usually in the sort of area nobody would choose. However, they could be moved out of this to another part of their local authority area at any time. Imagine, for example, being made homeless in Dunfermline in the south west of Fife. You could be put in temporary accommodation in St Andrew's, a good hour away. How do you get your kids to school? How do you get to work if you do shifts at unsocial hours if you don't have a car? And you could be moved to another part of this pretty big kingdom at any time.

And that accommodation, like I said, might not be a flat. It might be bed and breakfast, in which case as a family you'd be expected to leave during the day. Where do you go? It might be a homeless hostel, where you have to share with strangers.  Can you imagine how horrendously difficult it would be to live in those circumstances? Most people reading this will wake up in a warm house, with a washing machine to hand to clean their clothes and cooking facilities they can use when they feel like eating and space to rest and relax. There will doubtless be enough room for people to escape from each other when they've had a row. Imagine your whole life, your whole family in one room with possessions that you can carry. How would that affect a child?

Have a read of Shelter's article on what it's like to be homeless and you'll get an idea. The horror of the reality is being experienced now by far too many people and particularly children.

The Liberal Democrats' housing spokesman at Holyrood, Jim Hume, has today released the findings of his Freedom of Information requests to local authorities about the number of children and families in temporary housing. Glasgow, Aberdeenshire and South Lanarkshire aren't included, so this is a minimum figure. Basically we have 2073 families in temporary accommodation and this is at 1st October. 1271 had been there for more than 3 months and 779 for more than 6 months. By anyone's standards, that's just wrong.

Housing affects so much else, your health, your ability to work, your sense of security and it's vital that someone has the political will to sort it out. This is too important an issue for the SNP just to blame the coalition government for cuts or say that independence would sort everything out.  They have £30 billion, the entire Scottish budget, to spend as they please. If they want to, they can build more houses with the powers they currently have rather than halve the budget and forget their pledge to build 6000 new houses every year. If they want to.

We need to have not just an intelligent debate, but actual action now to make sure that everyone in need has a roof over their head and a long term strategy in place to make sure it stays that way.  It's not just about building new houses, it's about making better use of those we have. Ewan Hoyle has some ideas over at Lib Dem Voice about elderly people in larger houses sharing with younger people, maybe students, who help out with jobs around the place in a mutually convenient and non exploitative way.

It's not just homelessness we have to deal with, though, it's poor quality social housing with damp, condensation, leaky doors and windows and with appallingly bad energy efficiency so that they're difficult to keep warm. Something has to be done about them, too, and fast. There's no point in investing in education if kids haven't got somewhere warm to do their homework or they lie freezing in their beds at night.

I'll give the final word to Jim Hume:

“Thousands of families with children are facing a hard Christmas in temporary accommodation. We can only imagine how hard this is, especially for the 779 families that have been without a permanent home for over 6 months.
 “January marks the beginning of the year in which Scotland’s homelessness commitment is due to be met. “The SNP Government must ensure that it’s fully committed to ending 2012 with every homeless person having access to a permanent home. “A good start will be looking again at its planned 50% cut to the affordable housing budget and Alex Neil needs to face up to his government’s U-turn on the 6000 new socially rented houses each year
 “We also need to see a more innovative approach to tackling homelessness across Scotland. “We cannot afford to leave so many families out in the cold this Christmas.” 

Salmond takes from poor to give to the rich - Rennie

A couple of years ago, research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats at Holyrood showed that the net effect of Alex Salmond's Council Tax Freeze was actually to give more to rich people than to poor people. Then leader Tavish Scott  talked about this in his speech to the Liberal Democrat Conference then:

Research I am publishing today shows that - over four years - the SNP will have spent £950m on a set of distorted priorities and hand-outs that give more to the rich than to the poor. 

Because this is what you find: 

If you have two children and earn £100,000 then you will have gained £802 per year from the SNP. 

But if you have two children and you earn £15,000 then you will have gained just six pounds and seven pence. 

So that“s enough champagne and lobster every night for the rich. 

A fish supper for the poor. 

I've been hoping for a while that our current team at Holyrood would revisit this because I can't imagine things have got any better. And they have, with leader Willie Rennie highlighting today how on one hand the SNP is cutting the social housing budget and on the other giving an almost £3,000  cash boost to the likes of the Duke of Sutherland, Brian Souter and former RBS chief Sir Fred "the shred" Goodwin. You can add stacks of premier league footballers to that list, and lawyers and doctors and some journalists. These people don't need a tax break when people are struggling to find a decent quality house they could afford.

When I worked for Willie as his constituency caseworker, by far the biggest issue people came to us with was housing. They might be desperate for a Council House but forced to pay huge private sector rents on low incomes which means that they sink further into poverty. They might be living in a horrible, damp, cold Council property which is adversely affecting their health.  Their family might have expanded meaning too many children were sharing not enough bedrooms. They may have become terminally ill and unable to cope with the stairs to their flat, leaving them housebound before it was necessary.

For many of those people, there simply wasn't enough housing. In Fife, they were only able to grant the needs of around a sixth of their housing applicants every year even with new homes being built. We're not talking about doling out luxury apartments here - just basic, watertight, warm accommodation which should be every family's right.

By continuing the Council Tax freeze at the expense of helping these people who desperately need housing, Alex Salmond is showing, sickeningly, where his priorities lie. Rennie describes him as a Robin Hood in reverse:

“In the wake of draft budget, it is time that the SNP rethought their 5 year council tax freeze given that the budget for new affordable housing has been slashed.
 “While he rewards the richest people in the largest houses with a tax cut, he has cut the money available for those who need a roof over their heads. “I just do not understand Alex Salmond’s twisted logic. He is the reverse of Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the richest people in Scotland.
 “People will simply not understand, with the economy the way it is, why big spenders like Fred Goodwin, Brian Souter and the Duke of Sutherland need this tax cut. “The SNP Government must go back to the drawing board and come up with a credible budget that protects the most vulnerable in communities across Scotland, not millionaires in their mansions.”

It doesn't seem to me that the SNP is committed enough to doing something about increasing the supply of affordable housing. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats have been backing Shelter's call for bringing more empty houses back into use, as Jim Hume said last month:

“Scottish Liberal Democrats believe that bringing back empty homes into use is absolutely necessary to help quell the growing number of people languishing on waiting lists for houses in Scotland. It is totally unacceptable that people in desperate need of a house cannot get one, but, perversely, there are houses sitting empty up and down the country.
 “The Scottish Government must make tackling this an absolute priority. Ministers needs to provide answers on how they are going to provide sustainable and affordable housing for future generations in Scotland. Bringing back empty houses into use would be a start.”

There is no justification for the SNP giving more to the rich while they take to the poor. The Band H Council Tax band saves almost £3000 over the 9 years of the Council Tax freeze and those millionaires also benefit from free prescriptions and free bus travel if they're over 60 as well. When money's tight, we need to make sure that the poorest are our first priority. Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have made sure the Westminster Coalition has not adopted the Tory policies of an Inheritance Tax cut and marriage tax break. They have made it clear that the 50p tax rate is here to stay, while taking nearly a million low paid people out of tax completely.

I hope John Swinney looks at this again. Unfortunately, with an overall majority, the SNP are sure to get their budget through so we're reliant on them seeing sense. I won't be holding my breath.

Another Daily Mail Fail - and how they could make a difference

I am so behind in my list of things to write about, but I was so angry when I read this article in Friday's Daily Mail. I don't like linking to them, but I actually think it's important that we keep an eye on what they do and challenge their flawed assumptions wherever we can.

Essentially the story is about a family with six children living in a 2 bedroomed Council house. Yes, you read that right. 8 people, 6 of them aged under 7, are crammed into a a tiny house which in no way meets their needs. That's something we should all be angry about. We know that poor housing has a long term, detrimental effect on health. If these children continue to live in these conditions, the chances are that their life expectancy will be significantly less than a child from a more affluent background.  Their whole lives could be blighted by the failure of all parties in local and national government to sort out housing.

I've met many families in similar situations over the last 4 years. It breaks my heart to see the distress it causes.  The Daily Mail could use its position to run a big campaign to have more affordable housing built so that families like this one, and others who are living in private rented accommodation who really struggle to pay their rent. Wouldn't that be great if a national newspaper took this issue on?

But, sadly, the Fail has different priorities. The headline "Jobless Couple demand bigger home for them and their six children (who are named after celebrities)" gives you an idea of their agenda. They chose to criticise the couple for the names they gave their children and for the fact that they are unemployed. Have they any idea of the childcare costs for 4 pre-schoolers? One full time at a nursery will set you back around £500 per month up here and much more down south.  Have they any idea how much their parents would have to earn to be able to feed and clothe their family so that work would make them better off than being on benefits?

The Mail could choose to argue for better housing. Instead it chooses to demonise a family in desperate need. I think it's clear who's in the wrong here.

Is SNP's new housing scheme any good?

I know it's early in the morning, and I don't want to seem churlish or anything, but it seems at first glance that the SNP's new big idea on affordable housing is a bit like trying to shift 10 tonnes of gravel with a 5 ml medicine spoon. I know they say every little helps, but I would have hoped for something more ambitious.

What they're wanting to do is for Councils to team up with developers to build 1000 houses across Scotland, and then rent them out for 5 -10 years before selling them off.

I see 2 big potential problems with this.

Firstly, isn't it just moving on the problem 5-10 years? I mean, the people who rent the houses are still going to need to be housed in that time and then they'll find that they're sold under them. I come across families who too often end up on the homeless list whose private let is sold from underneath them and they can't find another.

Secondly, 1000? Well, the housing list in Fife alone, only 1 of Scotland's 32 Councils, is around 12,500 and they manage to find homes for around 2,500 every year. It's not even close to being enough, especially when the SNP Government is cutting desperately needed funds for social housing.

This National Housing Trust idea sounds like it has all the potential of the Scottish Futures Trust which so far has achieved very little. I am far from convinced that it will make any appreciable difference to the Scottish Social Housing crisis.

Holyrood: The Budget Battleground

Last year the SNP Government was only able to get its budget through after a highly dramatic Holyrood showdown. Will the various groups in the Scottish Parliament be able to conduct themselves in a constructive manner this year, working together to pass a budget that meets the needs of the people of Scotland? After reading the articles in today's Sunday Herald where the Party Leaders set out their positions, I'm not convinced.

We need more from John Swinney than what amounts to a plaintive wail that the big boys in London ran away with our money. If I in my own household budget have to deal with the impact of Labour's recession, then why shouldn't John Swinney with the Scottish budget. It's not pleasant, but you just have to get on with it, work out what's important, and stop whinging that it's all someone else's fault.

Let's look closer at Swinney's boasts that the Scottish Government has delivered a surplus of £2.6 billion over 3 years. I don't usually have much good to say about how Labour have managed the country's finances but you can't really compare the Holyrood and Westminster budgets in terms of responsibility. I mean, how many banks did John Swinney save? To say that the current economic crisis strengthens the arguments for independence is patently ridiculous. Look at the real pain that the Irish people go through as their Government made huge cuts make monstrous cuts in public spending in 2 emergency budgets last year.

As for Iain Gray, he concentrated most of his space on slating the SNP over the cancellation of GARL and blinding us with figures which supposedly show that the SNP has had plenty money but it just hasn't used it wisely. His words just seem to be an extension of Labour's inability to talk honestly about the financial mess we're in on a UK level. He also fails to recognise that one of the factors making things worse for Scottish businesses is London Labour's abject failure to properly regulate the banks, to use our ownership of them to keep them lending to sustainable businesses. Labour wants to see an extension of the concessionary travel scheme to those on the minimum level of DLA and more investment in housing as well as the reinstatement of GARL.

And still the Salmond-Goldie love-in continues as, get this, all the Tories want, their big idea, when Scotland's businesses and households are struggling, is that the Government should publish online any expenditure over £25,000. That's it. How is that going to help? The Tories are very keen on this kind of pledge. I remember Boris Johnson saying during his election campaign that he would publish every pennny he spent on his website. I'm not sure he's delivered on that in any meaninfgul form.

Patrick Harvie says some good things about investment in renewables and insulation but he'd be more than happy to ruin the economy of Fife by cancelling the vital new Forth crossing.

In contrast to all of the above, Tavish Scott's piece is mainly full of positive, practical stuff. That F word - fairness, highlighted by Nick Clegg this week, a principle of virtually every Liberal Democrat election campaign I've ever been involved in, is at the fore of what Tavish is saying.

First, he wants an end to the top earners in the public sector being able to award themselves big bonuses while those at the bottom end of the pay scale get nothing. He wants action on paying six figure salaries to doctors who also work in the private sector. I agree with him that if we're paying that sort of salary, we deserve to have them full time. If they want to work part time in the private sector, then their salaries should be reduced accordingly.

He says that urgent investment is needed to get young people into work, highlighting a 45% increase in claims for Job Seekers Allowance among young people.

He also highlights practical examples of how businesses are suffering, being turned own for credit even when their proposals are sound, being dealt with remotely by people who don't know their history and their business.

It's notable that Tavish is the only leader to report on constructive discussions with John Swinney which seem to be going somewhere. I like the fact that he's chosen to emphasise that dialogue.

Labour and the SNP don't escape focused criticism, but Tavish is much more positive in his presentation than the others. Labour gets it for its myriad economic failures, the SNP for the failure of its Scottish Futures Trust which "continues to consume millions of pound but still builds absolutely nothing."

If I have to say one thing about the Liberal Democrat proposals, is that they don't mention at all one of the biggest issues to me - housing. When you have some local authorities and housing associations able to house barely a fifth of the people who need housing, when large families are crammed into 2 bedroomed houses, often in hellishly poor conditions, damp, with inadequate heating with no hope of a move to something bigger, when you have families in bed and breakfast accommodation because there's nowhere else to house them, something has to be done. Tavish understands this. When I and other bloggers interviewed him just after he became leader, he wanted to see more invevstment in social housing to save the construction jobs haemorrhaging during the recession. I don't think that this can wait for action - we need to do more to help these people now. Only then will we have a budget for all of Scotland.

The first act of the budget drama plays out this week. Let's hope that the process is more serious production and less pantomime farce.