Housing Support U-turn shows the Gov't has finally realised that austerity for austerity's sake is not working
3 min read
Graham Jones MP says the announced U-turn on their 'cruel' plans to cut housing benefit for young people must be followed with an explanation and apology to all 'young people unnecessarily hurt'.
Today the Government announced a U-turn on their unworkable and punitive policy of taking away the automatic Housing Support entitlement from people between 18 and 21 years old claiming Universal Credit in full-service areas.
On the 8th March, I received a letter from the minister, not the first I have received on this matter which stated that the government policy had collapsed. I was unsuccessful in my application for a UQ that week which would have exposed further the government's failure.
This policy was part of a Tory war on young people, cruel with no rationale and promised savings that were never going to materialise.
This policy was was in trouble from the very beginning. Under 25s sanctions were scaled back to under 21s and when it was finally announced, the Government could not initially state how many people would be impacted by it and then refused to release the impact assessments to Parliament. The policy was doomed as further added exemptions demonstrated the government had not thought through this ideological dog whistle policy.
I pressured the Government to reverse this policy on the basis that they will not meet the savings they expected to make up against the misery and hardship some of the most vulnerable young people would go through unnecessarily.
In the month leading up to its implementation last April, I warned in the House of Commons that this policy would put a cap on aspiration by punishing young people on a low wage trying to start out in life on their own.
Despite my plea, the Government persisted.
I wrote to Esther McVey in January to ask how many young people have lost out due to this terrible policy and highlight how this Government was letting down people who are just starting out in life.
The response I received from the Department of Work and Pensions was astonishing. Only 90 out of 2090 claimants in the first 3 months of the policy being implemented were denied this element of Universal Credit. This is far from the original estimates (10,000 young people) which the government revealed after being pressured to provide it.
The latest figures reveal that 2,000 young people managed to receive an exemption to criteria. I predicted that the Government would be far away from meeting the £65 million total savings target by 2019/2020 that was projected in the Spring Statement of 2017.
Moreover, those 90 young people and those subsequently affected in from July to now who have been denied housing benefit should now be contacted by the DWP and have their claim reinstated. I am writing to the minister on behalf of these young people who have been the victims of a failed Tory government policy.
Today’s U-turn should not be the end of this matter. People’s lives have been shattered by this policy and public money has been wasted in implementing an unnecessary policy.
The minister should now come to the house and explain to Members of Parliament why this disastrous assault on young people has finally been buried and make an apology to all those young people unnecessarily hurt by this Tory policy
PoliticsHome Newsletters
Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.
