As a Shadow Minister, it’s my job to scrutinise Government policies in the ‘Work’ section of the Department for Work and Pensions.  

From April 2013, people on Jobseekers Allowance will have their housing benefit cut by 10% after a year.  This defies logic.  The number who are unemployed for over a year is going up.  With Government cuts about to hit – and VAT up to 20% in January – many jobs will be lost.  Many – through no fault of their own – will have to claim Jobseekers Allowance for over a year.

Take a family paying £300 per week in rent.  A 10% benefit cut would mean finding £30 extra per week.  That will be very hard for people surviving on benefits.  If, by any chance, the family manages to reduce their rent by 10%, their benefit will be 90% of the new, lower rent, so that won’t solve the problem.  Some will certainly lose their homes.

It’s illogical given other Government policies.  A new scheme called the Work Programme will start next summer.  It contains some good ideas, taken from the Labour Government’s ‘Flexible New Deal’.  When someone becomes unemployed, the Jobcentre helps them look for work for the first year.  In that time, most people find a job.  After a year out of work, however, each jobseeker will be referred to a specialist provider – probably a private company – for extra help to get back to work.

But a year after starting to receive Jobseekers Allowance is exactly the point at which housing benefit is to be cut!  So people will have the worry of not being able to pay their rent exactly when they start getting intensive help to return to work.

Lyn Brown pointed out in the House of Commons that a new cap on the total benefit which can be paid could mean that a large family would only get £125 per week in housing benefit – insufficient for any private rented accommodation in Newham.  And the amount of housing benefit will be limited to the cheapest 30% of private rented homes.  This change has just been brought forward to next April.

London Councils estimates over 80,000 people in London might have to leave their homes.  Some will not be able to afford to live in Newham any longer.  Others will be forced out of high rent areas in central London and move to Newham, where rents are lower.

The possible effects are set out in a remarkably frank Government assessment last week: “increases in the number of households with rent arrears, eviction and households presenting themselves as homeless; disruption to children’s education and reduced attainment; disruption to support services for people with disabilities ...; increase in the number of households living in overcrowded conditions”.  The Government’s Social Security Advisory Committee has warned of “costly and corrosive knock-on effects”.

We will press Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs very hard to grasp the scale of the damage some of these changes will inflict, and to scrap them.