The Bedroom Tax: SNP - Earn The Right To Be Free
I see
SNP supporters and others are enthusiastically sharing an article from Inside Housing reporting Alex Salmond's pledge to
abolish the Bedroom Tax in an independent Scotland, Good news. But
big deal?
Because
the very earliest this can be done is 2016, and more realistically
it will be 2017-18 before any law changes are enacted. So over four
years from now. Does anyone really think any but a tiny minority hit
here and now by the Bedroom Tax will survive by then? So a near
meaningless pledge. And a real cheap one, given the numbers by then
involved
So
tokenism. As token as the pledge from all SNP Councils
(and some Labour ones) not to evict any council tenant for bedroom
tax arrears in year one of the tax, And note, this pledge only apples
if a tenant “co-operates”, however that is defined by a Council
official. But, co-operation or not, it takes about a year to evict
someone anyway.
And more
fundamentally, many of the Councils committed to this pledge have
near no social housing to evict anyone from. SNP Argyll and Bute for
example has not a single council house – all transferred to local Housing Associations years ago, and all Housing Associations are
completely exempt from local council non-eviction pledges.
So SNP
folks and others, you are being sold mince here. Scottish mince –
but mince.
What the
Scottish Government can and must do, beyond the extra £5m already
allocated to advice welfare advice services centres, is as follows:
(1) Increase
significantly the Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) funds to
Councils over and above the £10 million allocated by the Westminster
Government to help those worst affected by the Bedroom Tax. The
Scottish Government can legally top this fund up by up to one and a
half times, so immediately the fund could rise to £25 million –
near on half the amount Scots are set to lose as a result of the
Bedroom Tax
(2) Increase by a similar or greater amount central grant
funding to social landlords to enable met to more realistically
carry, and in some case write off debt incurred by their Bedroom
Tax affected tenants, Many of these tenants simply can't pay, and
widely available statistics are now showing they are not paying in
significant numbers
(3) Give serious consideration to The Govan Law
Center proposed amendment to the Housing Scotland Act which would offer
enhanced increased legal protection from eviction to tenants in rent arrears incurred as a
result of the Bedroom Tax. And SNP whips could make a start by
telling its committee members who control the Scottish Parliament's
Public Petitions Committee, which meets on Tuesday 25h June to consider
the GLC amendment, to allow the main petitioner, Mike Dailly,
Director of the Center to speak to his own petition. Hardly a radical
idea. Kind of a self-evidently sensible one. And totally cost free.
But the
first two elements of this three part package, they would cost.
Around £50 million would be my estimate, much the same sum as calculated by Shelter
Scotland and the Scottish TUC. Not a trivial sum. But a findable
sum for sure. Less that 0.1% of the Scottish Government's total block
grant. A block grant SNP and previous Labour administrations have
succeed in underspending by this amount and more in near every year
since devolution.
So do
this Alex, and poor people – real poor people, amongst the poorest
in Scotland - might warm to your pledge to abolish the Bedroom Tax
altogether come independence: The final step in a process you will
have already started with them. And can start tomorrow.
In the
words of one of my recent songs, “Earn the Right to be Free”!
