NOVANEWS
By Carl Brown
Dozens of protestors calling for the bedroom tax to be abolished picketed the front of Manchester Central ahead of the welfare reform minister’s speech this morning.
He also came in for fierce criticism from delegates, many whom laughed and jeered after he said the bedroom tax is not a tax.
Lord Freud said: ‘It is not a tax, it is about how much can we afford to give people from taxpayers at a time when we are running, five years after a financial crisis, a £100 billion of debt every year, it is a nightmare getting this down.
‘If you think we can go on having low interest rates forever when we are carrying that kind of burden as a society think again. The people who will be hit hardest if we do not sort it out will be you, because it will be your interest rates that go through the roof when the international markets decide that we are not worth trusting.’
He responded to a question from the conference floor about whether the government would repeal the bedroom tax by saying he will monitor the situation.
Reverend Richard Coles, board member at Wellingborough Homes, said he does not see the bedroom tax ‘sustains the notion of the recipient of benefit as someone who is fully human, as someone fully entitled to take their place in wider society’.
Brendan Sarsfield, chief executive of Family Mosaic, drew a mixed reaction from delegates when he said that Lord Freud might be in the minority in the conference hall, but is ‘in the majority when he leaves this room’.
Lord Freud also outlined further details of how the government’s policy of paying benefit to tenants, rather than landlords, will work in practice.
The government will switch payment of benefit to landlords when a claimant has built up the equivalent of two months of rent arrears, under a mechanism called ‘managed payments’.
The minister said that when a tenant on ‘managed payments’ has cleared their arrears, the Department for Work and Pensions will aim to return the claimant to direct payment within six months.
Lord Freud told delegates: ‘We don’t want non-payment of rent to be a way out of direct payment.’
The minister also said the government will operate ‘an accelerated recovery system’, under which it would recoup arrears from claimants on managed payments within six to 9 months. ’This will help ensure landlords’ cash flows are protected,’ he said.
