From The Bedroom To The Kitchen

Rowena Mason writes:

Three-quarters of people affected by the bedroom tax say they have had to cut back on food, an independent evaluation published by the Department for Work and Pensions has found.

The research found that 46% said they had cut back on heating, 33% on travel and 42% on leisure.

Among a control group of tenants unaffected by the bedroom tax, far fewer – 56% – said they were cutting back on food because of benefit changes.

The findings by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research and Ipsos Mori were slipped out by the government on the last day of parliament before the winter break, along with a deluge of more than 380 other documents.

Its study found landlords were very concerned that some tenants were “in severe poverty and unable to pay the shortfall”. 

The report said 78% of claimants who were still affected by the bedroom tax after two years of the policy were regularly running out of money by the end of the week or month. 

They tended to pay the rent by using up savings, borrowing from family or friends or accruing debt. 

It found that the effects of cutting back “had an impact on some claimants’ health and emotional wellbeing, with the most vulnerable reporting experiences of stress and worry”. 

Claimants were able to use savings and borrowings in the first year of the bedroom tax but by the time of the second wave of qualitative research, in autumn 2014, claimants “who had been using their savings for the first year had depleted these and so were having to make greater cutbacks in their household budgets”.

The report found that only one in nine claimants escaped the bedroom tax by moving to a different property, and the vast majority of those affected were still affected nine months later.

Only 5% of those affected by the policy had been successful in finding extra work, of which half said they were then no longer affected by the bedroom tax.

Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said it was beyond him how Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, could “continue to stand by this vile policy”.

He said: “This damning independent report, published by the DWP itself, shows how this brutal and unfair policy deliberately drives people deeper and deeper in to poverty. It’s shameful – especially in the run-up to Christmas - that 80% of people hit by the bedroom tax regularly run out of money by the end of the week or month.

“This report yet again shows it isn’t just cruel but doesn’t even achieve what it set out to. The case for scraping the bedroom tax is overwhelming. The Tories should learn the lessons from their tax credit U-turn and end this brutal policy.”

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: “The DWP’s own evaluation finds that the bedroom tax is not only pushing families into hardship but it’s also failing to free up more accommodation for families – the key argument ministers used to justify this controversial policy.” 

She also criticised the timing of the report’s publication. 

“This is a long and deep look at a hugely controversial policy – it really should not have been released just as MPs rise for Christmas,” she said. 

A government spokeswoman said: “It is wrong that under the previous system taxpayers had to subsidise benefit claimants to live in houses that are larger than they require. Removing the spare room subsidy has restored fairness to the system for claimants as well as the taxpayer, and the numbers subject to a reduction are falling.

“We know that there are cases where people may need extra support whilst they transition to our reforms – that’s why we have given councils £500m of funding to provide discretionary payments to those that need them, with a further £800m to be provided over the course of this parliament.”