This week in Parliament Natascha Engel, Labour MP for North East Derbyshire who I have a great deal of respect for, asked a couple of questions. She is an active MP who asks lots of questions, but these two and their answers deserve our attention. The first Q and A was tabled as a written Parliamentary Question:

NE – To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate he has made of the level of rent arrears owed to local authorities and registered social landlords following the introduction of the under-occupancy penalty.

The person who was responsible for answering was Mark Prisk who is the Housing Minister in CLG and MP for Hertford and Stortford. His response to this reasonably straightforward question was:

MP – The Government is closely monitoring the situation and has commissioned an independent evaluation. We expect the interim findings to be published early next year.

The under-occupancy penalty is a controversial policy that some people may recognise as being known as the spare room tax. It was introduced in April and perhaps because of the level of criticism it has attracted it is not surprising that as Mark suggests they are monitoring the impact. However it is surprising that the Government does not have plans in place to ensure a speedy Independent review that could be relayed to Marks boss, Eric Pickles so he could tell all his chums and the rest of us that the policy is a success. One could imagine from Marks rather objective answer that so far there has been no problems.

Undeterred Ms Engel asked her second question, this time in a debate:

NE – May I give the Minister another chance to answer the question put by my hon. Friend Mrs Lewell-Buck and give him another example? Fifty-one per cent. of council tenants in my constituency are in rent arrears because they cannot afford to pay the bedroom tax. There are no smaller properties for them to move into, so what are they supposed to do?

Assuming that Natascha is well informed, this make it clear that the policy is not in fact working, at least in Derbyshire. This time the Minister in question is a Lib Dem, Don Foster who is MP for Bath and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

DF – Let me repeat to the hon. Lady the information we gave earlier: we have already provided £350 million in discretionary housing payments to local councils. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are saying from a sedentary position that it is all gone, but may I remind them that last year more than £11 million of discretionary housing payment was not used by local councils? They could use it more efficiently.

According to the Governments own figures there are 3.6M social homes in the country so the £361M that Mr Foster refers to in his answer is the equivalent of £100 per household or around 1.3 weeks rental. If as Natascha suggests 51% of her constituents are already in arrears some 3 months into this policy, we probably need to ask Messrs Prisk, Pickles and Foster to get an Independent review on this policy pretty damn quick. However lets not hold our breath. Eric Pickles is no bleeding hearted Conservative. A couple of moments after Don Foster did his best to avoid the issue, in response to another question, the MP for Brentwood and Ongar gave this answer:

“there is a hardship fund in place, and we expect local authorities to deal with these matters and not to send their spokesman here to shroud-wave.”

Needless to say this was after a fair bit of political shroud waving by Eric over matters to do with Labour links to the Unions!