Statements on Notice under Council Procedure Rule 11.10(b) may be made.  Statements do not need to be directed to a specific Councillor.

Statements on notice must, by the Constitution, be notified to the Head of Law and Governance by no later that 9.30am on Friday 16^th December 2011.

Full details of any statements for which the required notice has been given will be circulated to Members of Council before the meeting.

Councillor Joe McManners submitted the following Statement On Notice:

On the Coalition Government’s ‘Under occupying’ clause (11) of the Welfare Reform Bill.

Lord Mayor, colleagues and members of the public I would like to draw Council’s attention to a particularly unjust and problematic clause of the Coalition Government’s Welfare Reform Bill.

This is the so called ‘bedroom tax’ for social tenants set to be introduced in April 2013. If passed, it would implement a docking of Housing Benefit for Social Housing tenants.

The clause would change the rules so that a tenant who was deemed to have a spare room would lose around on average £13 a week of Housing Benefit. The rules would be made stricter, so that, for example, a family would have their benefit docked if there were two teenage daughters not sharing a room. Or a couple where one is just under the pensionable age who have 2 rooms.

It is estimated it would affect 670,000 households in the country.

This is not only unfair, as is in affect it financially penalises the worst off by forcing them to move or to cut their household budgets.  It is also poorly conceived, as in all likelihood those moving would either go into the private rental sector with higher rents so adding to the cost, or rent arrears will increase, putting pressure on us as a council.

It is also impractical as tenants would be expected to have the lower benefit rate applied immediately. So perhaps their 18 year old son moves for a job but then loses it, his parents would be expected to move the day after he leaves. This inflexible, punative plan is exactly the sort of muddled, unjust policy that we as a council should be protecting our tenants from.

Lord Best (a cross bencher) has successfully moved an amendment to remove this draconian clause, this will be passed back to the Commons where if the Liberal Democrat party oppose it, it will not happen. However, it seems likely the Government will reinstate the clause. Since it is not Lib Dem policy or in the Coalition agreement this should be rejected.

I will ask the Leader of the Council to write to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and all Lib Dem MPs to ask them to withdraw this clause, and call on MPs to maintain the amendment.

I invite the Leaders of the other groups on the council to co-sign the letters.