Time for Labour to take a hard look at welfare and housing

I’m a former miner and an active member of the Labour Party. I was elected a Labour councillor in Nottinghamshire last year and I’m proud to represent the town of Huthwaite, the community where I have lived all my life. I’m also proud of what the last Labour government achieved but I believe we need to take a long hard look at ourselves as a party because we have very testing times ahead.

In my opinion the three greatest achievements of the Labour Party are the NHS, the Welfare State and Social Housing. These are the three areas we need to be strong on if voters are ever going to take us seriously again. Let’s start with social housing. But I should warn you that I’m going to spell out some home truths not every Labour member will want to hear.

Council houses were first built in large numbers by a Labour government after the war. They were a great idea to provide decent homes for the workers of the country. To get a council house in the 1940s you had to meet certain criteria; you had to be working, you had to be able to pay your rent and you had to make a commitment to look after the property as if it was your own. The council would even come round and check the house and gardens to make sure everything was in check.

But today an average hardworking couple has literally no chance of ever getting social housing. Why not? It’s because of the way housing and homelessness legislation works. For example if you are pregnant, a single parent, or you have an addiction you will go to the top of the waiting list, pushing a typical couple to the bottom. I have a friend who at the age of 26 decided she wanted a baby. She had no boyfriend or partner – but she wanted a baby. She had no job and lived with her parents. She went out and got pregnant and before the baby was born she was handed the keys to a brand new house from a local social housing provider with all her rent and council tax paid. The child was born and she now receives Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance, Child Benefit and Tax credits.

The truth is that couples have no chance of getting a council house. Of course single mothers and people who have drug problems need houses to live in – but so do the average hardworking people of this country. When they see a local council spending millions on a new housing project it can’t be a surprise when it leaves them feeling angry.

After I left the mine where I worked for 12 years, I spent another 10 years advising people on benefits.  I know how the system works because I’ve seen it close up. A good number of council estate residents and those who don’t work are pretty savvy when it comes to benefits. For example, they know that if you have a child who can be diagnosed with ADHD or autism then you can claim Disability Living Allowance, which then enables you to claim enhanced disability premiums on tax credits and, more importantly, entitles the parent to Carers Allowance. Those parents don’t need to go to work. Better still, from their point of view, having a child on DLA then exempts the whole household from the Benefits Cap. So it is extremely beneficial to have a child diagnosed with one of these conditions because it significantly increases the income of the household.

I saw a case two years ago where a local couple had five children, two of whom were diagnosed with ADHD, and the family received £50,000 a year in benefits – you would need a job earning £73,000 a year to get this. How many people going to work and paying taxes does it take to fund that family? But more importantly the couple is now trapped in a way of life that is essentially dependent on welfare.

I know this is not always their fault. I know the cycle of benefit dependency is not an easy one to break and that it’s not an easy problem to solve. But I want Labour to be the party that solves it – not the ghastly Conservative Party of Iain Duncan Smith or George Osborne. They don’t truly understand working people and they never will.

But the average traditional Labour Voter, whose parents and grandparents voted Labour too, are now becoming disillusioned with it all. They go to work, they struggle to get by and they just want to make sure their kids get a good education and a decent job. They start thinking “what is in it for us?” and sometimes I can’t blame them.  Labour achieved a huge amount during 13 years in power and I am very proud of that, but what is in it now for our target voters? They already know that their kids will struggle to buy a house and that they won’t get social housing because they don’t qualify. They are pretty much on their own. This is where our party is letting people down – and they are the very people the Labour party was created to help.

We need to change the entire housing and benefits system to make sure that it’s fair and that people go on benefits as a last resort – not as a life choice or as a career. We set up the Welfare State so people had a safety net to catch them when they fell because unexpected or unforeseen events can and do happen – a death in the family, a sudden illness, divorce or losing a job.  That safety net should not be used by those who have become skilled at climbing onto it and staying there. Welfare dependency is not a career.

People need to know that we are on the side of the average working person. In the world of Labour politics, we argue about whether we are left wing enough. In the real world people simply do not care if you are left wing or right wing, they just want what they think is best for themselves and their family – and more importantly they need to have hope. They need to know that if they work hard and do right by their family the next generation will be a little bit better off than the current one.

Lee Anderson is a Labour Councillor in Huthwaite and Brierely. He was a coal miner for 12 years and a Citizens Advice Service manager and adviser for 10 years.