Opposition Day — Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty) — 27 Feb 2013 at 18:50

The majority of MPs voted in favour of a housing benefit under-occupancy penalty.

MPs were voting on a motion which called on the Government to abandon its proposed housing benefit under-occupancy penalty. This rejected motion was proposed by Eilidh Whiteford MP (Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party). It stated:

  • That this House
  • deplores and opposes the Government’s introduction of the housing benefit under-occupancy penalty;
  • believes it to be unjust and unworkable;
  • notes growing public anger at its introduction;
  • believes that the Government is showing a reckless lack of care and attention to the consequences of its introduction for low-income households affected by disability;
  • further believes that it will adversely affect, amongst others, families of service personnel, foster families and those struggling with the effects of family breakdown;
  • notes that some parts of the UK will be disproportionately hit because of the mismatch between the available social housing stock and the needs of tenants;
  • further notes that according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Equality Impact Assessment, 63 per cent of the 660,000 claimants affected by the under-occupancy penalty or their partners are disabled; believes that the measure unfairly penalises tenants in rural and inner-city areas;
  • further believes the under-occupancy penalty will fail to meet its stated objectives; and
  • calls on the Government to abandon this policy immediately.

An assessment of the impact of[1] introducing size criteria for working-age Housing Benefit claimants living in the social rented sector states: "The exchequer and taxpayers benefit as a result of benefit reductions to individuals"; this is balanced by potential higher costs to local authorities, and costs to individual claimants.

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Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Con244 (+1 tell) 0080.3%
DUP0 2025.0%
Lab0 214082.9%
LDem21 (+1 tell) 0039.3%
PC0 2 (+1 tell)0100.0%
SDLP0 1033.3%
SNP0 5 (+1 tell)0100.0%
Total:265 224077.2%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
no rebellions

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