Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
This lesson appears not to have been taken on board by Brandon Lewis, the minister for housing and planning. The Sunday Times reported that Lewis claimed a total of £30,750 in overnight stays on 99 occasions last year, at a rate of £150 a night, and 106 times the previous year. Sources close to Lewis point out this is within the expenses rules, and Lewis is “personally upset” by the criticism that ensued following the report.
He’s correct that this is allowed, but it looks terribly bad. Lewis owns three homes, two of them within an hour’s drive from London. The homes are worth around £3.5m in total, and the home he appears to spend most time in is a 35-minute train journey from central London, in Chelmsford.
Voting consistently for the bedroom tax and cuts to benefits, Lewis is surely aware that much of the Conservative rhetoric around housing and poverty in his party is focused on the idea of “lifestyle choices”: the ridiculous idea that people are in housing need or on the breadline because they choose to be, and that economically disadvantaging people further through welfare cuts is all that is needed to spur them into work and affluence.
This argument never seems to adhere to those at the opposite end of the scale: bankers, symbols of the lingering economic crash of 2008, need bonuses and high salaries if they are to continue working. MPs need expenses and higher salaries, else we’ll end up with no talented MPs. The idea that high salaries, rather than a duty to serve the public, should attract MPs is unpalatable to most voters.
Whichever way you look at it, capping housing benefit, enforcing the bedroom tax, and supporting sanctions while pocketing huge amounts of cash to stay in hotels is an indictment of his character. Either Lewis and fellow MPs believe there are two classes of people in Britain, the rich and the poor, who deserve to live by different moral codes when it comes to accessing public money, or MPs have no clue how badly people are affected by housing problems in both the constituencies they represent and the city they travel to in order to vote in parliament.
Westminster council moved 48% of homelessness cases out of borough in 2013 due to an acute shortage of housing that fell within the benefit cap. Meanwhile, Lewis could rent a studio flat there for £1,198 a month and walk to work, which would work out at less than he claimed for hotels in 2014. .
Politicians need to wake up to the fact that their actions, though not illegal, open them up to accusations of hypocrisy, and symbolise the gulf between those affected by the housing crisis and those profiting from the rise in house prices. Forcing people in housing need into destitution while staying in £150-a night hotels at the taxpayers’ expense doesn’t endear you to anyone, least of all the people hit by your policies.
Or how about this modest proposal, minister? Since the Conservatives suggested that people hit by the bedroom tax take in a lodger to mitigate the effect of the cuts, you could solve two problems with one stone and lodge in a flat with a “spare room”. It’ll would be far cheaper for you, and you’ll be doing a good deed in the midst of the housing crisis.
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