Scottish Affairs Committee publishes bedroom tax report The Scottish Affairs Committee has published its ninth report of the parliamentary session, urging the Scottish Government to adopt a plan B to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax. The report, The Impact of the Bedroom tax in Scotland: Charges, Arrears and Refunds calls on the Scottish Government to meet all the bedroom tax charges for Scottish tenants, write off all the arrear and refund all the payments that have been made, as the only fair and workable way forward. There is uncertainty how the extra £15 million allocated in the Scottish Government Budget for bedroom tax mitigation can be used. As a plan A, the Scottish Government is seeking consent from the UK Government to lift the two and a half times ceiling on Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) expenditure, but to date no formal response has been received. Ian Davidson MP, Chair of the Committee, said: The bedroom tax remains cruel and unfair and we remain in favour of its abolition. As long as it remains in place we continue to be strongly in favour of mitigating the effect of the tax by the changes we have already proposed. We call on the Scottish Government to develop a plan B to negate the bedroom tax for the coming financial year. If the bedroom tax is worthy of cancelling next month then it is worthy of cancelling this month too, and therefore the negation of the tax for 2014–15 should be paralleled by negation for 2013–14. Thus all bedroom tax arrears should be written off and, to avoid the moral hazard of allowing those who have struggled to pay to remain penalised, all payments made should be refunded. The Scottish Government has the powers; it has the money; we hope it has the will. If necessary we would be pleased to assist the Scottish Government in identifying all three, as will the Scottish Parliament, campaigning groups and the Scottish housing community. Mary Taylor, SFHA Chief Executive, said: We agree with the Scottish Affairs Committee and others that repeal is the cleanest and most effective means of remedying the bedroom tax. However, there is a significant constitutional dimension to dealing with the bedroom tax in Scotland, and on that basis we have welcomed the cross-party collaboration in the Scottish Parliament around the mitigation issue. Any solution has to be workable and constitutionally viable. We are extremely disappointed to see that the opportunity has yet to be taken by the UK Government to respond to the Scottish Governments request for consent to raise the cap on Discretionary Housing Payments. Scotlands housing associations are keen to see the additional monies identified by the Scottish Government for bedroom tax mitigation for tenants, but we need the uncertainty removed. We should have had arrangements in place by now. We are only days away from the start of the new financial year. A link to the Scottish Affairs Committee report can be found on the welfare reform update page of the SFHA Website. Tuesday, 25 March 2014 09:52
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 17:22:22 +0000
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