2012 and 2013 will be two of the unhappiest New Years ever experienced by many of the poorest citizens of the richest parts of London. Even under normal circumstances moving house can be traumatic. Nevertheless the government’s Welfare Reform Bill will force people to move house by making their accommodation unaffordable and putting them into rent arrears, which will in turn generate severe stress and mental health difficulties. It started with the housing benefit caps, which will be taking effect from the 1st of January 2012, and is repeated in the second wave of distress to be caused by the cap on the Universal Credit beginning in 2013.

It is our view that it is impossible to implement the UC cap in London without damaging the health and wellbeing of individuals, parents and their children, and should not therefore be implemented in London.
We ask Peers, and other comfortable tax payers, to consider where the unfairness lies, in their pockets or in the resulting ill health and misery of the victims of these policies. London Councils have estimated that 133,000 households in London will suffer an average loss of £105 a week if the planned cap on the Universal Credit goes ahead alongside the current housing benefit changes. The government has also estimated that 670,000 families will lose on average £676 a year if the planned reductions in benefit for under-occupying go ahead. But research from the National Housing Federation suggests a household under-occupying a three-bedroom home in London faces losing up to £1,385 a year. In the north west a family in a three-bed could lose up to £854 a year. It is unlikely there are enough one bedroom properties to take these tenants, this will also lead to evictions.

The Government Office for Science recognises the relationship between debt and mental illness. On top of that other researchers at the London School of Economics have found a clear link between anxiety and depression among parents and an increased chance of the children being ill and having a high temperature. The research helped in "understanding the biological impact of multiple sources of chronic stress in families on specific immune functions in a sample of generally healthy children", the team wrote in the Journal of Brain Behaviour and Immunity.
Schools in Westminster and Kensington have successfully spent tax payers money on services to parents and children who have been excluded from society and education by the cruel misfortune of being born poor. These families have made real progress and their children have begun to accept the education so vital to their lifelong wellbeing. They are about to be forcibly uprooted from friends, family and therapeutic services, and forced into the trauma of entry into a new, possibly unwelcoming, community and school.

The madness of this policy is illustrated in Waltham Forest where the council is coping with the influx of families from Westminster and Kensington, who were advised to get moving before the axe falls. Landlords are increasing their rents because of the increased demand, some times higher than the caps. The council’s own deprived families are being shunted out of London altogether to Luton, where the council has made a deal with private landlords.

Comfortable taxpayers should not be taken in by talk of transitional arrangements; the temporary discretionary housing payments do not mend broken lives. Nor should they countenance the government’s naïve suggestion that landlords will lower their rents to meet the caps where there is a healthy demand for rented accommodation. They are in fact increasing their rents where they are lower than the caps thus increasing the cost of housing benefit to the tax payer. Caps will only act as rent controls where landlords have no alternative, non-housing benefit market within which increase them. This is simply not true of most Inner and many Outer London boroughs where accommodation is in such high demand that working individuals will pay extortionate prices, even if this limits the amount of money they have to spend on other items such as a healthy diet.

The Welfare Reform Bill is being discussed by Peers in January. We call on you to prevent the mass changing of locks by bailiffs as tenants are evicted to an uncertain future; to abolish the cap on the Universal Credit; to call for a reform of the Housing Benefit Regulations; and to insist on the creation of a policy for affordable housing in all tenures which will improve the wellbeing and security of every one of London’s citizens.

Tariq Abu Rahma,
please help us from this resolution useless humanity

xxxxxxxx,
I am totally opposed benefit cuts and agree with the petition.We need representation in parliament to put our case.