Shadow Housing Minister Mark Isherwood AM has challenged the First Minister over the Welsh Government’s failure to prepare for welfare reform.
Questioning Carwyn Jones in the Chamber yesterday, Mr Isherwood asked why, despite warnings, the Welsh Government did not plan for the removal of the spare room subsidy.
He said:
“The Public Policy Institute for Wales Report on ‘The Impact of Welfare Reforms on Housing Policy in Wales’, as I’m sure you know, identifies a lack of appropriate homes for tenants to be able to ‘downsize’ to. Why, given that Homes for All Cymru warned Welsh Government a decade before the removal of the spare-room subsidy of a housing crisis, and the UK Government produced Guidance on removing the spare-room subsidy two years before it went, did Welsh Government cut the supply of new social housing by over 70 per cent and fail to invest in smaller homes until after the changes had come into effect?”
In his response, the First Minister failed to answer the question but instead attacked the UK Government.
Mr Isherwood added: “Given that housing has been a devolved matter since 1999, it is no wonder that he is sticking to his stategy of talking about the UK Government in order to avoid responsibility for his own Government’s failures.
“It was his Labour Party which trapped an estimated 90,000 Welsh households on housing waiting lists as overcrowding and hidden homelessness mushroomed. Perhaps he should also explain why UK employment levels are up, but the number of people not in employment in Wales is rising, when welfare reform applies to the whole of the UK, but his Labour Government is running Wales.”