Docking benefit wont stop antisocial behaviour, says study

Plans to dock housing benefit from antisocial tenants will not work, according to Blairite think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The IPPR found that the proposal failed its tests for successful policies: it failed to create equality of opportunity, it was unlikely to achieve its objectives and there were too many negative side-effects, such as homelessness due to eviction.

Kate Stanley, the IPPR’s head of social policy, said the think tank was not against the idea of setting behavioural conditions on benefits but felt docking housing benefit from antisocial tenants would not work.

She said: “This policy cannot be said to pass any of these three tests. This shows the limits of the conditionality approach more generally in trying to affect behavioural change.”

The policy was set to be part of the Antisocial Behaviour Act but was dropped. However, the government has never fully ruled out the idea.

Adam Sampson, director of homelessness charity Shelter, said: “Housing benefit is there to help people pay their rent. It cannot be used to tackle antisocial behaviour and this report shows that. All that cutting housing benefit will achieve is increase poverty, exclusion and homelessness while doing nothing to end antisocial behaviour.”

Birkenhead MP Frank Field, who was a vocal supporter of benefit docking, criticised the IPPR research. He said: “It says everything about how the IPPR thinks we make policy in that we do not talk to the person who proposed it; you cannot have a more armchair approach than that. The bill I proposed was clear and said people had to be found guilty twice in a court [before losing housing benefit].”

Field will put the benefit docking idea before MPs once again as part of a broader range of ideas to tackle antisocial behaviour.

In the bill, which he will table in the next parliamentary session, Field will also propose a network of foster parents to act as role models to children of antisocial families. He will also suggest that police officers should be allowed to issue antisocial behaviour orders after giving an offender two warnings. He will also demand that every local authority should have a scheme to reform antisocial families, similar to the Rochdale support project run by Shelter.