Rural Poverty: Benefits System

11. What steps he is taking through the benefits system to tackle poverty in rural areas.

We are bearing down on poverty, not least by incentivising work within the benefit system. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we have reduced the universal credit taper, for example, which has led to a record level of payroll employment and near record low unemployment.

I commissioned a poverty report for the Arfon constituency from the highly respected Bevan Foundation—copies are available online in Welsh and English. One finding is that, of the people receiving both universal credit and housing benefit in Arfon, 35% are paying the bedroom tax, compared with 21% across Wales. This is cushioned to some extent by the Gwynedd local authority’s discretionary help, but will the Minister review the differential negative effects of the bedroom tax between communities, particularly those with a diminished housing stock because of, for example, high levels of holiday homes?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for referring to that report, which I will look at with interest. Of course, there is no such thing as a bedroom tax, as it is not a tax at all; it is a spare room subsidy. It is there for very good reason: to free up additional space for those who need it. On the housing front, as I said earlier, local housing allowance has been improved such that 1.6 million people on low incomes in the private rented sector will be, on average, £800 a year better off come April.

One of the best ways to tackle poverty in rural areas such as Ynys Môn is through jobs fairs. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking Alwen Gardiner and my brilliant Ynys Môn DWP team for organising an excellent tourism and hospitality jobs fair, which was attended by over 150 jobseekers in Llangefni and companies such as Tredici Butchers & Deli in Beaumaris, and the Breeze Hill in Benllech? Diolch yn fawr.

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to her jobs fair. She is a local dynamo in standing up for her constituents. When I arrived there recently thinking I was very special to support yet another jobs fair—a disability jobs fair—I was quickly reminded of the fact that I was the 32nd Minister to have been to her constituency in, I think, the past 12 months.