The bedroom tax is officially discriminatory – abandon it now

The Government’s defeat in the Court of Appeal in two landmark cases, a verdict handily delivered shortly before Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, puts the so-called bedroom tax where it should always have been – destined for the legislative scrapheap.

If the Government found it so easy to drop its reforms of tax credits, which generally hit the working poor rather than the most vulnerable in society, then it should be able to execute a similarly nonchalant U-turn over the bedroom tax. Unless, that is, there aren’t enough votes in it.

It is difficult not to be cynical when you consider the progress of this policy. It certainly passes the “duck test” (if it looks like a duck…) as a new tax on the poor, which is why it is generally known as a tax and not a social security reform or the “spare-room subsidy”, as ministers would prefer us to call it. Like the community charge (or poll tax), and other ill-starred attempts to insult the intelligence of the public, it is no such thing.

As a tax – as we must concede it is – it needs to be fair, to be seen to be fair, and to be acceptable to those hit by it. It demonstrably is not, and our independent judiciary has rightly found it discriminatory too. The Government is taking its case to appeal, but its chances of success seem poor.

The practical argument against the bedroom tax is almost as powerful as the moral one. Who can define with legal precision a “spare room”? Who would even try? Who would attempt to ignore the many difficult individual cases and glaring anomalies they might create?

In the distant past governments have introduced taxes on windows, wigs, even the ownership of a dog. They were bizarre policies which led to bizarre consequences. The bedroom tax is firmly in that inglorious tradition. Let this ruling mark the beginning of its end.