Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
I chose the CPI because it is generally the Government’s preferred option. I thought it might be pushing the boat out a little too far to go for RPI. However, if the amendment is carried, I hope very much that the noble Lord will have a word with his colleagues in the other place and improve on it in the way he suggests. I would be perfectly happy with that outcome and I suspect he is more likely to persuade them than I am. I beg to move the amendment as it stands at this point.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 8 because I have still not been given a satisfactory explanation for why the thresholds have been reduced from those that were used in the voluntary scheme. There is no evidence base for that. However, my main reason for speaking now is to seek clarification on a point raised by the Minister on Report and to reiterate a concern that I have raised all along.
Twice on Report, at cols. 470 and 472 on 18 April, the Minister said that tax credits, child benefit and disability living allowance would not be taken into account as income. That is welcome, but as she knows, DLA is gradually being replaced by the personal independence payment and only those who are currently of retirement age will continue to receive DLA in the long term. Can she confirm that PIP will also be excluded, because otherwise the commitment to disregard DLA is not worth very much? She also made it clear that other exemptions would be made in the regulations and kindly referred to the case I made with regard to those with caring responsibilities and people who are subject to domestic violence. Is she yet able to say, first, whether carer’s allowance will be exempt under the regulations and, secondly, what provision will be made to protect those whose accommodation has been adapted, either for reasons of accessibility or under the domestic violence sanctuary scheme?
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
I will formally move it. I just think we need a proper debate, not at 11.30 pm, on the growing problem of homelessness and rough sleeping. We will deal with that on Report if the Government are not able to come forward with some assurances in the mean time. But it is too late to get into such an important issue, so I shall move the amendment formally.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I will speak to Amendments 82GB and 82GC. They would provide a right to succession and secure tenancy for a carer where there is no spouse or common-law partner. Without this, carers who have given up so much to care for a parent or sibling could be rendered homeless when the person they have cared for dies or moves into residential care, even if they have lived in the property for many years. This is because, as it stands, Schedule 8 to the Bill will standardise all secure council tenancies by removing the automatic right to succession for anyone but a spouse or common-law partner, as with all secure tenancies granted after 2012.
Carers UK demonstrates the potential impact of such a measure through the story of John, who gave up his music career to care for his father who had Alzheimer’s disease and his mother who had severe psychiatric problems, moving back into his parents’ council property to become a full-time carer in 2010. Last year, John’s father had a severe fall and was hospitalised, and later moved permanently to a nursing home due to his care needs. John’s mother has now become impossible to care for and the family are exploring the option of residential care due to her increasing needs. Under the Bill, if John’s mother moves into care, he will have no right to succeed to the tenancy and will be evicted from the family home by the council.
The least we can do for carers such as John, who gave up his career to care for his parents and depleted his savings in doing so, is ensure that they have the ability to stay in their home once their caring role ends. While local authorities will continue to have discretion to grant succession rights in certain cases, the guidance on this is very poor and must be updated to include carers—something I hope the Minister will look at. Better still, their right to succession where there is no spouse or common-law partner, should be enshrined in legislation.
Lastly, it is important to note that these amendments are in line with recommendations put forward by the Law Commission’s review of housing. The Law Commission recommended that in the absence of a spouse or partner a “reserve successor”, such as a carer, should be able to inherit the home if it is their only or principal residence. In fact, until 2012 the government guidance also recognised that those providing care should have the opportunity to inherit the tenancy. However, I understand that this section of the guidance to local authorities was removed in 2012. The Minister very kindly agreed to meet Carers UK to discuss the previous amendment. I suggest that we add this issue to the agenda for such a meeting, especially in the context of the Government’s carer strategy, currently in development, which looks at how we can better support carers across all aspects of their lives.
Housing Benefit (Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Beecham(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, as the Regret Motion makes clear, we have to understand these regulations in the context of the impact of the bedroom tax.
My noble friend Lady Sherlock quoted Esther McVey on Radio 5. I will take us back to her rather wonderful interview on Radio 4, in which the interviewer had to drag out of her that the Government’s estimate is that only 8% of people had moved—a whole two percentage points more than the BBC estimate which she had been contesting. She was asked if she was disappointed. She replied:
“Well no, because it wasn’t that you had to move house”.
How is that consistent with her statement in debate in the other place? She said:
“The reason that we are putting these measures in place is that we want to ensure we make the best use of our social housing”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/2/14; col. 311.]
In addition, how is it consistent with the constant refrain:
“How can we justify 1 million spare rooms when other people are sometimes crammed together in a room?”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/3/13; col. 27.]
Can the Minister tell us exactly how many rooms have been freed up by this policy? As the Work and Pensions Committee report observed, it is,
“a blunt instrument for achieving this”
aim, and one that is causing hardship, as we have already heard from other noble Lords.
Why, then, have people not moved? As has already been said, it is partly because there is nowhere to move to. In the Independent, on 3 March, it was reported that,
“a severe shortage of smaller council homes across the country is being exacerbated by the right-to-buy scheme—leaving many victims of the bedroom tax with no choice but to accept reduced benefits”.
Also, many people do not want to move because they do not want to lose social networks that are very important to them—a point I have made over and over again in this House. We are not talking about housing in the abstract, but about people’s homes within communities that matter to them.
As Demos said, in a study it carried out on social ties,
“policies can serve to actively undermine the kind of self-help and mutual support that families engage in”.
One would have thought that that would be approved of by a Conservative-led Administration who believe in the big society. Reforms such as the removal of the underoccupancy penalty—dubbed the bedroom tax—have left people with a choice of either finding more money for rent from already stretched budgets or moving away from support networks that make life liveable for many.
We have heard about rising rent arrears, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this week I attended the launch of a report by Community Links on the impact of the first year of so-called welfare reform—although I would call it social security cuts—in the London borough of Newham. The person presenting the findings pointed out that many people prioritise rent for fear of eviction. Therefore, there may not be rent arrears, but what other impact is it having on what people can spend on other essentials, and how many people are turning to payday lenders or, even worse, to loan sharks? That morning we heard tales of utter despair—the result of the cumulative impact of this and other benefit cuts such as council tax benefit.
The suggestion has been made: “Let them take lodgers”. Do we know how many people have taken on lodgers as a result of this policy? Some noble Lords who are following the Immigration Bill will know that later this afternoon we will talk about its residential tenancy provisions. Anyone who takes a lodger as a result of the bedroom tax will be turned into a mini-immigration officer and will have to check the immigration credentials of their lodger. Do we really want people on benefit being turned into mini-immigration officers to prevent illegal immigration?
The Minister, Esther McVey, pleaded that the BBC report showed how complex this is. I can suggest a simple solution: follow the policy of the Opposition—which I hope will very soon be the official policy of the Liberal Democrats—and abolish the bedroom tax.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I think I am the only serving, elected councillor who is likely to speak in this debate, unless the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in his declining days as a councillor—I believe he is standing down shortly—joins in to proclaim the new, belated Lib Dem policy on the bedroom tax. I bring a snapshot from Newcastle, where 5,400 households are affected, at an average cost to each of them of £13.47 a week. If paid, that represents around £3.75 million to be taken out of the local economy, so there is a knock-on effect, quite apart from the housing effect, on that economy. Just under one-quarter of those are working households, one-third have children and, as we have already heard, many have disabled people in them. In my own ward, there are 315 such households.
As has already been pointed out, it is not a simple matter to transfer into a smaller property. In Newcastle, we have 3,558 people seeking one-bedroom accommodation. The average number of available one-bedroom properties per year is 64. It would take a generation or more to accommodate those people. Some 615 are seeking to move down to two-bedroom accommodation. There is, admittedly, a slightly higher availability of this—all of 101 a year. Any effect on the private sector, which in Newcastle is largely taken up with students, will drive up rents. Landlords are increasingly reluctant to take tenants who are on benefits of one kind or another. This policy is not only cruel and inefficient; it is based on a complete misunderstanding—to put it generously—of what happens in the social housing market. It is damaging people’s lives.
I conclude with an anecdote about meeting a couple of people in their fifties—not in my own ward—who benefited from the decision which required the Government to effectively refund the amount paid because of the length of their tenure of the property. I was able to tell them they would be getting the money back but I also had to give the bad news that the Government were seeking to ensure that the money returned to them was spent on paying the bedroom tax. Here were two disabled people, living in a house for just under 30 years, with one of their grandchildren staying with them when I called. This just illustrates the cruelty and incompetence of the measure and I congratulate my noble friend on bringing this Motion of Regret.