Housing: Discretionary Housing Payment

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my noble friend draws attention to the point that we have introduced a cap on the amount of housing benefit to stop the very large amounts that were paid on local housing allowance.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, 500,000 people are affected by the bedroom tax, most of them disabled. If the Minister wants some figures, two-thirds of tenants hit by the bedroom tax are currently in arrears and, of those, 40% have been issued with a notice seeking possession. This is a serious crisis, and I think that the Minister should acquaint himself with all the figures, including those on evictions.

The House knows that a Labour Government would abolish the bedroom tax. The Minister told the House on 12 December that,

“the interim review is due to be published in the spring of 2014. I will be most pleased to discuss the findings of that review with Members of the House, who I suspect will be keen to have that dialogue”.—[Official Report, 12/12/13; col. 907.]

I am very keen to have the dialogue. When does it start?

[Lord Freud]

The noble Baroness need not persuade me about the savings—she needs to persuade the OBR, which has scored down in the Budget £490 million. The noble Baroness talked about the fact that a Labour Government would abolish the spare room subsidy. We will produce an interim report later this year, as I said, and we will bring forward next year the full report on what has been happening with the bedroom tax, as you would call it.