Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord German]

If the noble Lord wants me to answer the question, I can answer it, and will answer it in this way; I believe that the three underpinning policies behind this section of this measure are correct, but in order to achieve those we have to answer some of the fundamental questions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, raised earlier on today. I have also tried to seek answers to those questions, because I have not found them. That is what we are here to do, and that is what the Committee stage of a Bill is about, it seems to me, but I am new to this particular Parliament. In the one I have come from, that is what we would do: explore these issues.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, I am provoked into joining this discussion, which I was going to leave until the next group of amendments.

First, underoccupation is one of the most serious concerns in this Bill, and I think that those concerns are shared across the Committee. I do not think that it helps to start picking away at the positions of individual members of the Committee at this time. What I think we are trying to do is to make it clear to the Government that the current proposals are unacceptable. They are unacceptable to me for two reasons. One is process—and we touched on the discussion about transition. On 1 April 2013, between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the case load, which is arguably 67,000 working-age families, will be tipped into debt. It is a brick wall that they cannot avoid. It is very unusual for a social policy change of this magnitude not to have built in a transitional provision.

With a little bit of application and consideration, we might be able to address the issue of overoccupation, which it would be sensible to do in the long term. Speaking for myself, I think that Amendment 44 is close to doing that, although Amendment 40 is not far away. I got a very interesting note from Moat housing the other day, which suggested that:

“Two bedroom properties or below should never be regarded as ‘under-occupied’”.

It is as simple as that. That is another way of expressing it. I do not know what it would cost, but the Committee is right to explore some of these circumstances, which have ramifications for social landlords as well as everyone else. What worries me more than anything else is that on 1 April—that may be an appropriate date—in 2013, that change will be made, and people have very little protection or room for manoeuvre.

The other very interesting suggestion that Moat housing made to me, which I had never heard before, was that a “soft start” could be adopted when people were demonstrating that they were taking steps to address the underoccupation that they were allegedly facing at the time. They could continue to get the full support until they had made the appropriate arrangements. It would probably take 18 months or two years to work out in the wash; that may be too tight a period—it might take longer than that to do safely. As a Committee, we are looking for a safe transition process and a way of limiting the brick wall of debt that 670,000 of our social tenants in the United Kingdom will face on 1 April 2013. That is a matter of concern across the Committee, which I think we should represent to the Government in a way that will occasion constructive change on Report.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, there is very little left to say, particularly after the astonishingly impressive opening speech of my noble friend Lady Hollis. If I were a Minister facing that speech across the Table I would have run the white flag up and gone to the pub, but the Minister is clearly made of sterner stuff than me, which is probably just as well.

I have two questions, the first specific and the second general. First, what discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in other departments about the position of children in relation to the implementation of these provisions? Like many other noble Lords, I have had a number of cases raised with me on the position of disabled children, to which we may return, and children with health problems, as discussed by my noble friend Lady Lister. Also, Barnardo’s, for example, raised with me the position of families in which a child or children are in temporary care. For example, they may live temporarily under a residence order with their grandparent, and while the family is trying to get the children back it may look as though they are underoccupying when they are not. There is a whole series of exceptions. I am interested in the specifics, but more generally has the Minister talked to colleagues in other departments about the impact on child welfare, safeguarding and well-being or child poverty when this policy is implemented?

The second question is one the answer to which I would be very interested to hear. We have talked a lot about modelling and transition, but the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, talked about what seemed to me to be an astonishingly simple amendment. She said that somebody should not be required to do something that they are incapable of doing. What is the Minister’s philosophical reply to that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I have spoken at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and in a field at Cardiff Castle, and I trust that your Lordships can hear me in Committee Room 4A.

It is perhaps appropriate that with Amendment 35 I am in pole position in this vast group of amendments, for I am putting forward the case for people who reached the back of the grid only some 20 years ago and who had never been allowed near the track before then. I am of course talking about people with a learning disability. As your Lordships are aware, this Bill aims to introduce regulations laying out not only how housing benefit costs can be integrated into the universal credit but how mortgage costs would in future be covered in this context.

The purpose of this amendment, tabled in my name, is to ensure that disabled people have opportunities to buy a property via the home ownership scheme for people with a long-term disability, otherwise known as HOLD. Until October 2010, disabled people were able to access the higher rate of support for mortgage interest, or SMI, which meant that some mortgage providers were willing to lend to people with a long-term disability under the HOLD scheme by providing very specialist mortgages. The Royal Mencap Society, of which I have the honour of being president, believes that, contrary to all expectations, more than 1,000 people with a learning disability have been enabled to buy their own homes by this route. There are many more who hope and are able to follow in their pioneering footsteps. However, the abolition of the higher rate for SMI has meant that these mortgages are no longer available. This route into housing for people with a learning disability has, in effect, been closed down.

The purpose of the amendment is, effectively, to reinstate this route of home ownership for disabled people. It would also ensure that the Government’s support for care in the community continues to be a reality. Turning again to the analogy of motor racing, I am concerned that if we do not take appropriate action on this point now, people with a learning disability could be forced to take a prolonged pit stop, during which others will continue to lap them in the race to secure a decent and comfortable home.

In this group I support Amendments 36, 38, 39, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 and 84. I beg to move.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 36. This group is not as complicated as it looks because there are two sets of mirrored amendments. I look forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, whose knowledge is well understood in this House. The meat of the group is to do with the exceptions, which relate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, accurately said, to our earlier debate.

Amendment 36 does a slightly different thing. Before I speak to it briefly, I shall refer to what I said in the previous session of the Grand Committee. We are all under pressure to disaggregate groups of amendments because the people who are promoting the amendments think that they get better consideration in the Government’s reply if they are considered individually. It is better to have a debate around a wider set of amendments but it will not work for the purposes of the people who tabled them unless the Minister is able to say something about individual amendments. If he cannot, the flexibility in the Government’s position cannot be properly understood and appropriate arrangements cannot be made for Report. The Minister has a very difficult job because there are many amendments on the Order Paper, but they are all important in their own way. If he can address them individually to the best of his ability, that would be a favour.

Amendment 36 tries to lift and lay the existing protections in the current provision of housing benefit in the private and public sectors under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. Clause 11 is very regulation-oriented. Its last three subsections refer to regulations that determine a whole series of things and are the basis for the amount of housing costs. What Clause 11 does not do is provide for entitlement to be related to rents in individual localities. These are key concepts in the existing system that we want to make sure are enshrined in the new provision under universal credit.