Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope and Lord Rix

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Grand Committee

[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.