“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome this White Paper and are very keen that it should work and deliver positive outcomes for people who are out of the labour market, people who are economically inactive, those with health problems, and young people trying to get a productive start in life. Many of the proposals contained in the White Paper are either based on or continuations of some of the work we started in government—our WorkWell pilot schemes, our youth offer with youth hubs, and the universal support schemes—but we are not quite sure about the carrying on of the fit note, so I would be grateful for some confirmation on that. It is critical that the outcomes of the White Paper proposals work and, to that end, we really want them to.

I will talk about outcomes, which are important when looking at the investment being committed to this important area of work. As many in this House will know, I spent many years working with others in this sphere, so noble Lords must forgive my passion and commitment to the subject. Let me give just a few examples. On ThinkForward, we put our advisers in schools, working with the teachers and the management team. Our job was to prevent young people becoming NEET in the first place. The outcomes were that 85% of the 14 to 16 year-olds showed significant improvement in their attendance and behaviour. Some 60% of the group achieved at least five GCSEs at grade A to C and —wait for it—96% of the 17 to 18 year-olds in further education, employment or training were still there after a year.

Then we put our advisers into doctors’ surgeries. Let me tell your Lordships about the outcomes: a 20% reduction in GP appointments, a 74% reduction in referrals to practice counsellors—not that there is anything wrong with counsellors—and a 34% reduction in antidepressant prescriptions. Some 36% of people who completed the course were in employment and 80% of the 36% were still in employment 12 months later. This was for one surgery with a cohort of 200 people, at a cost of just over £2,000 a job. The noble Baroness who was the Minister of State for Education visited the project and saw for herself how great it was.

My other point on outcomes is, as noble Lords have heard me say many times, that getting someone into a job is one thing but keeping them there is another. Will His Majesty’s Government publish a set of metrics against which we can judge the success of Get Britain Working? Will they publish quarterly performance data? This will allow us to see what is working—and, indeed, what needs to change—to make this policy more effective. There is nothing wrong with changing half way through or changing course; people who do not change their minds do not change anything. Once someone has a job, will they retain the support of their coach to help them stay in work to ensure that the return on the investment reaches its full potential?

On employers, economic activity is not a problem that the Government can solve on their own. Businesses are the engine of our economy. They create jobs. No Government can improve employment rates without creating an environment where business can thrive and grow. If people are to get off benefits and into work, there must be jobs for them to do. However, as a result of this Government’s Budget, businesses are saying that they will no longer be hiring. Some 50,000 jobs will be lost from this Budget alone, according to the OBR. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s decision to raise employer national insurance contributions has had a negative impact on the chances of finding employment? If the Minister wishes to help more 18 year- olds into work, I respectfully suggest—I was challenged on this many times here—that she might speak to the Chancellor who has made it so that from April it will cost £5,000 more for a business to employ someone.

The Minister might also take the opportunity to speak to the Business Secretary whose Employment Rights Bill will, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, make it less likely that employers will take on young people. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s policies are counterproductive and making it harder for people to get into work? Only employers create jobs—and they have a very challenging time ahead.

As much as the people we are trying to help need continued, robust support, so do employers. We will be asking them to try to integrate people with various issues into their workforce. Let me tell noble Lords about one project I was involved in. A very high-profile car company said it wanted to integrate long-term unemployed people into its workforce. We got a young girl booking the executive travel for the workforce. She turned up for work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but on Friday she was a no-show. Our staff went round and knocked on the door. She came down in her pyjamas. We said, “What are you up to?”. She said, “I never went to school on a Friday and nobody said anything”. That is true. We told her to get dressed and took her to work. The next week, the same thing happened. We went round, knocked on the door and took her to work. The third week, she showed up and it was not a problem. That is an example of the level of support that people need.

We on these Benches fully support the review of the apprenticeship levy. It is much needed and will be welcomed by employers. But I am disappointed that those on the Labour Benches in the other place could not recognise the significant work that came before them on apprenticeships. We have had over 5.8 million apprentices earning while they learn since 2010, 225,000 of them at degree level since degree apprenticeships were launched by the Conservative Government. Over that time, we developed 690 high-quality apprenticeship standards in partnership with 5,000 employers, 370 of those in STEM subjects, ensuring that we delivered the skills the country needs. This is a record to be proud of and I know the Minister will be keen to build on it.

I come now to the merging of jobcentres and the careers service. It is good to see the continued cross-government working between the DWP, the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care. It is really important that the Government work across departments. The merging of Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service is a significant move. Can the Minister tell the House what assessment and analysis has been made to result in this decision? What is the plan for the merged service to become operational and what do His Majesty’s Government forecast that the benefits will be? What is the plan for ensuring the staff have the skills to carry out their roles? What is the timetable to deliver the new service and when will it become operational?

The challenge to Get Britain Working should not be underestimated but do we really need to wait one to two years for it to gain momentum? I assure the whole House that we on these Benches want this to work; we want Britain to work. For the sake of the people, we all want to help. To quote my leader in the other place: we are here for you—let us help. I personally pledge any help I can give to making this work.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we welcome the encouragement the Government are giving to improving apprenticeships, reforming jobcentres and investing in the health service to cut mental health and other health problems affecting labour activity rates. The long-term sickness at the end of this Parliament, projected to be 2.8 million, is clearly completely unacceptable, and the social and benefit costs of that will be dire. We need to transform our training, career and employment services. The only problem is that we have been arguing and discussing this for more than 50 years of my political life. It comes up in every generation.

In this sort of debate or Statement, we should have in front of us all the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, from the Budget debate. She said that

“if Britain were ranked against each of the 50 US states in terms of wealth, it would be last, with Britain’s GDP per capita … below America’s poorest state, Mississippi”.—[Official Report, 11/11/24; col. 1614.]

Our per capital income in this country has not grown for 10 or possibly 15 years; 25 years ago our economy was larger than China’s, and we are now 20% of the size of China. Those are the warning signals, and therefore investment in training is absolutely fundamental to the Government’s growth strategy.

I have six points, which I hope will be helpful, on aspects that I am worried about. First, as I said, we have been struggling with our training, career services and jobcentres for more than 50 years. There have been so many initiatives. Does the Minister accept that it is not going to take one year, nor five years, nor possibly even 10 years? This is a 20-year programme to get this right. It needs investment and long-term planning to achieve comprehensive reform.

Secondly, are the Government worried that there is a huge shortage of resources here? There are a number of schemes in this White Paper devolving to mayors eight trailblazers; we are going to spend £45 million next year. That is just £6 million per region. It sounds like quite a lot of money but in reality it is not, so there is just a slight worry that this is a sticking plaster trying to deal with a long-term problem. Too many of these funding projects are just for one year, when we actually need a long-term plan. The White Paper seeks to bring together the jobcentres and the National Careers Service to transform our training arrangements. This is going to involve a major culture change. Any other organisation undergoing this would be planning for the long term and understand that it is going to take a major effort to achieve it, let alone make an impact. Do the Government realise this?

Thirdly, the youth guarantee is a fine objective, but in the White Paper there is very little mention of the role of further education. This is one sector, outside universities, that has been neglected and underresourced over the last few years, but it is fundamental to all this. Are the Government going to set some objectives and produce a reform of further education?

Obviously, the one priority that the Government have set—quite rightly—is that we must clear the backlog in mental health care and in the health services, but all the evidence is that early intervention is required to get people back into work quickly. Is there a conflict between the long-term need to clear the backlog and having resources to deal with the short-term, immediate need?

Finally, reducing the backlog in the NHS, which is behind a lot of these problems, is going to require real progress in social care. I know that the Government are struggling to come up with their reforms on this, but I repeat that releasing the NHS beds that are being used for social care is absolutely fundamental to providing beds to get people back into the labour market. They cannot get the care at the moment.

Employment and Support Allowance

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, first, I will respond to the noble Baroness by referencing passported benefits, which are of course the responsibility of each government department. It would be impractical for the DWP to undertake an exercise to uncover who might have been entitled to those other passported benefits. However, we are talking to other departments to make them aware of the issue. In terms of compensation, it is important to make it very clear that no one saw a cash reduction when they were transferred to ESA. This is about extra money that they might have been entitled to. Also, it is really important to explain that we are learning lessons from this. The key lesson is that it is a mistake to try to prepopulate information without being in touch with claimants. It is very important for us to make sure, when we are changing benefits or introducing new benefits, that we do so in a way that involves working with claimants so that, rather than trying to be clever with a seamless process, we actually engage. That is what we are doing now, with what will be 800 people working with claimants to get this right.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, this announcement is a stark warning that a botched transition, which very sadly took place under the coalition, can leave vulnerable people thousands of pounds out of pocket for years to come. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has just said, in the move to universal credit, we must take more care. What lessons are the Government learning from this mistake for the big changes to come and what new safeguards are they putting in place? In particular, will the Government amend the proposed Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) (Managed Migration) Amendment Regulations 2018 so that claimants are transferred automatically from legacy benefits such as income-related employment and support allowance to universal credit?

[Baroness Buscombe]

First, I want to make it clear that we are constantly looking at how we can make our procedures more robust. In fact, our Permanent Secretary is in discussion with the Public Accounts Committee about how we can do this. The key lesson that we have very much taken on board in developing our processes and our thoughts on managed migration is—as I have just said, and I will repeat it—that it is important that we engage properly with the claimants and that we do not have a system that is entirely automatic without the opportunity to understand up-to-date data, information and circumstances with regard to each and every claimant. That is to ensure that claimants do not lose out on benefits to which they are entitled, unlike the legacy benefits, which about 700,000 people are not receiving. That is about £2.4 billion because there is not sufficient contact.

Local Welfare Assistance

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

No, my Lords. The Government believe that councils are best placed to decide how to support local welfare needs. Local authorities in England will receive more than £200 billion to deliver those and other community services between this year and 2019-20, and will have the certainty to plan ahead through our four-year funding settlement.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

According to the report from the Centre for Responsible Credit, in one year, my own city of Portsmouth has reduced the amount it spends on welfare assistance from £700,000 to £30,000. Do the Government intend to review the impact of these sorts of changes? If not, why not?

[Baroness Buscombe]

It is important that I stress again that, under the national system, there are strong safeguards in place. We expect local authorities to concentrate the funding on those facing the greatest difficulty in managing their income and to enable a more flexible response to an unavoidable need, perhaps through a mix of cash or goods and aligning with the wider range of local support that local authorities’ devolved administrations already offer. In short, the funding is to allow them to give flexible help to those in genuine need.

Benefit Rate Freeze

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have said to noble Lords opposite, we do care, but we are absolutely clear that work is the best way to get children, in particular, out of poverty. That is why we want to incentivise work, which is the best route, but we need to focus on making sure that people see their wages rise and take home more of their pay packet once they are in work. Our reforms include increasing the national living wage for workers aged 25 and over, cutting income tax for over 30 million people and extending free childcare for working parents.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, the Government never anticipated that inflation would be double what it was when they originally introduced this freeze on working-age benefits. If they are prepared to look again at public sector pay, why will they not look at working-age benefits?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I think I said that we are already spending over £95 billion on benefits for people of working age, but we have to ensure that that is fair also to the taxpayer and that it encourages people into work. Before we brought in the Welfare Reform and Work Act, the inflation rate, for example, for most working-age out-of-work benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance, went up by 21% between 2008 and 2015, while earnings rose by 12%. We want to incentivise work, which we know is the best route out of poverty.

Pension Protection Fund and Pensions Regulator

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely accept what my noble friend has proposed; I am very much hoping that this will be part of the many issues covered in the White Paper.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

Surprisingly, the section of the Conservative manifesto on protecting private pensions did not mention George Osborne’s policy of enabling people to cash in their pensions, which was introduced without very much consultation. Today’s FT says that this change is not,

“a palpable fiasco, but the early signs do not look promising”.

So what are the Government doing to protect people from being duped—or was this simply a short-term measure to raise tax revenue?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I too read the article in the Financial Times this morning. The truth is that these pension freedoms are proving very popular. However, they raise important issues around the operation of the market and how we support consumers, so we will be working with the Financial Conduct Authority on the next steps to address this issue.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the arguments that have just been expressed so well by my noble friend. In doing so, I declare an interest as a trustee and chairman of the members’ committee of NOW: Pensions, which has 1 million members and 20,000 employers signed up. The whole area of member engagement and communications is a major preoccupation for us in a period of what has been very rapid growth—not just of NOW: Pensions but of certain other master trusts.

To find the right way to communicate with 1 million people is an extremely tricky task, but we note with some interest that a range of solutions are now being developed. For example, we note that Legal & General, which I think has about 500,000 people in its trust-based schemes, does hold annual meetings, as the amendment calls for, while others who find that concept difficult are beginning to look more seriously at what they can do in that area.

Finding ways to encourage the member voice is pretty close to the top of most of our agendas. Putting communications at the heart of a master trust, which is by definition a rather sprawling outfit, is very important to try to get it to centre stage. The Government’s idea of a dashboard would help. I hope that is not being put on the back burner, because it would be a very useful tool to show people where they are with their pension investments and entitlements. Trustees themselves need to work very hard to explain basic messages about pensions to the people who have signed up. A pension pot, for example, is the members’ money now—it is theirs. If that penny really dropped, a lot of people would take rather more interest in the process rather than simply pushing it to one side as they often do.

Getting members to see how their workplace pension sits alongside the new state pension is also important. Members need a wider view than just the workplace scheme to get a picture of their total position when they are coming up to retirement. Where schemes offer a choice of contribution rates, as some do, drawing the availability of higher contribution tiers—and associated higher employer contributions— to members’ attention would help to make them aware that these higher contributions in fact mean a greater amount of money from the employer contribution. These kinds of points are in the spirit of helping people to maximise their interest and entitlement in the pensions area. Members should be encouraged to set themselves targets, take ownership of their pot and see if they are getting a good return when they try to work out their pension arrangements for the future.

I accept that these ideas will never be legal requirements—nor should they be; they are more good practice—but they are in the spirit in which every master trust worth its salt should be acting, and they put the members of the trust more at the core of its work. A master trust needs a very good communications strategy. I support all the things that my noble friend Lord McKenzie mentioned, such as online technology and forums. We at NOW: Pensions conduct regional meetings of employers at the moment and are thinking of extending it to members, probably on a first-come, first-served basis as we are not inclined to try to hire Wembley Stadium to run the meetings.

In supporting my noble friend, I urge the Government to take this communications area very seriously and put it not on the edge of their requirements but in the middle, right at the core of the work that is to come.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to support this group of amendments. I have put my name to Amendment 10 but, having heard the speeches so far, I can see no difficulty in supporting the rest of the amendments in the group—and if they come back on Report I would be pleased to sign up to them. The arguments have been strongly made but I will make three specific points about why member engagement is really important.

The first reason is that the risk in contributory pensions is totally with the employee. They are not like direct benefit schemes, where the employer is sharing a lot of the risk; in this type of pension, employees are holding the risk and therefore their engagement and involvement with how their money is being handled is pretty important. If you are introducing a regulatory scheme at this stage, it should be a central point.

My second point is that if you are introducing a regulatory system, you do not want sole reliance on the regulator to make sure that things are running well and that members are satisfied; you want a counterweighting source of evidence and interest from members themselves to support that regulatory role. That is why this should have the attention of the Government in the Bill.

The third reason is that, as we have already heard, organisations such as Legal & General are already doing that. If that is good practice, the Government should take the opportunity of the Bill to encourage it, take it forward and make it more widespread. The concept of an annual meeting, which Legal & General already accepts as a valuable new forum for communication with members, should be examined and included as an option in the legislation. That would be a way to introduce the discipline of finding out what members want and to make it the fiduciary duty of the trustees to understand what members want from their pension investment. For all those reasons, the Government must take this very seriously. I hope that they will look at this more closely so that when we get to Report, there will be no need to retable the amendments.

[Baroness Altmann]

First, I support my noble friend’s remarks about the master trust assurance framework under the previous amendment, because that framework already exists and there are a number of shortcomings in it, so I could not support including it in the Bill’s requirements.

However, in these amendments we are dealing with member engagement—and, indeed, employer engagement, because with a master trust, the employer has in a number of ways handed over responsibility to the trustees. Many of the smallest employers who are currently joining auto-enrolment and using master trust schemes are not fully aware of all the implications and intricacies of pension arrangements. Therefore, it is important to have member engagement and information requirements as part of an authorisation process.

In particular, this might help to address one of the big injustices that your Lordships’ House has not yet addressed. Members who earn less than £11,000 a year who join a pension scheme—in particular, a master trust—which happens to use a net pay arrangement, are charged about 25% more for their pension than they would be if their master trust used a different scheme. I have to mention that that is apart from the NOW: Pensions master trust, which has itself made up the extra money that those low earners are unable to receive from tax relief they are due because of the administration of their scheme.

If there were proper member engagement and information that told both members and employers that this particular complicated administration arrangement denies low earners a significant amount of money, perhaps the operation of the schemes would work better in members’ interests and the employers themselves would be better informed.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 1st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and to the House for being a few minutes late for the opening remarks in this debate and thank the authorities for allowing me none the less to speak. I want to make three initial, general points before looking at the details of the Bill.

The very fact that we are discussing this Bill shows the good progress that has been made on auto-enrolment. More than 6 million are now involved in it, with the proportion of people active in pensions going up all the time. This is good news. However, the House needs to realise that the really big task lies ahead as we move to a phase where higher contributions will be required and start to address the fact that people in the country as a whole are hugely undersaving for their pensions and retirement. The situation is not made any easier as young people find it increasingly difficult to move into a home of their own. We have a high level of consumer credit and no longer have the old paternalistic systems of final salary pension schemes. All the risk in pensions is now with the employee and the saver.

However, one reason why we have made good progress during the past 10 years is that we have had good, cross-party support for ongoing pension reforms. Therefore, on this side of the House, we agree that the growth of master trusts now needs some adjustment in terms of regulation and monitoring. I re-emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie: that the last thing we need is any undermining of confidence in the pension savings, however inadequate they may be, that people are trying to make in the current circumstances. Anything that undermines that confidence will undermine everything that we are seeking to do here.

The third point I would like to make is an immediately political point and concerns the economic uncertainty that surrounds the country at the moment. I do not think we should underestimate the damage that is being done by low interest rates for pensions and pension saving and, particularly, to the valuation of annuities. I think it was recorded only the other day that 0.1% off interest rates contributes to an increase in the deficit of the Tesco pension fund of £300 million. That just shows the damage that is being done in the current circumstances. Let us not forget the high proportion of our pensioners living in Europe who have experienced a 20% reduction in their retirement income as a result of the exchange rate. We have to realise that, in the pension field, return on investment and economic growth is vital for pension growth in the future. I do not think that anybody will have voted for the current uncertainty if this uncertainty continues and undermines those three tenets of our economy.

Looking at the issues of the master trust, I make the overall point that regulation is necessary, but have we missed an opportunity in the Bill of opening things up so that these arrangements and proposals are much more proactive for the consumer and saver, actually encouraging their investment in the saving process? I am a bit surprised that the Government are not doing in parallel and together the proposed regulation of the master trust in the Bill and what they are doing to enhance and improve the advice that is available to pensioners and people saving for their pensions.

Everybody supports making the master trusts subject to good transparency. Those who are saving in them should know how they are performing, that they are being safeguarded because there is good regulation. People should also know what the investment strategy is and what the risk assessment is of the trusts that they are involved in. That should be absolutely clear. Those should be requirements of the regulation, and charges should be transparent. It is also important that accountability should not simply be to the regulator; it should be to those who are actually investing in their pension savings directly. I am not sure that the Bill goes far enough in trying to advance that and improve on it.

Given the Prime Minister’s ideas of putting people from the consumer and employee interests on boards, are there any thoughts about their being involved in these master trusts? Why is that not included in the Bill, or is it to be the subject of late amendments? That is one direct possibility that the Government could consider. Does the annual report simply have to go to the regulator? Why is an annual report not going to the individual contributors and savers in these trusts, so that they can see exactly how their money is being stewarded and looked after? What do we regard as “a fit and proper person”? I take the trivial example of my local football club, where I have had huge disillusionment in various authorities trying to define who are fit and proper people to run a club. What is required for people to be fit and proper to run pension trusts? It is not just qualifications; it is actually an analysis and keeping to account how they operate those trusts, how they operate as managers. How will that be done? That seems to me to be the most important thing.

Another opportunity missed in the Bill concerns the whole concept of the digital age. We have moved on in the last 10 years; we can now very easily communicate with people, providing we have their email addresses. Any excuse that it is more expensive to communicate regularly with individual savers is for the birds, frankly, because bodies can now do it quite easily. This would be a good time, when we are trying to get these bodies regulated for the first time, to put in a requirement that they should have those facilities. For them to be approved, they should have those facilities so that they can easily and cheaply communicate, not just with the regulator and the employers but with the individual savers and employees.

In addition, the Bill should have said a little more about the trigger mechanisms and the pause provisions, because those both talk about informing the employers, but there is very little about telling the employees. What happens to the employees or the individual savers when the pause provision is brought in? What will they be told? What will they be advised about the contributions that they might want to continue to make but will not be allowed to? Some consideration should have been given to that.

Another important aspect of this regulation is that there has been a huge growth in master trusts, but there may be a need or an opportunity for the encouragement of consolidation going forward. Is the regulator going to keep an account of the cost per saver indices for these various trusts so that there is some indication to people how efficient they are and an indication to their management of where they can get improvements in costs and efficiency so that they operate effectively?

My final point is related, and I have not heard much about it recently. When I last asked this question, I got an answer that took it straight into the long grass. Portable pensions were always seen as an important aspect of auto-enrolment. I return to the issue of pension pots. We have now been in this for a number of years. The type of people who are investing in these pensions are moving jobs all the time. We are probably already in a situation where people have more than one pot. I do not know what the average is; it would be interesting to know. What are the Government doing on the policy that we originally looked at under the previous Government with regard to encouraging people to consolidate their pension pots? It was originally proposed that the pots would follow the employee in whatever new job or saving arrangement they went into. What is the Government’s purpose in delaying regulating on that and what are their plans to address this issue? As time goes on, this problem will grow and it will become even more difficult for the industry to find a rational solution.

I welcome the Bill’s aspirations. It could do a lot more, particularly in widening the power and knowledge of individual savers who need to put more into their pensions. I look forward to following up some of these issues in Committee and on Report.

Housing: Under-occupancy

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The policy is clearly directed at people who have a spare room. These tend not to be people with families; in many cases, they are empty nesters. They would be a typical group—people who have had a larger place but some of the people living in it have then moved on and they now have spare rooms. There is a point in time at which one should address the issue to get the downsizing. This policy looks to make sure that that time is during working age and not later.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Housing & Care 21. As the Minister will be aware, there is a major problem coming down the road on retirement housing, particularly the imposition of a cap on housing benefit, which will impose itself on people in retirement housing where rents and the cost of housing are higher—often higher than the proposed cap on housing benefit. How are the Government going to address, beyond just using discretionary funds, the needs of these retired people who will be disadvantaged and also stop the undermining of future development of retirement housing in this country?

[Lord Freud]

We put out a Ministerial Statement in September outlining our approach to supported housing, including sheltered housing, which looks to divide the support into two, with one element coming out of the housing benefit bill up to the limit of the LHA amount in each area, which is then topped up by local authorities through a fund. This will help them drive the commissioning of the appropriate level of housing, and supported housing, for the people in their area.

State Pension

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

This Government have made an absolute commitment that winter fuel payments will be protected up to 2020. Any changes that a future Government may wish to make will be decided in due course.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

One of the groups that particularly benefits from the high state pension, championed by my colleague Steve Webb in the last Government, is the self-employed. However, the proportion of self-employed in private pensions is disappearing over a cliff. What plan do the Government have to address this problem?

[Baroness Altmann]

The noble Lord makes an important point; it is one that the Government have already been looking at. The new state pension will give much more clarity and generosity to the base on which the self-employed can build. The new lifetime ISA may be an opportunity for the self-employed to save in a way that they might be more comfortable with, rather than locking money irrevocably into a pension in their 20s and 30s.

Social Housing Sector

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

As my noble friend Lady Williams made clear on Monday night, this area is under active consideration within the timetable of the Bill.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of Housing & Care 21, one of the housing associations referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Best. Can I ask the Minister whether he really understands the urgency of this issue? He talks about 2018, but the housing associations involved will have to start telling people in the next few weeks what they can expect under the current government policies. The review has to be quick. How quickly can the Minister respond in order to help housing associations that are currently delaying their decisions?

[Lord Freud]

We are aiming to develop our policy on the back of the information that we get in the spring, and we will be working with the whole sector to develop policy. As for the other issue that the sector is concerned about, which I discussed in the last question, that is within the timetable of the Bill.