Housing Benefit (Scotland)

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clarke]

It is not the Minister’s debate either.

[Annette Brooke (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Steve Webb]

I think, technically, that right hon. and hon. Members who intervene are meant to tell me formally that they want to do so; I do not mind at all, but they have made their comments and I think it is fair that I respond to the hon. Gentleman.

There are several Scottish angles to the debate and I want to deal with some of them rather than make more general points. There is an issue about whether people who are covered by LHA are being driven into pockets—very localised areas. One aspect of the Scottish situation is that the 30th percentile tends to be closer to the 50th percentile than perhaps it is in other parts of Great Britain. The cash difference tends to be smaller, as I said earlier, so the impact is not as great as it might be in other areas where the rent distribution is more dispersed. I fully accept the point that the impact of the measures will be different in different places, but the 30th percentile has a smaller impact in Scotland because of the compressed rent distribution.

The hon. Gentleman quite properly raised the issue of unemployment. I would not for a moment suggest that it is ever easy or straightforward to find a job; but, again, headline unemployment is slightly lower in Scotland than for Great Britain as a whole. The majority of Scottish local authorities have lower unemployment rates than the Great Britain average. That is not to belittle the matter, but it is not a purely Scottish dimension. The issue is clearly one to be dealt with nationally.

As to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and the support that we are giving, an important feature of the new scheme is discretionary housing payments. We recognise that we cannot anticipate every hard case, so we give local authorities discretion. We give them funds so that if there is someone who just does not fit the rules terribly well or who is acutely affected by the changes—the hon. Gentleman gave examples of situations that might be difficult—local authorities have discretionary funding. In 2011-12, Scotland as a whole will be getting an increase of 15% over 2010-11. That is an increase of £360,000 in discretionary housing payments. The hon. Gentleman’s local authority will be getting a 34% increase; more than double the Scottish average increase will be going to North Lanarkshire to provide additional assistance. The figure will go from £77,000 in support this year to £103,000. It is worth saying that the 2011 DHP increase is much smaller than the increases will be in succeeding years; the Great Britain-wide figure will go from £20 million this year to £30 million, and then £60 million a year. Most of the increase in DHP will be in later years, but we have already added 34% to it in the coming year for the broad rental market area of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Although, inevitably, that money will have to do a lot of work, it is specifically designed for the sort of hard cases he spoke about.