Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I, too, shall speak briefly to Amendment 40 and Amendment 41, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie. As has been said, Amendment 40 seeks to ensure that the restrictions on the size criteria for social housing cannot leave a foster carer unable to meet their rent. As has been suggested, as currently drafted, the social sector size criteria and related benefit cuts would hit foster carers who claim benefit. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that is because foster children are not counted as part of the household. Therefore, any bedroom that they sleep in is defined as being empty and underoccupied. The Fostering Network has warned that the failure to exempt foster carers from the penalty could lead to a number of them leaving fostering altogether.

As was suggested by my noble friend Lady Hollis in her earlier question, it is indeed a necessity that to be accepted for fostering, carers are required to have spare rooms in their homes for such children. Indeed, if you look at any advertisements for foster parents, they say that a spare room to foster is necessary. In addition, it cannot just be any old room; it is expected that most foster children will have a room to themselves from the age of three upwards, as specified by the minimum standards issued by the Department for Education and Skills. That age is well below the underoccupation rules for birth children who live with their parents.

We all know that social housing can provide a stable, high-quality environment in which to care for children who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their birth families. I am sure that none of us would want to exclude the occupants of social housing from acting as foster carers. I cannot believe that the Government intend that foster carers should face the underoccupation penalty. It is fairly obvious what impact that that would have.

Foster carers can claim housing benefit for the housing needs of their families, but the ones that they look after are not taken into account, which would mean that, just as with any other family, the rooms would count as being underoccupied, despite the fact that children sleep in them, and the foster carers’ benefit could be reduced by 23 per cent for the use of two rooms or 13 per cent for the use of one room used by a foster child. Many foster carers look after two or more children, especially those carers who deal with emergency needs, when a whole family can arrive together, and the availability of not just one but two spare rooms is crucial.

Most foster carers do not receive financial compensation for housing costs at present. They receive allowances towards the care, which include household running costs but not housing per se. Last year, the Government changed the law to exclude foster children from housing benefit claims. The Minister will recall that he wrote that this is because fostering allowances are intended to cover all the costs of looking after a foster child, including housing them. However, that statement is inconsistent with official information about the purpose of fostering allowance. The minimum fostering allowances set by the Governments in Northern Ireland, Wales and England do not include housing costs. In any case, the levels for recommended minimum allowances are far too low to provide realistic compensation for housing costs.

In case it is thought that discretionary housing payments may be available, it is true that foster carers are entitled to apply, but even if this concession was awarded it would be only to a small minority. As other noble Lords have said, there is already a significant shortage of foster carers. If there was a penalty for keeping a room in order to foster, some experienced carers might have to quit altogether. This could have a significant impact, especially in major towns and cities and other areas where rents are particularly high. Accommodation is in short supply, yet the demand for such carers is great. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, there are about 2,700 fostering families claiming housing benefit. One thing being asked for through the amendments is that the cost of permitting it would be more than offset by the cost involved in losing foster carers, with children therefore having to be kept in care.

It is very hard to overemphasise the value of the work done by foster carers. I should like to take a moment to talk about two families I know, who between them have had more than 120 children through their doors. They have mostly been children who either have difficulties or disabilities themselves, or whose birth families are, for whatever reason, unable to provide a home for them. They do not always arrive in a nice planned way. They can come in the middle of the night, after the death or illness of their only parent, as the result of an assault or, as in one case that one of these families dealt with, when one of the child’s parents had been murdered by the other. The need for a home in the middle of the night and a room for those children cannot be stressed too much. These families are ready to take someone in, often very distressed small children. It is something of which we all need to be aware.

The Local Government Association is particularly concerned that if the proposal should remain unamended, and therefore reduces the likelihood of fostering, as carers are forced to give it up to avoid the penalty, it will be local authorities who pick up the cost, at a time when we are already short of foster families. It is fairly obvious that particularly vulnerable children make up a large proportion of those who are placed in emergency or short-term care. Therefore, we hope that the amendment will get a very warm response.

Amendment 41, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie, is there to assist the Minister. It would make an exemption for foster parents to prevent their being subject to any accusations of abuse. I do not believe that there is such abuse, but certain papers like to run scaremongering stories about benefit claimants living in mansions, while there are blogs that talk about people living in enormous eight-bedroom houses in Chelsea, paid for by housing benefit. I have yet to find one. Amendment 41 seeks to protect foster carers from any such accusation. It includes defining,

“the type of property reasonably required for a household which is providing or routinely provides foster care placements”.

So it is to try and help the noble Lord in a very simple way.

The guidelines for good fostering are that there must be a spare room, and that no child over the age of three should be asked to share a bedroom. That is what we would call a suitably sized property, so I very much hope that the Minister can respond positively on the issue of foster care.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Best, especially on his amendment regarding the CLG criteria of one-plus-one bedroom. One thing that struck me is that we have not referred in this debate to people with fluctuating impairment who require overnight care but not on a regular basis. People with mental health problems, when they go into crisis, may need somebody to sleep in the bedroom next door for a month or two, and that is not necessarily counted as an overnight carer in considering criteria for an extra bedroom.

We should celebrate that 15,000 disabled people need overnight care in this country—that figure is given to us by the DWP. Has the Minister had discussions with the Department of Health about the implications of the changes to the housing and benefits extra bedroom situation for people with fluctuating impairments? Increasing numbers of disabled people are living at home in the community now, and that is to be celebrated, but many disabled people require the help of another human being in order for them to do that. Otherwise it is back to residential care and the old days of warehousing. This is another good reason to support the one-plus-one bedroom and if we cannot do that, then I certainly support all the exemptions that are called for in all the amendments.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but I congratulate my noble friend Lord Best on his incredibly commonsense approach to this problem. It seems that allowing an extra bedroom would probably deal with most of the tragic exceptions that people have talked about—what a straightforward way to deal with those exceptions and normal life. I cannot think of any family that at some point does not badly need an extra room, and the case was so well put.

We talk about all the amendments individually, but what is so painfully obvious is that it is the combined impact of the changes in the Bill that are going to have such a devastating effect on so many people. It feels irrelevant to talk about ESA and people being reassessed and placed on to JSA, and therefore losing a section or part of their benefits, but the individuals at the front line are going to be hit by that, then they find their housing allowances upgraded in line with CPI, then they find that their housing allowances are pegged to the 30th percentile, then find that they have an extra room. Oh my God, their housing benefit will not cover the accommodation they are in and they are going to have to think about moving.

It is the impact of so many hits that feels petrifying, and perhaps the change that frightens me more than any is the pegging of housing allowances to CPI. If that goes on longer than two years—perhaps we do not pay too much attention to it because we assume that it will not—we are talking about families and households finding every few years that they have a growing gap between their rent and the allowances they are paid for housing. They will have to move, and move, and move—is that not correct?—over a period of time, into ever more distant areas, ever meaner properties, ever smaller properties. It is difficult to imagine the psychological impact on households of all these changes.

I do not know who devised this law, but I wonder whether whoever it was stood back and thought about all that. I know, and the Minister has mentioned many times, that the driving motivation behind the reforms is to provide an incentive for people to move into work. From where I come from, dealing with people with mental health problems, one thing that stands between them and work is their level of stress and distress and anxiety.

It strikes me that if all the legislative changes go through, we will create an even bigger gap between very large numbers of people who are prone to anxiety and depression—if not psychosis and other things that are even more problematic to deal with—and the labour market. That troubles me, because I respect the Minister’s commitment to providing an incentive for people to go back into work. I also know that he is very sympathetic and understanding about mental health problems. I would be interested to know what he has to say about the apparent contradiction in what the Government are trying to do.

Another aspect of this for people with mental health problems is that to force them to move away from wherever they are—probably away from the carers who might just about prop them up and allow them to survive and carry on—is the last thing we want. The underoccupation rule impacts even more, given the other provisions of the Bill. As I understand it, young people are going to be expected, in some circumstances, to share accommodation. There are an awful lot of people with mental health problems for whom this might be quite helpful. There are others for whom it might be a complete disaster. Indeed, let us not forget to mention the potential sharer. It might be quite difficult to share with some of our folk. We have to be sensitive to the impact, and the combined and compound impact.

I sympathise with the amendments that noble Lords have tabled about disabled people who have had adjustments to their homes, and those about looked-after children. Those are obvious and glaring problems. I would like to think that the Minister will think seriously about that, in the context that I know he very well understands.