Housing Benefit: Social Housing Units

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I am afraid there were a lot of inaccurate figures there. Under the last Labour Government, the number of social and affordable rented houses fell by 420,000. Since 2010, it has gone up by 46,000. We have just seen the expenditure come down, because we have got people into work: people in work do not require support from housing benefit, and their numbers have come down. The numbers in the social rented sector are down 2% in the last year and the numbers in the private rented sector are down 5%. The figures that the noble Baroness was promoting are really quite wrong.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that there are abuses in the system through which private landlords let properties to people who need them very badly? In the past, there was a ridiculous situation whereby, if you were prepared to let your property for £X, the council would tell you that you could get £2X for it, so immediately any sensible landlord charged £2X. Is he also aware that other people required their tenants who were getting housing benefit to pay extra to them as private landlords and to say nothing about it? Something has to be done to ensure that that does not continue.

[Lord Freud]

We inherited a system under the local housing allowance which was based at 50% of the average rate. Clearly, that was too high and encouraged some landlords to move up to that central rate, even though their houses were not worth that amount. We have now put a series of controls on how the LHA works.