Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Kerslake
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 70, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, to give my noble friend a bit of a rest. The amendment would exempt a number of particularly at-risk groups from pay to stay, but I will speak solely in relation to disabled people and carers for whom there is a particularly strong case for exemption. My noble friend will address the other groups included in the amendment later.
In the Public Bill Committee, the Minister, Marcus Jones, assured MPs that,
“exemptions can be made and we will consider carers carefully. We recognise that, in certain circumstances, exemptions may well be needed, and we are thinking through that process carefully”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 3/12/15; col. 482.]
That is welcome. I particularly welcome the fact that the Government are considering exempting carers, not least because the means test, as I said earlier, will take no account of the cost of caring or disability. Carers UK has summarised what these costs are, based on the findings of its Caring & Family Finances Inquiry. They include higher utility bills, not just in winter when there is more prolonged and intensive use of energy, but when the weather is warmer. Many disabled and older people are unable to regulate their body temperature. The use of specialist equipment, such as electric wheelchairs and hoists, as well as greater use of appliances, such as washing machines, takes its toll in energy bills. Other costs include higher transport costs and higher than average expenditure on food and cleaning products, with some having to pay for incontinence pads. Carers UK points out that because such costs can take up a high proportion of income, even if the household’s taxable income is above the threshold, their disposable income could be well below it. Increased housing costs could well push them into debt. In such a situation, even a few additional pounds under a taper could prove the straw that breaks the proverbial carer’s back.
A related issue is that of disabled people themselves—notably disabled people in adapted homes. In its response to the consultation, Habinteg, a housing association with long-standing experience of providing homes for both disabled and non-disabled tenants, echoed the point about additional costs associated with disability, and pointed out that these are not necessarily covered by disability benefits. They are even less likely to be covered by disability benefits, given what we have heard in the media over the last day or so about further savage cuts to personal independence payments. Habinteg suggests that the result could be discriminatory, and I here note my thanks to Jenny Morris for drawing my attention to Habinteg’s response. Once again, an equalities impact assessment would have been helpful. I appreciate that it is going on the website as we speak and that I will receive a personal copy, but it suggests that the likely impact on disabled people, carers and other protected groups has not been taken into account in the drawing up of the policy.
Aspire, an organisation supporting people with spinal cord injuries, sent me recently published research undertaken by researchers at Loughborough University—I declare an interest as an emeritus professor there—that studied people with spinal cord injuries living in adapted and non-adapted accommodation. The report cites the UN convention on the rights of disabled people, which emphasises the vital role that suitable housing plays for disabled people, as does the Government’s Office for Disability Issues. To summarise the findings:
“Living in an adapted house had a positive impact on the health and wellbeing”,
of people with spinal cord injuries and the family. The report continues:
“It created the conditions and an environment for people to have a good quality life, to manage their physical health well, to be happy, and to sustain meaningful relationships. In contrast, for those who lived in an unadapted house, health and wellbeing was negatively impacted on and, over time, deteriorated substantially”.
It damaged physical and psychological health, with potentially very damaging consequences.
Last November, Stacie Lewis, a mother of a severely disabled daughter who has cancer herself, wrote a piece for the Guardian website. After years of struggle the family had recently moved into an accessible, new-build house, which will, nevertheless, require extensive adaptations. Her husband’s income is above the threshold and she is now understandably worried about what this might mean for them. She pointed out how little suitable housing there is available for disabled people and that they therefore rely heavily on social housing. Her family waited three years for that home. She asked,
“what kind of economic sense does it make for the government to spend thousands to adapt our home and then throw that investment away by forcing us out?”.
Let us hope that it does not come to that, but it is a highly pertinent question.
I cannot believe that the Government would want this policy to lead to some disabled people having to give up their adapted home because they can no longer afford to live there. A similar point on high-value sales was raised by my noble friend Lord Beecham on Thursday. I suspect we are talking about a relatively small group, but the impact on the well-being of disabled people and their families could be huge. It would make no sense, from the point of view of housing stock, not to exempt those in adapted accommodation.
Following a similar logic, will the Government undertake to consider exempting victims of domestic violence whose homes have been adapted under the sanctuary scheme? Although they are not covered by the amendment, I am sure that my noble friend would be happy to include this group. Again, probably very few of them would be affected, but if that is the case, what is to be lost by exempting them?
Given that Mr Jones’s statement about considering exemptions was made on 3 December, is the Minister in the position, three months on, to tell us what the outcome of that “careful thinking” has been? If she is not minded to accept these exemptions, will she undertake to consult disability and carers’ organisations, such as Carers UK, as requested by, for example, Habinteg in its response to the consultation, preferably before Report? I beg to move.
Lord Kerslake (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak on Amendments 70B and 75B, and in support of the other amendments in the group. I apologise for not being able to be here for the debate on the first group, due to other long-standing personal commitments. I also declare my interest as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association.
The amendments before us seek to address the issues of feasibility and deliverability, and propose phasing in the changes over time, starting from April 2017. They also suggest that we have a pilot scheme before we move to full operation of the policy. Of all the parts of the Bill—there are some very contested parts of it—this is without doubt the part on which I have had most correspondence. It comes not just from organisations, but from a greater number of individual tenants. These tenants are people who have typically worked hard and got on in their life, and now are genuinely worried about their future security. This part of the Bill introduces in the name of fairness a proposition that is, in many ways, deeply unfair, bureaucratic and centralist in its nature. It departs very substantially from the original intent of the policy, developed during the coalition, which was to tackle those on very high incomes of more than £60,000, developed in response to one person: the trade union leader Bob Crow. The proposition that went in then was flexible and voluntary, and local authorities got to keep the proceeds.