Oral Answers to Questions

Frank Roy Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says; we are conducting the further natural reassessment roll-out only in those areas where I am confident we have the capacity to undertake the claims in a timely way. We are doing it in a carefully controlled way. The majority of DLA claimants will not be invited to claim PIP until 2015 onwards under a programme of managed reassessment.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

Thousands and thousands of DLA recipients are feeling the effect of the unjust bedroom tax. What does the Minister intend to do to raise discretionary housing payments to help alleviate the problems felt by people on DLA?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention discretionary housing payments. I looked into this matter quite carefully. We have been very generous in the amount of money that we have given to local authorities. Indeed, many local authorities have not spent the money we have made available to them. We also made available further funds for which local authorities could bid and, again, not all of that money was spent. So we have given local authorities the wherewithal to use discretionary housing payment to support those who they think have a good case following the removal of the spare room subsidy.