Exempt Accommodation

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify a particular group of people who need support and proper accommodation, and who can easily be exploited. There are many groups in that situation, which is why we should not simply shut down accommodation; we need to make sure that sufficient supported accommodation of an appropriate standard to meet particular needs is provided for a whole range of different groups, including people with acquired brain injury. We will certainly feed that back, as he has suggested.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for using this device to throw an important spotlight on the issue. Unfortunately, it is not new—we have been aware of it for some time—but it is important to have a spotlight shone on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) referred to properties being bought, established and put to this use to launder often significant amounts of money. People then get a quasi-legitimate revenue stream to pay them back, but that is paid for directly out of the public purse through housing benefit from the Department for Work and Pensions. Surely it is not beyond the wit of Ministers in that Department to make sure that when significant amounts of money are paid out for housing benefit in particular properties, those properties are fit for purpose and managed appropriately. It should not be difficult for the Government to organise something as simple as that.

[Mr Betts]

It should not be. Currently, all that providers have to do to get the higher level of housing benefit, which is almost uncontrolled, is to provide support “beyond the minimal level”—nobody knows what that means; it does not mean very much. Some authorities have tried to challenge the housing benefit requests that have been made, but the problem is that all providers have to do is to show that the rent is reasonable—they are issuing freedom of information requests to find out the amounts of rent being charged for other properties in the area—and that there is no alternative accommodation, which there often is not, for reasons that I have explained. People are allowed to write a virtually blank cheque. That needs to be closed down, because the money can be put to better use than being siphoned off for profiteering, as it is currently.