Welfare Reform Bill

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue]

During that time, 35% of those involved are likely to end up in arrears. That is 2,540 residents, and 83% will struggle to find the extra money. A total of more than 6,000 people will find difficulty in meeting their commitments, on top of the increases in food and fuel prices, and the fact that the Government have imposed rent rises of 8% for 2012-13. What are the Government going to do? I hear the Minister say that discretionary payments will be provided until 2014, but that is not the eight to 10 years that my association says it will take for even the people who want to downsize. That association is extremely concerned that the burden will be pushed on to housing benefit, even when people move, and that hard-pressed local authorities will have even more problems.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Briefly, I want to make three points about under-occupancy and disabled people. First, I welcome the Minister’s announcement of funds to ensure that disabled people and other special cases are given the help that they need in transition. The other points that I want to make both arise from a constituent’s coming to see me. This particular family has four members, with two disabled people within it, and it needs four rooms. From the outside, someone might say that parents and two children need two or three rooms, which would give them one spare room. Absolutely not: in this case, every single room was needed, and the family was concerned that under the legislation they would be told that they had a spare room and be forced to move. I would like some reassurance on that point—that where people need all the rooms because of disability, certain rooms will not be considered spare, even if the family being of such a size might otherwise justify that decision.

[Maria Miller]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that if a disabled person has the need for an overnight carer, additional rooms can be allocated. Indeed, if there are disabled people in the house who require rooms, there will be clear support there for them to be able to have those rooms.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the Minister for that reassurance. On my second point, as hon. and right hon. Members know, many homes have had thousands of pounds spent on adaptations, and rightly so, for disabled people. It would not make a great deal of sense to ask people to move from a home that had had such adaptations into another home, where making such adaptations would cost plenty of money. Also, in the first home, the adaptations might have to be removed. Again, I ask for reassurance that common sense will prevail.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

If ever a piece of legislation was to demonise and penalise people who live in the social rented sector, this Bill is it, and I have listened to the debate today. My local authority in Durham has written to me to say that many thousands of families will be affected by the under-occupancy provisions, and both the local authority and the housing associations have written to say that they simply do not have enough alternative suitable housing and that it will take many years to re-house people. That means that tenants, who are already on low incomes, will have no alternative but to pay an additional sum of money—up to £50 a month—that they simply cannot afford or move into smaller, private rented accommodation if it is available, and in places like Durham it is not available.

The point that the Government must take on board is that if those people go into smaller and more expensive accommodation, that will have to be paid for from housing benefit in any case, so the whole policy is an absolute—