Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jessica Morden and Steve Webb

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I refer my hon. Friend to the written statement that we issued today, which confirms precisely that we will shortly bring forth our announcement, and that we will see through our agenda during the course of this Parliament.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the implementation of personal independence payments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jessica Morden and Steve Webb

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need local authorities and social landlords, with which we have been working, to alert tenants to the fact that over £150 million has been made available to local authorities this year to help individuals in hard cases.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Monmouthshire council has allocated over a third of its £121,000-worth of discretionary housing payments in the six weeks since the bedroom tax came in. Given that the demand and the need is so high, does the Minister really believe that the Government have given enough money?

[Steve Webb]

It was always the case that there would be high demand at the start of the year, because unlike other discretionary housing payments that arise randomly through the course of the year, this will apply for the whole year. We expected and planned for a higher rate of demand at the start of the year. We do keep these things under review, of course, and we are in close contact with local authorities in Wales to monitor the early implementation of this policy.

Under-occupancy Penalty (Wales)

Debate between Jessica Morden and Steve Webb

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) on securing the debate. It is good to see the number of hon. Members who have taken part. I will try to respond to the points that she has raised. In general, I will take interventions from her but not from other hon. Members, until we get near the end of the time.

Let me set the context. Obviously, we want to focus on the impact of the policy on Wales, and I want to respond to some of the particular points made by the hon. Member for Newport East, but for the record, the Government are seeking to take £18 billion a year of what we spend on social security and tax credits because of the vast amount of borrowing that we had to deal with. It is not that the Government woke up one morning and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to cut people’s housing benefit?” We have to stop a situation in which for every £3 the Government were raising in tax, they were spending £4. That is unsustainable. It is not fair to the children whom we are expecting to pay our debts. That is why the Government are looking to save money on social security.

Housing benefit is a vast and rapidly rising bill and inevitably had to be looked at, so within the housing benefit budget, what can be looked at? We have looked at private sector rent. We have looked at shared accommodation for younger people. Within the social sector, there are two reasons why spare bedrooms—where they are spare bedrooms—need to be looked at. The first is the unfairness between social tenants and private tenants. At present, a private tenant cannot have housing benefit for a property with spare bedrooms. They can have housing benefit only for a property of the size that they need. However, a social tenant living next door can have housing benefit for a bigger house. That is an unfairness. At a time when we are trying to take costs out of the system to deal with the deficit, being fairer to private tenants and not giving social tenants an advantage over and above the advantage that they already have through a subsidised rent is an issue of fairness.

There is also an issue of fairness in the system in relation to people who are overcrowded. There was absolutely no mention in the hon. Lady’s speech of people who are living in overcrowded accommodation. If we have a limited social housing stock—frankly, successive Governments have failed to build enough social houses; it is a finite stock and a social house, with a subsidised rent, is a very valuable thing—we owe it to those who are overcrowded to make maximum use of the housing stock.

Getting from here to there is a painful and difficult process. I accept that, but many housing associations and social landlords around Britain have been creative and imaginative—I accept that the position will be different from area to area—about moving people who were in overcrowded accommodation into family homes and finding places for people in under-occupied accommodation to move to. It is not a static case—on the register this week, there are only so many empty properties. Social landlords have to start getting to know their tenants much better than they have in the past. All too often, they have not done that. That process—I accept that it will be a difficult transition—should lead to better use of the social housing stock.

[Jessica Morden]

Will the Minister accept that it is possible to be creative without being cruel? It would be possible to work far more closely with housing associations in relation to asking them to do more about under-occupancy, but the broad-brush approach that will be taken in April will hurt many people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I really want to respond to the hon. Member for Newport East, because I have other things to say about the points she made.

We tried not to prescribe in a rigid, central, one-size-fits-all way, but to make substantial extra money available so that people could respond individually.

[Jessica Morden]

Does the Minister accept that the pot of money is very small compared with the number of people we are talking about? If the aim of the policy is to use the housing stock better and to save money, it will fail on both counts. As we have mentioned—it would be helpful if he could address this point—the pressures in Wales are because we have larger properties and few smaller properties, and because people will pay more in private rents.

[Steve Webb]

On whether people pay more in private rents, a lot depends on where the people who occupy the houses that have just been vacated come from. For example, if someone is in overcrowded private rented accommodation, on which they are claiming housing benefit, and they move in to reduced rent social housing property, that saves us money, so a lot depends on the dynamics. It is not a static situation. The hon. Lady said that this is not much money, but take her local authority of Newport: last year, in 2011-12, Newport got £47,000 towards DHPs, and next year, it will get more than a third of £1 million.

[Jessica Morden]

It is not enough.

[Steve Webb]

Of course, it is not enough for everybody who will lose, because the policy is part of trying to reduce the deficit.

The hon. Lady made other points about the lack of suitable housing stock, and that is a long-term issue that needs to be addressed. Housing associations and local authorities, when looking at the future housing stock, need to consider unmet need. Of course, there is a lead time on that, but if we just sit and wait, it will never happen. Yes, this is a trigger to tackle the deficit, but it is also a trigger for a much more rational allocation of the houses we already have, and for a much more rational building policy, so that we build homes that meet the needs of the people we have. All too often in the past, that has not happened, and it is time that it did.

The hon. Lady asked about the impact on Wales, and she is right that we are talking about roughly 40,000 households. The average loss in Great Britain as a whole is about £14 a week. In Wales, because rents tend to be lower, it is about £12 a week.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) mentioned rural communities. We will evaluate the impact of the policy over a two-year period, but with interim reports that we will publish across England, Scotland and Wales, and across rural, urban and suburban constituencies. As a consequence of debates in the House of Lords on the Bill as it went through, we agreed—we were well on the way to doing this anyway—proper evaluation, so if there are particular issues in Wales or in rural areas, we will have the chance to respond, for example, by adjusting the allocation of discretionary housing payments. That allocation has been set for 2013-14 but not beyond, so if we learn things during the year, we can look at whether we need to change the allocation. We could change the rules of the scheme. Obviously, that is a more fundamental change, but we have a fairly flexible lever if we get early signs that there are problems in particular areas.

We are trying to support social landlords, so we have worked with the Chartered Institute of Housing to produce a toolkit for landlords called “Making it Fit”, which provides an overview of how different social landlords are responding. The last thing I want to convey is that the change will be easy for people, that there will not be people who find it difficult, and that it will not be disruptive. However, there is a difference when social landlords engage, get in there early and get to know their tenants—for example, those who sit with their tenants and say, “Are you claiming all the benefits you are entitled to? Could you be getting disability living allowance, for example, which would top up the household income?” There is chance to have a constructive engagement with tenants to find out their needs and what is happening. Many social landlords do not know whether their tenants are even there, or whether they are sub-letting. A lot of beneficial things that need to happen could happen as a result.

[Jessica Morden]

Does the Minister accept that with the report, that is precisely what Bron Afon has done? It has spoken individually to every single person who is affected, and in the report, there are the harrowing personal stories that people have told.

[Steve Webb]

I accept that Bron Afon has been out and talked to its tenants, and if that has triggered the process, it is a good thing. As I said, I have some doubts about at least one of the case studies, and in terms of some of the other case studies, I hope that the housing association has explained what discretionary housing payments are, because I think, from memory, another one had a disabled adaptation, or something like that, and that is what DHPs are for. It certainly was not a criticism of Bron Afon, but there are social landlords who are upping their game, engaging, and trying to generate extra revenue through benefit take-up. They are being creative, looking at the private market, and they are moving people around. They accept that the change is coming and are not simply saying, “Oh, this is terrible”, but doing something constructive. I welcome any housing association or social landlord that does that, and they deserve credit.

I have mentioned the discretionary housing payment money. The particular people we had in mind are those with disabled adaptations and foster carers, but the local authority has discretion to use it in individual cases. I do not belittle the impact that this significant change will have. We need to save money, but we have the potential to make better use of our social housing stock to deal with not only under-occupation, but overcrowding, and to be fair between social and private tenants. At a time when we are trying to take very large sums of money out of the housing benefit bill to deal with the vast, yawning deficit that was not dealt with, we need to look at this area but manage the process, and that is what our research and use of DHPs is designed to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jessica Morden and Steve Webb

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

We must strike the right balance in respect of those who work for an employer for a very short period, in order to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. Those who are with a firm for more than three months will be within the scope of auto-enrolment, and those who work for a shorter period will still be free to opt in and trigger a contribution from their firm.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

T6. Will the Minister reassure my constituents that the assessment for the personal independence payment will be fit for purpose and will not repeat the experiences of the work capability assessment?