Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the best piece of information I can provide the Committee on that question is that it is the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. I think I am reduced to going back to the basic principle that there should be a limit and we have set that limit at the equivalent of £35,000. We are going round in circles slightly.

[Lord Best]

I thank the Minister for helpful and hopeful words about the transitional arrangements—the 26-week period of grace that was the subject of my amendment. On my other amendments relating to excluding sheltered and supported housing and temporary accommodation, I think the Minister was saying that that was still a work in progress, so my hopes are not dashed on that.

The overarching point that I have repeated a little here is that it is fair enough to have a limit, if the Government, for political or wider reasons, believe it to be necessary, but the limit affects people in very random ways. If you live in a nice three-bedroomed council house in Wales—as I described it earlier—costing £85 a week, you will have £415 left to spend on other things. If you live in a crummy flat in the East End of London at a rent of £325 a week, you will have an awful lot less to spend out of your £500 on all the other things you need. The cap hits people in a rather random way, which is why I have been arguing that we should take housing out of the equation and look at the other factors where the fairness principle might have greater applicability.

The underlying question I would leave with the Minister is: how are we going to manage the movement of people from a high-rent area of the country—they may be in privately rented property or have a number of children—to the cheaper areas of the country? We are looking at something like 200,000 people and 50,000 households. The Minister has suggested that some people will deploy savings, but savings will run out quite quickly if they are being dipped into at an average rate of £93, and for some people up to £150, per week. Such people do not have large amounts of savings and their savings will run out quite quickly. We know it is rather improbable that landlords will drop rents dramatically to cover these and other benefit caps.

In most cases we do not expect people to be going out to work—90 per cent of them are not required to go out to work—so although some might be coerced or incentivised to go out to work, the great majority of the 50,000 will still be in homes where they will not be able to stay because the gap between what they will receive to pay their rent and the rent itself is too wide. They will have to leave. Are we making contingency plans for this movement of a couple of hundred thousand people from the more expensive parts of the south-east and south-west to the inexpensive parts of the country? The move will be expensive.

I pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about the cost of this cap. If people stay put and wait until they are evicted, an eviction will cost the housing association or social landlord something like £9,000. It is not just the legal costs but the fact that when the people move out you have to redecorate the house and you have a period of vacancy. All those things add up. We reckon that an eviction costs about £9,000, but if people go voluntarily and we can move in at the right time and do things in a more sensible way, the cost is about £2,500. However, on average you are looking at the landlord paying several thousand pounds when people move out.

There is also the question of providing education. When people arrive in new areas, their children will need to attend new schools. Social services departments will have to be notified if children are under the care of social workers. All these things will cost an awful lot of money, let alone just the simple transportation of people’s belongings, the cost of their rail fares and the costs involved in searching for a new home. All this is incredibly expensive. If we are to move 200,000 people because we feel, for whatever reason, that it is not fair for them to continue to occupy homes in expensive areas, are we putting in place the contingency plans that the local authorities in particular will need to get their heads around?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for that area of inquiry. We are looking to get early support for families in a number of ways well before the cap comes in. We are looking at a process whereby families on benefit face the same choices that low-income working families face. We are looking to achieve significant behavioural change through this measure. I assure the noble Lord that we are working hard with local authorities and other departments as well as with the devolved Administrations on the implementation of this measure.