Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

If rents and housing benefit diverge significantly, the Government must change the method of operating. That was the policy intent, and that was what the noble Lord, Lord Freud, accepted. I ask the Minister not whether the Government agree with the policy—they have already agreed the policy intent of this amendment—but how their delivery of the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, is to be secured. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 12A, which entirely supports Amendment 7, so eloquently moved by the noble Baroness. In fact, I think that I prefer her speech to mine. However, my amendment has a slightly different take on the same set of issues, as it has been prepared by the Residential Landlords Association, which represents its member landlords. I have no interest to declare as a member of any landlords’ association, but I draw attention to other housing interests in the register.

It is important to note that the amendment’s call for a review of the impact of capping rent increases in local housing allowances at 1% next year, rather than at the consumer prices index level, comes from the landlord side as well as from those excellent bodies Shelter, Crisis and the others representing tenants. If the case made from the perspective of tenants does not win the argument, perhaps the points made by the landlord representatives will prove convincing.

Why is there a need for a special review of how rent increases in the private rented sector in comparison with increases in help with rent from local housing allowance are likely to work out in the years ahead? I suggest that there are two distinct reasons why the capping of local housing allowance at 1% per annum irrespective of levels of real rent increases in the marketplace is critical. First, the local housing allowance can represent half or even more of the total benefits received by those out of work and can represent most of the support which many of those in low-paid jobs receive from the state. That means that there are huge repercussions for tenants where a gap opens up between the actual rent that must be paid and the local housing allowance received to cover it. Cutting housing support means the tenant finding the money to meet the shortfall on the rent out of income intended for food, heating and other essentials.

High housing costs greatly increase the level of child poverty—the issue of concern to my noble friend Lady Howe. Department for Work and Pensions statistics analysed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation this month show the child poverty rate in England at 19% before housing costs are factored in, but at 28% afterwards. Where housing costs are lower, that huge impact does not show up. In Scotland, for example, the child poverty rate is the same as for England excluding housing costs, at 19%. It rises to 21% when housing costs are taken into account, far short of the 28% figure for England because of England’s high housing costs. Help with housing therefore makes a very real difference to the number of households in relative poverty.

Not providing enough money to pay the rent for those who rely on income from benefits simply means a cut to the other benefits that they receive. For tenants in the private rented sector, the reduction in living standards in real terms resulting from the Bill could well be doubled: first, from the gap in direct help with income between 1% and whatever inflation turns out to be and, secondly, from the gap in housing help between 1% and whatever rent increases over the next three years turn out to be.

Secondly, there are consequences where support for housing costs is cut not only for those receiving benefits but for the housing market—the availability of accommodation. Obviously, it affects the attitude of landlords towards providing accommodation for those on modest incomes if they are subject to tough rent controls. In most parts of the UK, there are plenty of other people desperately keen to find a rented home—students, mobile single people who share, and, as we know from excellent new research by the Building and Social Housing Foundation, increasing numbers of working families with young children who would have bought a home in times past but now cannot afford the deposit and mortgage costs. The acute housing shortages in so many parts of England mean that landlords are most unlikely to reduce rents to assist those in receipt of local housing allowance. Rather, as the Residential Landlords Association survey cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, shows, landlords will avoid lettings where LHA rent controls could apply, and will go for lettings on the open market.