Housing Benefit

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are looking to protect people in difficult circumstances by looking to the local authorities to apply the discretionary housing payments, which have gone up enormously. Overall, they are running at £150 million this year, and at £360 million for the SRS. Our expectation is that these hard cases will be looked after locally.

[Lord German]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister has just explained, there are a large number of exemptions which are made through local authority discretion. The Government have, however, insisted on a certain number of exemptions, and one of the most welcome is the recent exemption given to a disabled child who was unable to share a bedroom. Will the Minister extend that commitment to include a disabled adult who is unable to share a bedroom, and so put this matter beyond doubt, rather than leave it to the discretion of local authorities?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are looking for local authorities to deal with this matter with adults. We think that there is a difference between disabled children and disabled adults in that disabled children cannot know whether they pose a risk to themselves or to another child whereas adults and couples are able to exercise choice in how they run their lives.