Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, some of my more sharp-eyed colleagues here will have seen the information we put out on the discretionary housing payments for last year. That showed that there was a £13 million underspend by 240 councils and that of the £20 million bidding fund, £7 million was not spent. The £20 million was not applied for in its entirety. However, we allocated that money on the basis of parity of requirement. There was an extensive process to make sure that we gave the appropriate amounts of money to those councils.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, the Ipsos MORI review, of course, is much awaited, not least by the Master of the Rolls who, in making a judgment in favour of the Government, said that the DWP had informed him that,

“the scheme may need to be modified in the light of experience”.

When the independent review comes out and my noble friend sees it before the Summer Recess, will he agree to act upon it and take decisions to make changes to the scheme so that it fits the experience shown by his independent review?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we always look very closely at any research that is done and we will do no differently with this research.