Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

That the Grand Committee report to the House that it has considered the Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2011.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to move the Motion standing in my name. I am grateful for the Chairman’s guidance about what we are doing today, which is exactly what I was intending.

The policy that the statutory instrument enshrines was first promulgated in the October 2010 comprehensive spending review, since when quite a lot has happened. Actually, it is my impression that the pressure group community and those in the wider world who follow these things actually think that some of these regulations are already in place. Because there was a nine-month transitional period, which was welcome, people perhaps do not recognise that the scheme enshrined in these regulations will not be implemented until January next year. Therefore, I think that it is apposite for colleagues to pause and reflect, and to tax the ministerial Front Bench with some questions that arise naturally from the proposed changes.

The first thing to say is that the economic circumstances have changed. I am certainly seized of the importance of deficit reduction, and it was obviously right of the incoming Government in 2010 to act quickly to make the savings that they have. You can have arguments about the degree, pace and scale of some of the changes, but I certainly think that, given the economic environment in which we now find ourselves and given the housing market changes that we have seen, particularly in the private rented sector, it is right to pause and look at the regulations carefully.

As colleagues will know, because it is clear from the regulations, housing benefit for single people under 25 who are in the private rented sector is currently restricted to paying for a single room in shared accommodation, rather than a self-contained, one-bedroom property. I remember well that quite a controversy surrounded the introduction of the original shared-accommodation rules in 1996, and it has been my sense that, ever since, the department has been hankering after the opportunity to make a change of this kind. However, there are cogent reasons for stopping and reflecting on why we need to think carefully about this.

First, it is now clear that the shared-accommodation rate tends to be significantly lower than the one-bedroom rate. In checking some of the facts in preparation for this debate, I was taken aback by the scale of some of the proposed changes. Indeed, in some areas recipients will see their benefit entitlement more than halved if their circumstances are caught by the proposals in these regulations. For some people, this will mean a significant change in January 2012.

Secondly, a worrying, but perhaps not surprising, degree of concern has been expressed on a number of fronts, which I think the Committee will want to reflect upon carefully. The University of York did an important survey that repays careful study called Unfair Shares. It came to the conclusion that this was potentially the most damaging housing benefit cut in terms of potentially promoting additional homelessness. The University of York is an experienced hand in these matters and its opinion should be taken seriously.

In addition, the Social Security Advisory Committee advised the Government that they should not proceed with these regulations and made suggestions to the Government about what they would need to do if they proceeded with them. The Government, I am pleased to say, came up with two additional exemptions and they are very welcome. I will come back to exemptions in a moment but I do not want to lose the point that the Social Security Advisory Committee, after mature reflection, thought that these regulations should not be proceeded with. That should give us pause for thought.

The Merits Committee, which does valuable work looking at the regulations as they come before us in this House, came to the conclusion that there were significant uncertainties about the wider consequences of these regulations. It went on to mention that it was uncertain about where any second-order costs would fall—for example, the cost of providing emergency re-housing for individuals who cannot find a room within the housing benefit budget that they are set. The Merits Committee was encouraging Members to look carefully at these regulations, and that is what we are doing this afternoon.

The pressure group Crisis did a serious piece of work in a survey. It judged that these regulations were going to cause major problems and increases in homelessness and rough sleeping. Crisis knows a great deal about that client group and their needs and its conclusions need to be respected too. We are in a situation where there is continuing and increasing concern because of the changes in the private rental market and the economy that we are now facing. These regulations therefore need some careful thought.

I turn to the exemptions. The two new exemptions are welcome but, because they deal with homelessness and people who have spent more than three months in supported accommodation and therefore are on the road out of rough sleeping and matters of that kind. By definition rough sleepers who do not have the three-month qualification will not be exempt and that is a concern. The ex-offenders’ extension of an exemption is welcome but, again, ex-offenders who are not considered to be a risk do not qualify for the exemption and that is a concern. People who have disabilities but do not qualify for the higher rates of DLA will not get the exemption that already exists under the shared accommodation rate exemptions, and that is a concern. Two obvious other groups that occurred to me are pregnant women, who I think should be the subject of an exemption under these regulations, and non-resident parents, whom I want to come back to briefly in a moment.

My third point is the lack of available accommodation. That is getting worse, for the reasons that I explained—the private rental sector is getting tighter and tighter. Households of multiple occupation are being much more rigorously policed by the local authorities and that is a good thing, but it means that there are fewer of them. In rural areas like the one in which I live, there is almost a complete dearth of any appropriate accommodation that would service the needs of people who would be looking for shared accommodation in rural areas, and I am sure that that is true of other parts of the United Kingdom as well. I want to tax the Minister of State with a question about what evidence he has that, when these changes are introduced, appropriate levels of accommodation will be available to people who will need to take account of it. Of course, by virtue of the fact that we are forcing more people into this marketplace, there is even more pressure on available suitable accommodation for shared occupation in future.

Of course, the Government are right to say that they have put extra money into the discretionary housing payment scheme, which is welcome. Some £190 million over the period of the comprehensive spending review is a significant sum of money, but the evidence is that it will not match the needs that will be generated, particularly by these changes.

I turn briefly to some of the problems—I hope that other colleagues will be encouraged to enter the debate and expand on them a little. My evidence is that there is an advantage to some people in sharing accommodation. In a “friendly” share, you get people’s support. If you are comfortable with your fellow inhabitants in the share, a lot can be gained and a lot of positive support can flow from that. On the other hand, in circumstances where your entry into shared accommodation is unplanned and you are working in a strange environment with people whom you do not know, that almost by definition increases stress and makes life a lot more uncomfortable. It generates questions of safety, particularly for young female claimants. It can also affect people’s ability to get to work. If they come from self-contained accommodation and go into shared accommodation where they are uncomfortable, it disrupts their state of mind to the extent that it may even affect their work patterns if they happen to be in work at the time. A general question of health and well-being therefore surrounds whether people are able to find friendly people to share with or whether they are forced into accommodation with strangers whom they do not really know and trust.

I would have been much more comfortable if we had taken the time to pilot the regulations. I do not have any recollection of whether we did so in 1996 but, given the circumstances that we find now, again in rural areas in particular, I would have been more comfortable if a little extra time had been taken to look at how the regulations might work out in practice. There are all sorts of divergences in policy provision in different social security areas. In Scotland, the policy that the Government are working towards is to give everyone an entitlement to settled accommodation by 2012. I do not know how these regulations will fit into that plan. I am not arguing that it is a good, bad or indifferent plan, but it is different and I hope that there has been proper consultation so that these regulations do not run counter to what the Government north of the border are thinking of doing.

A small but important legal point is that you can engage in a tenancy north of the border if you are 16 or 17; you cannot do that in England until you are 18. So there is the prospect in Scotland of a 16 year-old entering a shared tenancy with a much older adult, the potential risk in which is obvious for everyone to see. I would happy to see an extension of the regulations much lower down the age range to try to protect against inelegancies such as that. That is another example of how we have to treat the devolved nations of this United Kingdom with some care.

On shared accommodation for non-resident parents, I do not know how valid or strong the following legal point is, but I am advised that the right to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents could contravene Article 9.3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I do not know whether that is so, but it is certainly an argument. I should like some reassurance that a lawyer in the department has looked at that. We will discuss non-resident parents, child maintenance and child support in another Room later in the week, and for weeks and weeks—we are looking forward to that—but I make that request for information today.

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I hope that this debate has helped to inform your Lordships of our thinking behind this measure, and I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and views. I commend the regulations to the House.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his usual, comprehensive diligence in responding to the debate. We have had a very good debate, which I do not want to prolong. I take it from what the Minister said that he has registered that there is continuing concern, not just among the bodies that we have cited but in this House and in this Committee, about the potential effects of implementing this policy. I also take it, from his invitation to feed back any information on untoward results, that any evidence that might controvert the evidence on which the department has founded the regulations will be happily received. Speaking for myself, I will be watching this area, as will other colleagues, extremely carefully over the next 12 months.

As well as being very grateful to everyone who has taken part in the debate, I want to say two other things before I sit down. First, the Minister has invested discretionary housing payments with a role that I did not think that they had. He said—I wrote it down—that there is “no limit” on discretionary housing payments, but he has to be very careful about this. I do not want to read too much into what he said but, for example, a very powerful case was mentioned this afternoon. I take it from what he said that, as there is no limit on discretionary housing payments, it would be possible for a local authority, if it thought it appropriate, to apply discretionary housing payments not just for transitional provision or for temporary problem solving but—if it has the budget, which is an important point that was made—to apply its discretion systematically over time. That is not what I thought that discretionary housing payments were for. We will all go away and reflect carefully on that.

My final point is that we need to monitor all of this, including the use of discretionary housing payments. We also need to ensure that we keep in kilter with the devolved Administrations, as I am not sure that these local authority duties are exactly the same in other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom.

Having said all that, this has been a valuable debate, for which I am really grateful. I know the Minister of State well enough to know that he has obviously engaged with the issues seriously, and we are grateful for that. If we get any other evidence or feedback from other sources, including the pressure groups and other bodies that are competent to operate in these areas, we will take advantage of his kind offer by ensuring that the department is made fully aware of the circumstances as those unfold after January next year. I am grateful to the Minister for making that clear.

On that basis, I am happy that the Committee has indeed considered the statutory instrument in what has been a very valuable debate, and I am grateful to the Minister for his reply.

Motion agreed.