Scotland: Underoccupancy Charge Debate

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Department: Department for Work and Pensions

Scotland: Underoccupancy Charge

Lord Storey Excerpts
Thursday 24th October 2013

(11 years ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (LD)
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My Lords, I was shocked to discover that on Merseyside councils have left unused hundreds of thousands of pounds of discretionary housing payments. Will the Minister comment on that? Does he think that perhaps that money could be rolled over to future years or used in authorities where it would be used?

Lord Freud Portrait Lord Freud
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My Lords, we are currently looking very hard at what the support should be in the next year and possibly beyond so that we will have a smooth transition for this policy. One interesting thing is that there is a real economic mismatch, which I have talked about, in what we are building for people: we have 60% of people requiring single bedrooms and we are building only 13% in any one year. There is an economic mismatch so the signals must be corrected and that is one thing that this policy does.