Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Webb and Annette Brooke

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

10. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of councils’ use of discretionary housing payments in this financial year.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Details of how local authorities used discretionary housing payments in the first half of this year were published on 20 December. That report gives an early indication of how that funding is supporting people, including disabled people living in specially adapted accommodation, and of the type of choices that people are making in response to the changes, such as seeking to move to alternative accommodation or looking for work.

[Annette Brooke]

Does the Minister agree that councils should use all available funds provided by his Department to offset the ending of the spare room subsidy for those who are disabled and have a clear need for two bedrooms or more, and those who cannot find smaller accommodation? Will the underspending this year affect next year’s allocation?

[Steve Webb]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the funding being made available to local authorities for cases where it would be inappropriate for individuals to make up the shortfall should be spent. In addition, this Government have made available an extra £20 million, in-year, but less than a quarter of local authorities bid for that money. We want local authorities to spend the money being made available, so that those who can move do so, but those for whom that would be inappropriate have the top-up that they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Webb and Annette Brooke

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am surprised the shadow pensions Minister chose not to raise the issue of the state pension reform announced by the Chancellor in the Budget statement, which will be of particular benefit to this group of women. Many of the women who are aged about 57 spent considerable amounts of time out of work bringing up children, and we will reform the state pension system so that they get a proper pension for the first time.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

5. What recent progress has been made on implementing the recommendations of the Harrington review of work capability assessment.

Housing Benefit (Scotland)

Debate between Steve Webb and Annette Brooke

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clarke]

It is not the Minister’s debate either.

[Annette Brooke (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Steve Webb]

I think, technically, that right hon. and hon. Members who intervene are meant to tell me formally that they want to do so; I do not mind at all, but they have made their comments and I think it is fair that I respond to the hon. Gentleman.

There are several Scottish angles to the debate and I want to deal with some of them rather than make more general points. There is an issue about whether people who are covered by LHA are being driven into pockets—very localised areas. One aspect of the Scottish situation is that the 30th percentile tends to be closer to the 50th percentile than perhaps it is in other parts of Great Britain. The cash difference tends to be smaller, as I said earlier, so the impact is not as great as it might be in other areas where the rent distribution is more dispersed. I fully accept the point that the impact of the measures will be different in different places, but the 30th percentile has a smaller impact in Scotland because of the compressed rent distribution.

The hon. Gentleman quite properly raised the issue of unemployment. I would not for a moment suggest that it is ever easy or straightforward to find a job; but, again, headline unemployment is slightly lower in Scotland than for Great Britain as a whole. The majority of Scottish local authorities have lower unemployment rates than the Great Britain average. That is not to belittle the matter, but it is not a purely Scottish dimension. The issue is clearly one to be dealt with nationally.

As to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and the support that we are giving, an important feature of the new scheme is discretionary housing payments. We recognise that we cannot anticipate every hard case, so we give local authorities discretion. We give them funds so that if there is someone who just does not fit the rules terribly well or who is acutely affected by the changes—the hon. Gentleman gave examples of situations that might be difficult—local authorities have discretionary funding. In 2011-12, Scotland as a whole will be getting an increase of 15% over 2010-11. That is an increase of £360,000 in discretionary housing payments. The hon. Gentleman’s local authority will be getting a 34% increase; more than double the Scottish average increase will be going to North Lanarkshire to provide additional assistance. The figure will go from £77,000 in support this year to £103,000. It is worth saying that the 2011 DHP increase is much smaller than the increases will be in succeeding years; the Great Britain-wide figure will go from £20 million this year to £30 million, and then £60 million a year. Most of the increase in DHP will be in later years, but we have already added 34% to it in the coming year for the broad rental market area of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Although, inevitably, that money will have to do a lot of work, it is specifically designed for the sort of hard cases he spoke about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Webb and Annette Brooke

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

16. What steps he plans to take to reduce the level of pensioner poverty.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

The Government want to see all pensioners have a decent and secure income in retirement. We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011, with a triple guarantee that pensions are raised by the highest of earnings, prices or 2.5%. We will also protect key benefits for older people.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. What action, if any, is he able to take on a problem he himself identified, namely, the cliff-edge situation of women who have completed 30 years employment and who have made the necessary national insurance contributions, but who were born one or two days too early to get the pension that they deserve?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend raises an important point—in fact, it sounds vaguely familiar—and she is quite right that introducing changes in a cliff-edge manner, as the previous Government did, creates unfairnesses of the sort that she identifies. As she will know, when women are short of the necessary number of years, they can buy voluntary contributions, under a fairly restricted set of circumstances. That will allow some women to get closer to the full pension than they would otherwise have been able to get. However, she is absolutely right that the way in which the scheme was implemented by the previous Government creates an unfair cliff edge.