Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateTessa Munt
Main Page: Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat - Wells and Mendip Hills)Department Debates - View all Tessa Munt's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe reason is that we will be talking full time, all the time, to local authorities. We receive a huge amount of information from them, so we are not talking about stand-alone assessments being made; rather, the functioning of universal credit requires that, at its best, it should be done in one location. However, we will be in constant contact with local authorities about the needs in their areas, and we will be with them all the way through in the way this is applied.
May I press the Secretary of State a little further on the matter of paying housing benefit directly to landlords? A number of my constituents have found that when they are overdrawn or beyond their overdraft, the bank snatches the money, leaving them still unable to pay their rent, so that they get into worse and worse difficulties. Will he reconsider?
I recognise that, and the point is that although the vast majority of those who receive local housing allowance make their payments on time, there is always a group that does not. The way to deal with that is to recognise that we need to help landlords by not allowing those kinds of people to get away with it—for example, by paying a little bit at the two-month point, which sets the clock back to zero. We can make adjustments that way, and we can also deal with those who have difficultly by assisting them and, where necessary, making direct payments. However, those payments should always be the exception, to try to help people manage their budgets.