Welfare Reform Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

The point that the hon. Lady misses is this: when people come to my advice surgery and say that they need an adapted property, they do not mean that they need one in Merseyside. That is the fundamental problem. Not only is there a regional imbalance in the supply of accommodation, but each individual has individual needs. If they do not, why does my local authority employ Dependability Ltd to send occupational therapists to assess individual needs? I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) would support me on this, but every individual with a disability is likely to have personalised requirements. That is my central argument. Not everybody has wheelchair access adaptations or larger bathrooms or lower counters. Adaptations are highly tailored to the individual's circumstances, as they should be. In some cases, the Government's proposals will work like a dream. Nobody is arguing that in no instance will a perfect match be found and people will be satisfied. My central point is that that will involve a minority of the 108,000 who will be affected. I cannot see—housing associations support my analysis—how the result could be anything different. The measure is likely to result in a phenomenal waste of money on adapted properties and/or to trap people with disabilities who are by definition on low and fixed incomes with a cut in their living standards, which is exactly what the Government told us they wish to avoid. Last year, the Secretary of State claimed that disabled people had ““nothing to fear”” from his welfare plans, adding:"““It is a proud duty to provide financial security to the most vulnerable members of our society and this will not change.””" If disabled people are in an adapted property with an extra bedroom, they have every reason, as things stand, to worry. To return to the intervention from the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), the discretionary housing payment, which the Government repeatedly say is a panacea, is the philosopher's stone, as I described in Committee. Somehow, the £40 million a year fund will stretch to cover overall cuts in housing benefit of £1.5 billion. There is no earthly way in which it can stretch sufficiently to cover the protection of vulnerable younger people who are affected by the single-room cuts, of people in accommodation that has been adapted for disabled use, and of all those whom we want to keep in their homes because we want them to keep their jobs when their property becomes unaffordable owing to overall housing benefit cuts and the downrating from CPI.