Welfare Reform Bill

I am grateful for that quotation, which of course goes against the other one that I gave from further on in the document, which says that we do not know what claimants’ choices are likely to be. The noble Baroness’s quotation has the word ““little”” in it. We have often reached the point where we have quoted from different sections of the same document, and that is why we need answers. We need to know which of the three choices people are going to make so that we can determine whether the homes are available for them. There are three solutions, which I put to the Minister and which we need to answers about, at the very least after his answer to the fundamental question of whether we have the housing stock. I ask the Minister, when replying, to talk not about the DCLG but about the three government departments that are responsible for these matters in this country, because three levers have to be pulled for the DWP to be able to answer that single question. What is the solution? I would like to know what the three government departments feel about how they can match housing demand. I must say that I am not particularly encouraged because, for many of us, moving house is probably the worst thing in the world that you could probably do. In fact, my noble friend Lord Kirkwood told me this morning that we ought to exchange our rubbish with our neighbour’s because our neighbour’s rubbish is much more interesting than our own. I have found moving house to be a very uncomfortable exercise, and I am sure we have to be careful of this. The Government say that they are working in England to develop a team of advisers who will work to help people to make better use of our housing stock, which is a laudable aim, but they also say that they will work with the devolved Administrations to see what can be done in Scotland and Wales. What can be done about the housing stock across the whole of the country where this policy impacts? It seems to me that there are three potential solutions when we have the answers to the figures, one of which is that we must have housing money—discretionary housing money, or whatever—to ensure that the money reaches the particular groups that will need it in order to be able to make the adjustment. The second is about exceptions. We will come to that in the next set of amendments, but where the cost to the public purse can be demonstrated to be larger—and many of the amendments coming up now will demonstrate that—we must ensure that we have exceptions. The final point that has been made by many noble Lords here today is that we must have transition time for the social housing sector in all three parts of the country where this Bill applies to make the changes in order that this policy works. We cannot achieve the original purposes of these measures, all of which I think are right, without achieving those three things and without ensuring that we have a sector that can—