Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, the size criteria measure marks a significant change in our approach to housing benefit for claimants living in the social rented sector. The current housing benefit system is not fair; it is not right that families on benefit in the private rented sector have been able to live in homes that most working families could not afford, and we have already begun to tackle that unfairness through changes to the local housing allowance. It is also not fair that, in the social rented sector, housing benefit pays out the full rent on properties that are larger than required by those who live in them, while at the same time over 250,000 households in England are overcrowded. To pick up one of the many points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the bedroom standard, that standard actually expects children aged over 16 to share a room with children of the same gender until they are 21. That is a rather tougher requirement than that of the DWP and the LHA, which allows separate bedrooms for a child of the same gender, aged 16 and over.