Welfare Reform Bill

I fear that that is exactly the position. Others may wish to come in on the amendment about foster parents. Amendments 43 and 83 would not require an underoccupying tenant to move out where there was simply nowhere for them to downsize to—the fundamental point behind the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. For example, the National Housing Federation has demonstrated that about 180,000 social housing tenants would be classified as underoccupying their two-bedroom homes and would need to move on, but that only about 68,000 one-bedroom social housing flats come available for letting in a year. Even if every one of the one-bedroom flats was allocated to those who are downsizing—which of course would be impossible as there are serious demands from tens of thousands of other such households—it would take years before they could be accommodated. In the past, we built social housing between the world wars and afterwards. Mostly, we built three-bedroom housing. Now we have a lot of households that require something smaller, but we do not have enough houses to put them in. Here, again, the impossibility of people moving means that the exemption would kick in. If they were expected to downsize into less secure private rented properties, rents are likely to be much higher and therefore the benefit costs, the universal credit costs, would be much higher—about £66 per week more in south-east England. That is not a great saving. The housing benefit bill would be likely to rise dramatically although people were occupying less space. Moving creates the familiar barrier to employment. Moving to somewhere with a higher rent itself intensifies demand on the private rented sector, which will push up rents more generally. Of the amendments, my preferred option is to define underoccupying as exceeding the bedroom standard plus one—that is, having two ““spare”” bedrooms. That would cut the gains to the Government from the underoccupation penalty to 150,000 households from the 670,000 that the Government are expecting to be caught by the new penalty. If the Government cannot accept that, I hope that, alongside the exclusion for older people—the category most likely to be underoccupying at the moment— exemptions could be put in place for disabled people in adapted property, recipients of disability allowance, families classified as underoccupying because foster children are not counted, those unable to move because no suitable alternative exists, and those in supported or sheltered housing where a spouse or partner dies or leaves them and who are below pensionable age and would be compelled to move out. Added together, those exemptions would certainly reduce the hardship and extra costs implicit in the underoccupation penalty. I look forward to hearing comments from other noble Lords and the reaction of the Minister.