Welfare Reform Bill

I, too, support Amendment 35, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Rix. As we have already heard today, tidy laws are not always fair laws. I am concerned about some exceptional people whose needs cannot neatly be described and I hope that common sense will prevail. I shall give the example of a young man with autism and learning disability, Theo. Since early childhood, Theo has loved and become very knowledgeable about cathedrals, churches and architecture. He is also a man with complex impairments and a history of behaviour which has challenged every shared setting he has lived in. With specialist advice from Housing Options, and support and endorsement from social services, his parents set up a safe and individualised housing and care package for him. The Government’s view may now be that it has never been the intention that SMI would cover all a person’s housing liabilities, but Theo’s shared-ownership mortgage was offered precisely on the basis that it would cover the mortgaged part of his housing cost, as was DWP policy at the time. The past nine years of Theo’s life have been built on that. His home has provided the all-important stability that someone with autism needs; and his disabilities combine to make change much more disturbing than we would find it. Theo has an interest-only mortgage, so the possibility of the acquisition of a valuable capital asset does not apply in his case. With careful management by his parents, he has been able to lead a happy life at a much lower cost to the public purse than the alternative arrangement of a secure hospital. However, the new FSA rules require mortgage-lenders to set aside more capital and to treat mortgages on shared-ownership properties as 100 per cent mortgages. The result is a sudden gap between the rate at which lenders have to lend—for example, 6 or 8 per cent —and what the new SMI rate, which I think is 3.63 per cent, will cover. In Theo’s case, this leads to a shortfall of £200 per month. You can imagine that the arrears are already quite high. A new mortgage would be at an even higher rate, but he would then have to find a 25 per cent deposit for his property. He does not have the money to negotiate another mortgage. There has been quite a bit of publicity about the adverse effect of this reform on HOLD. Experienced housing experts say that fewer lenders are likely to want to deal with disabled applicants seeking this solution to support a non-institutional life. Ageing parents of disabled adults have followed similar paths with the help of enlightened housing associations. Those parents have been making responsible arrangements in their own lifetime, hoping for some assurance of long-term stability and security for their child. Instead, Theo's parents now face the prospect of seeing Theo’s distress at being uprooted from his home and moved, probably, to an inappropriate and less sensitive institution, which will be much more costly. As the noble Lord, Lord Rix, pointed out, there are probably about 1,000 customers with learning disabilities—0.4 per cent, I understand, of the total caseload looked at by the impact assessment. Some of those administering HOLD have suggested ways in which the cost of continuing higher-rate payments for this group of disabled people could be contained, but it would require acceptance that there are indeed exceptions to the rule. Since the Poor Law 1601, society has tried to tidy away people whose needs do not fit present-day norms, but in today’s more enlightened society we have made huge strides towards creating an inclusive society in which every person's humanity and dignity are respected and in which they have a place regardless of the extent of the difference that the person presents. However, these gains are quite fragile and we need look no further than Winterbourne View to be reminded of the previous scandals in mental handicap hospitals such as Ely and Normansfield in the late 1970s. Surely, we must now realise that without adequate advocacy and diligence we could again allow such inhumane provision to be re-created—people shunned by society and placed out of sight and out of mind at considerable expense but in the interests of tidiness. The test of a humane society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. I had little awareness of the lives lived by some people with learning disabilities until I had a disabled child. My eyes were opened. I should like the Minister to consider using the Bill to reinstate SMI at the higher level for people such as Theo, which would allow them the opportunity to live with dignity in their own homes.