Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I speak in this debate having released, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Best, the battery of Baronesses from this side of the Committee. I am not sure that I am not better suited to sitting on the hill at a safe distance and watching all this from afar. However, these are hugely important issues. One thing seems abundantly clear on the basis of this debate and the previous one: what is in the Bill simply cannot stand. We recognise the issue of underoccupation. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, part of that is dealt with by definition: the extra bedroom in itself is part of the solution. My noble friend Lord Whitty just made a powerful contribution about the need to look at this in the context of housing policy more generally: the provision of a range of new accommodation and the range of tenancies that we have. To use the mechanism of housing benefit as the sole lever to try to deal with the problem seems fundamentally flawed. There seems to be an assumption behind that approach that someone who finds themselves in a position of underoccupation, as defined, is somehow doing it to cheat the state, to grab more from housing benefit that they might be entitled to. The reasons that people end up in an underoccupying position are varied. It could be that the kids are leaving home to go to university; it could be that a member of the household has undertaken the instructions of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and got on their bike to find a job somewhere else; there could have been a death in the family. All sorts of reasons may underpin why people find themselves underoccupied, and I am not sure that that is reflected in the provisions. I must stop agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Best, but I agree that underoccupation is more of an issue among elderly people. I remember people from the patch that I represented on the council. One elderly woman occupied alone the three-bedroom house that she had occupied since she started a family. That is where her memories were. She could not get up the stairs and used to sleep in the front room. That is not a satisfactory outcome to her life or, indeed, to the use of housing stock. Means of dealing with that, such as local authorities having a scheme whereby they can help people to move by dealing with the practical issues of carpets, curtains, utilities and so on, would relieve some of the risks and tensions associated with moving house. Following the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, I say to Lib Dem Members of this Committee that we have heard some powerful speeches and challenges to the legislation. When push comes to shove, if the Government themselves will not change, we will seek change by going through the Lobbies. We look forward to the Liberal Democrats joining us on those occasions. That is the most effective way of changing this legislation. So many issues were raised that if the Government do not adopt a different approach to definitions of underoccupancy, the range of exemptions that any sensible analysis suggests that they would have to bring in will negate much of what they are trying to achieve in this legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said that we have to bear in mind the deficit and public finances; of course we do. The Minister’s price tag was £2 billion, but why put that £2 billion on this group of people? People who are in receipt of housing benefit are by definition poorer. Why visit that cost on them? We heard several contributions on Amendment 35. We debated SMI in our last session in Committee when we sought assurances that it would continue and not be scrapped. However, another dimension has been raised today. I understand that HOLD is about shared ownership schemes. Therefore, it is partly to do with people buying and partly to do with people renting along the way. I seek the Minister’s assurance that the renting element can still be subject to housing benefit or housing support under universal credit. I think that is the position on shared ownership schemes at the moment but it would be good to have it confirmed. Another theme of this afternoon’s discussion is that the Minister is looking to save money. We understand that. However, the consequences of that for a whole range of people will be much greater cost. On the issue of disabled adaptations, everybody knows that local authorities are very stretched in their funding. It is always a challenge to get enough capital funding for DFGs. There is not enough money to go around and it is even more difficult now. It cannot make sense in anybody’s book to force a situation in which somebody is turfed out of a property that has been appropriately adapted so that all that money has to be spent again on adapting a new property. We have heard about issues to do with children in foster care. If the Government force the consequences of the legislation as it is on those families, there will be far greater costs to society than the savings that the Government seek to make here. This is a big group of amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the point at the start of our deliberations that it would be good if the Minister could respond in bite-sized chunks so that we have the opportunity to focus on and return to each of the components, although there is obviously a wide and very important dimension to this debate.