Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, as we would all expect, that was a comprehensive exposition in support of the amendment. We will read Hansard and have an encyclopaedia of the issues, which will be enormously helpful. If rents go up by more than the amount that people receive in benefit, will it lead to homelessness? Is that scenario likely and will it create serious problems in the future? Will rents go up by more than the amount available to pay them, leaving people with a serious problem? The Minister has said that it is hoped that rents will be kept down by the restraints on housing benefit and the restraint on housing costs that are helped by universal credit. Rents through these measures, which are so controversial, will be restrained, which should mean that increasing the support for tenants on the basis of the CPI does not hurt anyone too much because rents are relatively static. That may happen. In some parts of the country, so many people are dependent on housing benefit that, like it or not, landlords may have to tailor their rents to the level that is paid through universal credit and housing benefit for their tenants. Landlords may be pressured into keeping their rents down. In other places, it seems improbable that this will happen. If rents do rise, they will get further and further away from what people have available to pay them. In London and the south-east, we have already seen rents going up by a lot. Noble Lords may ask whether it is possible that rents can keep on exponentially increasing in the way that they have, or whether they are bound to flatten out. An awful lot of people who would have been home purchasers—first-time buyers—are becoming and staying tenants. These people have a higher income. They could have bought were it not for the fact that they are required to pay a deposit of perhaps £35,000 or £40,000—far too much for them to accumulate. However, they have the money to pay in rent if they have to. It might have been a much better option for them to buy but they do have the resources. These are an extra ingredient in the marketplace in London and the south-east, which mean that this extra group will be able to afford increased rents, which means that landlords will be able to turn away those who are dependent on benefits and accept this new expanding group. This means that it would be unwise to speculate that rents will be restrained by the housing benefit cuts and the measures that we have all been talking about. It seems quite probable that others will replace those tenants. Landlords can be choosy, particularly in London and the south-east. The impact on poorer households will therefore be as bad as many of us have feared. I was extremely grateful to the Minister for agreeing to set up a substantial independent review of the impact of the housing benefit cuts on families, poverty and local authorities. The exercise will be extremely helpful. It has involved the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the University of Oxford, the University of Sheffield and Ipsos MORI in a comprehensive way. It will be an excellent piece of work, from which we will be able to discover the exact impact of these cuts. It would be very helpful to get a commitment from the Minister, however it is phrased, that if this review shows that, in at least some parts of the country, rents are moving upwards and getting out of line with the basis on which there is an increase in the amount given to tenants to help them pay their rent, that gap will be addressed. In this way, among others proposed in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, payments to tenants would always be restored according to the relationship to rents being paid in the marketplace, rather than getting out of line. That would be an enormously helpful commitment in advance of receiving the results, which may show that it is unnecessary and that increasing rents in line with CPI is enough to keep payments to tenants in line with what they face in the real world.