Welfare Reform Bill

Now we hear the nub of it. The noble Lord wishes that all Conservative Back-Benchers should have a good dose of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, to get them into the right frame of mind. This is good fun, but we have business to do, so let us get back to it, although I am now completely distracted from what I was going to say. I was talking about the way we are supporting first-time buyers with First Buy, which will help 2,500 aspiring home owners by spring 2013. First Buy will maintain capacity in the house-building industry in the short term and support 5,000 to 10,000 net jobs in England in 2011-12 and 2012-13. Those are measures to help first-time buyers back into the market. My core response to this amendment is that, bluntly, it is unnecessary. As I have said, we are committed to making savings from the CPI measure until 2014-15. After that, if local housing allowance rates are clearly out of step with rents, they can be reconsidered. I have made that clear in the past. It will be up to a future Government to decide how LHA rates will be set from the end of that spending review. I do not believe there is a substantial difference between the parties on this. I was interested to see that Liam Byrne for the Opposition during the Budget debate said that where: "““there is a temporary switch from RPI to CPI for the next three years … we will support that””.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/3/11/; col. 201.]" This is a response to the crisis. It is not exactly the same point, but a parallel point, and the true difference between us is having set it without a formal adjustment to the process. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that in the long run there is a difference between how rents move and how CPI moves, so clearly it will need to be looked at very closely then. Even more than that point, we have commissioned independent research to evaluate the impact of reform to housing benefit, as the noble Lord, Lord Best said. That is a very good and very fine review. I am extremely pleased to have it. I think it will be the most interesting piece of housing research we have ever seen in this country, and I am proud to have been able to find the funding for it. As he said, we will be getting the initial findings next spring and consequently they will be refined over the next year or so. Clearly we will take those findings very seriously. I am not going to make a formal commitment here about that, but we will take those findings very seriously. In response to the question of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about the role of rent officers and the capacity in that area, we will still need rents in the local market to be tracked so there is likely still to be a role for rent officers in dealing with the residual cases that do not fit within the mainstream local housing allowance rules. So there is a dual reason to maintain capacity in that area.