Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment and wish to underline two points. First, if the great problem in the housing market is a shortage of affordable housing, then by doing something to social landlords and private developers which not only affects the certainty of their cash flow but also seriously undermines their credit worthiness—and therefore their ability to raise money to develop new houses—we would cut ourselves off and shoot ourselves in the foot. They are the only source of new affordable housing if the Government are not prepared to spend any more directly. Secondly, we have always set up direct debits for paying our mortgage costs or our rent, and the kind of bank accounts that most of us have allow us to go into slight overdraft if the falling of the payments is out of synch. A large proportion of people who exist on benefits either do not have bank accounts or, more frequently, they have bank accounts which do not allow direct debit or, if they do allow direct debit, do not allow agreed overdrafts. It is more difficult to manage your money if you are in that situation with your financial service provider. It is patronising to say to the poorest part of our community, ““You must manage your own money better””, when they do not have the opportunities that we who are better off have in managing our money.