Welfare Reform Bill

I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the importance of including council tax benefit within the universal credit structure and payments system, and I reinforce what the noble Lord has just said. As always, the noble Baroness has set out the arguments extremely cogently, and I know that the Minister needs no reminding of these arguments from me. I want only to reinforce the important point about the resentment of local authorities and their resistance to the proposal to leave them with the council tax benefit problem. The head of the benefits department of a particular local authority explained on Friday that because they have so little time to change the council tax benefits system radically, they are going to have to use the current system with a 20 per cent taper. This means that they will have to impose a minimum percentage that every claimant of working age will have to pay. This will apparently vary from one local authority to another, depending, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has said, on the numbers of pensioners living in particular communities and of other vulnerable people who will have to be protected. This particular local authority will have a basic council tax rate of 25 per cent that will have to be paid—a sort of poll tax of 25 per cent of council tax. The local authority in question is far from happy about that, and I understand, as others have said, that anger on the part of local authorities is widespread. On a more personal basis, a fixed charge of 25 per cent of council tax for people on JSA of £67 per week will cause enormous problems and will be one of the factors that will lead to the debts that we were discussing earlier with regard to another amendment. In addition to ruining the work incentive system within the universal credit and its simplicity—two aspects of the system that have had broad support from across the House—in my view council tax could become a major political problem for the Government. Ministers need to be aware that they will be accused of reintroducing the hated poll tax—the phrase just trips off the tongue—and that that will be campaigned about. This issue, compounding the cuts across the benefits system, could cause unrest on a scale not known in this country since the 1930s. I know that the Minister is well aware of these issues, but are his colleagues aware of the trap into which the Government are walking, which could so easily be resolved by incorporating the council tax benefit within the universal credit? I await the Minister’s response with keen interest and concern.