Welfare Reform Bill

I am saying that we are working really hard with the banks and the banking community to make sure that we have an escrow arrangement of that nature, and we are doing this at several levels. We can have a general agreement, which I shall discuss with the banks as a whole, to provide a generalised protection. However, I am quite interested in getting particular banking products that will provide a simple bank account and elaborating on what could be a new level of support for some of the poorest people in our community. We have a one-off chance with universal credit to ramp up support for the poorer people in our community, and we are putting a lot of energy into achieving that. I have talked about this before. It is one of the hidden gains that we can get out of the introduction of this new system. Rather than people living on drips of money from here and there, we can really start to help them, supporting them in managing their finances and getting true independence. This is a core part of what we are going to be doing with universal credit, and part of that relates to housing. Housing will be a major part of people’s total income stream. We are not doing this for fun or to annoy anyone; this is absolutely part of what we are trying to do with universal credit. I need to deal with one other point—the issue of safeguards raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We are concerned about the safety and welfare of claimants and, where we have a concern, we need to put direct payments in place. There are vulnerable groups who are not able to manage the potential freedoms, and for them we will make sure that we go on with existing arrangements for direct payments. We have commissioned a consortium led by Professor Paul Hickman—I am sorry, but this is a bit of an announcement late at night—from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University to evaluate the effects of direct payments to claimants in the six demonstration project areas, which I shall announce soon. The other key team members are Dr Kesia Reeve, Peter Kemp of the Oxford Institute of Social Policy, and Stephen Finlay from Ipsos MORI, names that I know that the noble Lord, Lord Best, approves of. That will give us a cumulative understanding of the impacts of direct payments and inform the detail of delivery under universal credit. Research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2007, Paying Housing Benefit to Claimants, on both private and social tenants’ experiences of and their hypothetical attitude toward the management of their own housing benefit confirms that a significant proportion of social tenants have the potential to manage their own housing benefit payments. We will also have an advisory group for the demonstration projects and a wide range of local government, money advice, voluntary sector and other external stakeholders who will be invited to join that group. We had a slight exchange about what ““choice”” means and we have been teasing each other about the imbalance of power when you have choice. It concerns us that while there is theoretical choice today, only 5 per cent of people take it. As it stands, tenant choice does not go far enough, which is why I am concerned about it. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Best, will accept that we are making incredible efforts here to be transformative and not to undermine the housing sector, and on that basis will feel that there is enough going on for him to withdraw this amendment.