Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. As we have heard, it would mean that families facing immediate homelessness because of the imposition of the benefit cap would be saved. A major problem with the cap is that, as well as taking no account of the number of children in a family—a point which a later amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and others will seek to address—it takes no account of the level of rent: that is, it takes no account of how much of the benefits within a £500 cap must go to the landlord not the tenant. The £500 cap looks relatively high in areas where housing costs are low. In Committee, I quoted £85 per week rent for a council house in the north-east or south Wales, leaving a headroom of £415 per week for benefits to cover all other expenditure. Indeed, the average cost of housing—the £500 is all about comparisons with average earnings—is some £87.50 per week. However, the same cap applies in all areas, including London and the south-east of England, where housing costs are much higher. I am not talking about the extreme cases of refugee families with 10 children living in Hampstead. A rent for a not very salubrious private sector flat in the east end of London can be £350 a week. A £500 cap will plunge a family with three children living there into poverty, with only, in this example, £150 per week left for food, clothing, ever rising fuel bills and the rest, instead of more than £300 as at present. It is not their fault that rents are so high in much of southern England, but clearly the family will have to move out if the application of the cap is not moderated as by this amendment. However, it is very uncertain where those made homeless can be moved to. The logistics for local authorities of moving large numbers of families to cheaper areas will be extremely complex and expensive. Finding new homes for them, even in a much lower cost area, will not be easy. Most private landlords prefer not to take on tenants on housing benefit and local housing allowance, particularly those not known in the locality, not least because benefit is now seldom paid direct to the landlord. No one wants to send families to so-called benefit ghettos with the lowest quality housing which is bound to undermine the hopes, aspirations and life chances of those sent there. It should be remembered that the new benefits cap is in addition to the caps on rents in high-priced areas which have already been introduced and are now beginning to bite, as existing tenancies come to an end. Regrettably, we are just beginning to see a return to the use of expensive but seedy bed-and-breakfast hotels as the numbers of homeless families rise. The new cap will considerably compound the problem. This morning on the radio I heard the Secretary of State, Ian Duncan Smith, suggesting that the definition of homelessness was that children would have to share a bedroom. That is a confusion with an earlier amendment which found favour with your Lordships concerning the underoccupation penalty—the so-called bedroom tax—which was not about homelessness at all. Families are deemed to be homeless if the local authority deems that unintentionally they have no place to go. That can happen if they can no longer pay the rent where they are because their benefits are cut drastically. The council is then required to step in to find them somewhere to live. Amendment 58D would avoid that miserable and expensive outcome for thousands of families and tens of thousands of children who will otherwise have to leave their current homes. Two later amendments in my name address two of the most extreme aspects of the imposition of the new cap. At this point, I am pleased to support Amendment 58D.