Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The reductions in housing benefit will of course be repaid as we correct the anomaly for this period, so people will be made whole.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, when the repayments have to be made by local authorities, will they be reimbursed by central government, since it is clearly not the fault of local authorities that this cock-up has occurred?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, the payment will of course go through as housing payment in the normal way.

Property: Under-occupancy Charge

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest assessment of the impact of the under-occupancy charge on properties with spare bedrooms.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, both an impact assessment and an equality impact assessment have already been published. It remains too early to say how people are reacting to this change. The DWP is conducting a formal two-year evaluation of this policy, running from April this year to March 2015. In the short term, an outreach exercise is being undertaken with approximately 78 local authorities to monitor implementation and to ensure that the support provided to local authorities and claimants has been sufficient.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, two years is too long for many people, and the evidence is already coming in. Is it not true that, in many cases, the discretionary housing payments available for people with special needs, especially disabled people who need an extra bedroom, are being provided by local authorities on a short-term, temporary basis, and therefore that these people will still be trapped with rents that they cannot afford in the longer term? Is it not also the case that many councils and housing associations are already reporting that, in order to relocate and rehouse people who wish to move to smaller accommodation, the demand, compared with the supply, is such that it will take several years, and these people, too, will be trapped with higher rents than they can afford?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the purpose of DHPs specifically for the disabled in heavily adapted houses and homes is to make sure that they can stay there indefinitely. Clearly, it would not make sense for people to move when there would be a high cost of adapting a new premise. As I have said, it is too early to know what is happening in different local authorities. The information I have up to now from our intensive interrelationship with local authorities on this matter is that there is a great deal of variation in outcomes.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Greaves

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are going to spend a lot of time on getting this right. It is not something we want frozen in primary legislation. In fact, it would be very uncomfortable to freeze these items in primary legislation. Regulation is the right place to do these things. We have a consultation paper out on how we may move forward with temporary accommodation. There are some very obvious solutions within that—I touched on them earlier this evening—comprising separating out service charges and housing costs rather than bundling them up; that is where the temporary accommodation becomes so expensive. We need to get a solution to this so that we do not have a ludicrous go-round of people moving into expensive temporary accommodation which they can no longer pay for because of the cap. We are absolutely aware of this and have measures in train to get a solution in the round to that issue. However, it is not a simple set of issues.

[Lord Greaves]

On the same point, the Localism Act 2011, which we recently passed, means that in many cases local authorities will carry out their duty to find accommodation for homeless families by putting them into privately rented accommodation, where they will have to pay the rent. How will that tie in with a benefit cap that might apply to the accommodation, to which the local authority directs them in order to fulfil its homelessness duty? Will the local authority be under some obligation to top up the rent, or something like that?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one can very easily see circumstances in which a local authority considers that to be a very sensible use of the discretionary housing payments. That is one reason why we have ramped up that amount. I am not saying that it will be every time, but that might be a solution. We are looking to redesign the process of finding temporary accommodation, which is the immediate problem that local authorities are faced with, so that we do not get caught in some Catch-22, which would obviously not be smart at all. That is where we are with that; we are very conscious of those issues and very comfortable that we have the legislative powers to develop effective solutions.

I pick up the important point from my noble friend Lady Thomas on the DLA and how the cap interacts with it. The DLA is there for those in receipt of DLA. That is how we have worded the illustrative regulations. A person whose DLA award is pending and who is serving what is now, and will remain, a three-month qualifying period, would not be covered by the exemption. That is the point in the question raised by my noble friend. It shows why this issue and other similar issues need to be dealt with in secondary legislation, so that we do not have the inflexibility that we would have if it was in primary legislation.

We are conscious of the concerns around the introduction of the cap. I can assure noble Lords that we are listening. We have said all along that we will introduce measures to ease the transition for families and provide assistance in hard cases. We are still considering our plans, and it is essential that we get them right. The clause has been drafted so that we have all the powers that we need to ensure through regulations that we provide the appropriate protections. I hope that that gives the noble Lord, Lord Best, a measure of reassurance.

Before I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment, I would like to make it clear that the Government do not consider Amendments 60A and 61 to be directly consequential on Amendment 60. Further Divisions would be required should noble Lords wish to push those other two amendments in the group to a vote. I apologise for spelling that out, but we had a small frisson the other week. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.