Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Baroness Meacher

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but I congratulate my noble friend Lord Best on his incredibly commonsense approach to this problem. It seems that allowing an extra bedroom would probably deal with most of the tragic exceptions that people have talked about—what a straightforward way to deal with those exceptions and normal life. I cannot think of any family that at some point does not badly need an extra room, and the case was so well put.

We talk about all the amendments individually, but what is so painfully obvious is that it is the combined impact of the changes in the Bill that are going to have such a devastating effect on so many people. It feels irrelevant to talk about ESA and people being reassessed and placed on to JSA, and therefore losing a section or part of their benefits, but the individuals at the front line are going to be hit by that, then they find their housing allowances upgraded in line with CPI, then they find that their housing allowances are pegged to the 30th percentile, then find that they have an extra room. Oh my God, their housing benefit will not cover the accommodation they are in and they are going to have to think about moving.

It is the impact of so many hits that feels petrifying, and perhaps the change that frightens me more than any is the pegging of housing allowances to CPI. If that goes on longer than two years—perhaps we do not pay too much attention to it because we assume that it will not—we are talking about families and households finding every few years that they have a growing gap between their rent and the allowances they are paid for housing. They will have to move, and move, and move—is that not correct?—over a period of time, into ever more distant areas, ever meaner properties, ever smaller properties. It is difficult to imagine the psychological impact on households of all these changes.

I do not know who devised this law, but I wonder whether whoever it was stood back and thought about all that. I know, and the Minister has mentioned many times, that the driving motivation behind the reforms is to provide an incentive for people to move into work. From where I come from, dealing with people with mental health problems, one thing that stands between them and work is their level of stress and distress and anxiety.

It strikes me that if all the legislative changes go through, we will create an even bigger gap between very large numbers of people who are prone to anxiety and depression—if not psychosis and other things that are even more problematic to deal with—and the labour market. That troubles me, because I respect the Minister’s commitment to providing an incentive for people to go back into work. I also know that he is very sympathetic and understanding about mental health problems. I would be interested to know what he has to say about the apparent contradiction in what the Government are trying to do.

Another aspect of this for people with mental health problems is that to force them to move away from wherever they are—probably away from the carers who might just about prop them up and allow them to survive and carry on—is the last thing we want. The underoccupation rule impacts even more, given the other provisions of the Bill. As I understand it, young people are going to be expected, in some circumstances, to share accommodation. There are an awful lot of people with mental health problems for whom this might be quite helpful. There are others for whom it might be a complete disaster. Indeed, let us not forget to mention the potential sharer. It might be quite difficult to share with some of our folk. We have to be sensitive to the impact, and the combined and compound impact.

I sympathise with the amendments that noble Lords have tabled about disabled people who have had adjustments to their homes, and those about looked-after children. Those are obvious and glaring problems. I would like to think that the Minister will think seriously about that, in the context that I know he very well understands.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I speak very briefly in support of Amendment 35, to which I have my name, to endorse entirely the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in introducing this bank of amendments, and to support the other amendments that deal with disability particularly. In doing so I should declare my interest as vice-president of Mencap Wales. In fact, at the Mencap annual conference in Warwick on Saturday, there were people who asked specifically about these matters. They said, “They have taken away from us home ownership for people with long-term disabilities, and now they are going to start clobbering us on housing benefit, where people with disabilities may be in a particularly vulnerable position”. I should therefore like to ask the Minister, so that I can respond to people who raise these questions with me: do the Government still believe in home ownership for everybody, and if so, does that include people with long-term disabilities? If the Government, having taken away the previous scheme, are not going to put something in its place, surely that is a straight contradiction of what the party opposite has always put itself forward as believing in?

Secondly, with regard to people with disabilities and housing benefit—the amendments before us would make exceptions for them—I hope that the Minister will be able to spell out how he will ensure that they do not suffer. If the amendments are not acceptable, I hope that amendments will come forward from the Government on Report. If not, I hope that there will be an opportunity to vote on these matters to show exactly where each of us in each of our parties, including the coalition partners, stand on such a basic issue.