Housing Benefit: Social Housing Units

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Freud

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I am afraid there were a lot of inaccurate figures there. Under the last Labour Government, the number of social and affordable rented houses fell by 420,000. Since 2010, it has gone up by 46,000. We have just seen the expenditure come down, because we have got people into work: people in work do not require support from housing benefit, and their numbers have come down. The numbers in the social rented sector are down 2% in the last year and the numbers in the private rented sector are down 5%. The figures that the noble Baroness was promoting are really quite wrong.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that there are abuses in the system through which private landlords let properties to people who need them very badly? In the past, there was a ridiculous situation whereby, if you were prepared to let your property for £X, the council would tell you that you could get £2X for it, so immediately any sensible landlord charged £2X. Is he also aware that other people required their tenants who were getting housing benefit to pay extra to them as private landlords and to say nothing about it? Something has to be done to ensure that that does not continue.

[Lord Freud]

We inherited a system under the local housing allowance which was based at 50% of the average rate. Clearly, that was too high and encouraged some landlords to move up to that central rate, even though their houses were not worth that amount. We have now put a series of controls on how the LHA works.

Social Housing Sector

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Freud

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Lord for that question, because I absolutely understand the substantial distinction between standard provision of housing and supported housing, which in the context of the actual payments is now specified allowances.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

For the purposes of clarification, can the Minister confirm exactly what is supported housing and clarify that it in no way involves aids for disabled people in housing of any variety?

[Lord Freud]

This is a variegated sector, which is exactly what we are discovering now. Supported accommodation or specified accommodation, using the other definition, effectively looks at the services that are provided to support people. I suspect that some of them will supply aids of some kind, but the real thing is the actual service elements that are provided for people.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Freud

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I think the judge very much took on board the fact that the Secretary of State realised that something that was simply unacceptable was going on and that we took very large measures to deal with it. Those measures included ramping up the numbers—we ramped up the number of health officials by a factor of four—and we had many more places to do the assessments, and so on. That is what has got the situation under control.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that a great deal of time is taken to reassess the cases of people who have incurable and irreversible conditions? Would it not be of great benefit to the department for those people not to be reviewed so often?

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend makes a fair point. Indeed, one of the ways in which we have speeded up the process since last June is by making more paper assessments, and it is precisely that group of people for whom we are able to do that.