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Welfare Reform Bill

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate, which has been extremely thoughtful and well considered. We have heard from a lot of people who are experts in the field, although I do not pretend to be one of those. I was certainly impressed with the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning), who certainly has great specialist knowledge. She and the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) made very good contributions to the debate. I would first like to talk about the antisocial behaviour aspect of the Bill. All of us have met constituents in our surgeries with antisocial neighbours on their estates. We thus write letters to the chief executive of the local council and feel frustrated not only for ourselves, but on behalf of our constituents. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) did us all a great service with his private Member’s Bill on withdrawing benefit from those who displayed antisocial behaviour. I was initially pleased with the measures in the Bill, but the more I consider them, the more I think that they are rather disappointing. The withdrawal of housing benefit is to be a threat after eviction, but I do not think that the power will be used very often. We heard from the Secretary of State earlier that the Government will be sensitive to situations involving children. The power will be used in very few cases. There would be merit in allowing local authorities to use housing benefit as a lever before they reach the point of eviction, largely because that might present the opportunity to modify people’s behaviour before they lose their home and their families become homeless. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) made a good point about schemes that local authorities can run to provide rehabilitation and to change people’s behaviour. It would be far better to have several sanctions that local authorities could use to improve people’s behaviour, rather than the measure in the Bill, which can be used only after an eviction. As we know, an eviction is always an extreme case. I cannot foresee that the sanction would be used in very many cases. I do not understand the logic of the measure, so I hope that my Front-Bench colleagues will examine it in Committee.