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Housing Benefit

A number of hon. Members have mentioned that the Government's proposals have been driven by the portrayal, in the right-wing media, of scroungers and so on. While I agree with hon. Members who say that that media portrayal is inaccurate and unfair, we should also make it clear that the Government's proposals are not driven by that portrayal. Today, the Liberal Democrats have been called the nasty party. Although the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) was not a Member of this place prior to the general election, the principle was established in the previous Parliament that there should be a cap on housing benefit on local housing allowance. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) will remember, when we were both members of the Work and Pensions Committee in the previous Parliament, that the principle that nobody should be entitled to a house of more than five bedrooms was introduced by the previous Government on the basis that it was not fair that people should have an endless capacity to have houses that were costing taxpayers a significant amount of money. We can therefore argue about where the cap should be set, but the principle was set, and hon. Members in all parts of the House agreed that there should be a cap of some sort to ensure that there is fairness for those working on low incomes and to ensure that they do not feel at a disadvantage in their communities in comparison with those who are not working and are receiving LHA. As I have said, I was a member of the Work and Pensions Committee in the previous Parliament. One recommendation that the Committee made, in one of the final reports that we published in the previous Parliament, was that there should be additional rooms available on LHA for people who need carers. I would like to put on record that I am really glad that the Government have now introduced that. When we took evidence prior to the election, that situation seemed to be very unfair, and the evidence we took included some upsetting stories about how that had affected people's lives. I am glad, therefore, that that has been put right. I want to flag up a number of issues about which I have concerns, and I would be grateful if the Minister were to respond to them in his summation. One concern relates to the broad rental market areas, which have been an issue for a period of time. The Committee looked at that issue in the previous Parliament and raised it as a concern. However, the Government are proposing to change the centile, so that LHA will be based on the 30th centile. Whether the BRMAs are working effectively becomes an even more important issue, because it has an even more noticeable impact on the amount of LHA that claimants can receive as a maximum. Some BRMAs have serious internal problems within an area, which then create barriers to the labour market. The most often quoted example is the city of Cambridge. The area covered by the BRMA includes the city centre, which has very expensive properties, and a significant rural hinterland, where the properties are very cheap. That means that the centile is skewed by the large rural areas. If people then end up living in those areas, the jobs are not there and it makes it difficult for people to access the labour market. The opposite effect, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen South has said, has been seen in Blackpool, where the cheap areas are in the town centre and the rents there have been driven up by a significant amount. That has effectively priced working families on low incomes out of the town centre and made it difficult, particularly in a job market that is heavily reliant on seasonal work, for people to keep their accommodation. As well as the well-known examples of Cambridge, Blackpool and others, there is a significant problem in London, where the BRMAs are enormous. People moving from one area of a BRMA to another are not moving within a small area. It may be that there are entire boroughs within a BRMA where there is almost no affordable accommodation for people receiving LHA. I know that a number of London MPs are concerned about how exactly that might work. The principle, therefore, of changing the centile from the 50th to the 30th, if the BRMAs work properly and effectively, might not be too problematic. Where BRMAs are not working, however, where they are too big or where they have internal problems, those issues will be exacerbated by the move from the 50th to the 30th centile. I hope that the review of the housing benefit proposals, which was mentioned in the other place by Lord Freud, the Minister with responsibility for housing benefit, will look at BRMAs, which have not been examined properly, have been a problem for a number of years and have not been taken seriously. In Wales, BRMAs are co-terminus with local authorities, which seems to be more effective because it tends to involve a smaller area. People tend to have their community, and, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion has said, their support network—their friends and family—that they need to be able to stay in work, and they tend to be in the same local authority area. By reducing BRMAs to a more practical size, we may be able to overcome a lot of problems that might otherwise arise with the change to the centiles. On the shared accommodation rate—I shall probably call it the wrong thing as well in this debate—I share the concerns raised by other hon. Members. I completely understand the rationale behind it of ensuring that people who are receiving LHA are not at an advantage over people who are working and not receiving benefit. My personal view, however, is that it seems to be based on a London-centric view of the world. In London, a lot of young people under the age of 35 live in shared accommodation. For those working in London, it is difficult to afford a one-bedroom property. Outside London and outside of the expensive parts of the UK, in a lot of areas young working people under the age of 35 are perfectly able to rent a one-bedroom flat. That is certainly the case in my city, Cardiff. We may find that we are putting young people up to the age of 35—I would like to think that that is young—at a potential disadvantage, in comparison with other people.