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Welfare Reform Bill

I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken from all sides of the House, including the Bishops' Benches. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who made the point that breaking up social networks by requiring people to move or face a penalty that they find very difficult is disruptive. Once it is known that a Member of your Lordships' House is involved in these things, we of course get targeted. One of the most moving e-mails that I received was from a woman who, with her husband, has two rooms and will, I am afraid to say, face a charge of £25 per week. Her husband is partially disabled and they live on a very meagre income. Her mother is a neighbour, living not very far away, and this lady provides a full caring service for her. She has looked into the possibility of moving elsewhere and she can move some miles away. However, she is not going to be able to get back to see her mother twice or three times a day. She cannot afford that £25 a week and is going to have to do something. These are the kinds of social network issues that are raised by this measure. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord German, who spelt out the need for milestones when one brings in new legislation of this kind. To the categories that we ought to look at, he added the disruption of education. Moving children to a different area and taking them out of school can set them back, and that can have life consequences. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, who has talked on children's issues eloquently throughout the Bill. From the intelligence on the ground, he is worried that the level of homelessness will increase, and that is certainly an issue that research would look at carefully. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who has throughout on this and other aspects of the Bill been absolutely tireless, makes the point that rents may not go down, as the Government hope. I hope that the Minister does not get the blame when the housing benefit bill does not fall. For example, I received some new figures just this week which show how the number of claimants of housing benefit has gone up recently because of the effects on the economy, with more unemployment and more people having to claim housing benefit. That is not the Minister's fault and I hope that the Treasury does not hold it against him. The housing benefit bill is very hard to curb. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, draws attention to these knock-on effects of everything that one does and calls for a much wider review, which sounds entirely sensible. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, to whom I am grateful, stressed the importance of housing more generally and the value of an independent evaluation of the kind that is proposed in this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised a point to which the Minister responded. I believe that he is genuinely interested in the outcome of an independent review, upon which good policy can be based. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, highlighted—quite rightly, as it probably has not had quite enough attention in this debate tonight—the fact that very many disabled people are in the accommodation that we are talking about, with fixed incomes and no opportunity to go out to work. They will be particularly badly hit and we must look carefully at that. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, having followed this every inch of the way and to whom I am extremely grateful for his support, made the point that the long list of potential escape routes, such as taking in a lodger or using up one's savings, are not really viable alternatives to having to move or pay out. He concluded that this was going to place unacceptable burdens on the most vulnerable. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for accepting the necessity for an evaluation and for committing himself to bringing forward full-scale proposals when the regulations come to us. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the point that when regulations come before us, we have another chance to look at these matters; we even have a chance to vote on them, and we are able to hold the Minister to account on this. I think we will be pleased with what is brought forward, not least because he also committed himself to full consultation on this research project with the stakeholders concerned; to consulting, discussing and working with the stakeholders, including myself, the subsequent action—the strategy and the guidance—that follows from this. Therefore, I must be satisfied with the Minister's response. He will, he said, be keeping under review the very key ingredient: the level of discretionary housing payments with which local authorities are provided to top up and help people who are in difficult circumstances. I do not think local authorities are going to be very keen to bail out the Government on this one and make up the deficit themselves, but if the Treasury finds, as a result of the research that we do, that there are sufficient hard-luck stories where one cannot really resist having to pay out more housing benefit, the discretionary housing benefit will be one lifeline which could be substantially influenced by research, when it comes along. At the end of what seems to have been a very long innings on all of this, I thank the Minister for his response and for the courtesy and good humour with which he has approached all aspects of this Bill; I am grateful to him in all those respects. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Motion A1, as an amendment to Motion A, withdrawn. Motion A agreed. Sitting suspended.