PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

473WH
Under-Occupancy Penalty
(Birkenhead)
about the nature of their properties and say whether
there really is a spare bedroom that someone could
sleep in. They should then designate the property
accordingly.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned fairness. I have
referred to fairness between social and private tenants,
but what about fairness between overcrowded households,
households on the waiting list and those who are in
under-occupation? In Wirral, there are 21,280 households
on the waiting list for a home. Where is their voice in
this debate? I may be wrong, but I do not think the right
hon. Gentleman mentioned the people on the waiting
list or the people who are overcrowded. Fairness is
surely about them as well as the people already in
occupation.
We recognise that there are some people who should
not be affected by this measure. That is why, for example,
we have exempted pensioners. People living in their
lifetime home, who have retired and have no prospect of
working again, are exempt. We have also taken the view
that local authorities need money to deal with what one
might loosely call hard cases. In Wirral, in the year that
is coming to an end—2012-13—roughly £500,000 of
discretionary housing payments were available; next
year it will be not far short of £1 million. For individuals
whom it would be wrong or inhumane to expect to
move, money is there to make up the shortfall. Nearly
£1 million in that local authority and about £150 million
nationwide is a huge sum of money, provided to make
sure that where the room is not really spare and where it
would be inappropriate to expect someone to move out
or put someone else in the room, local authorities have
got the resource to respond appropriately.
It is vital that local authorities spend the money, yet
we have come across cases of local authorities
underspending their discretionary housing payments.
Hon. Members berate the Government and say how
terrible the policy is, but their local authority is sitting
on cash that it has not spent to help people who have a
shortfall in their housing benefit.
Mr Field: Could the Minister give us examples of
authorities that underspend?
Steve Webb: My understanding is that the right hon.
Gentleman’s own local authority had a discretionary
housing payment contribution of £464,000 for the current
year, but has a carryover that takes it up to £522,000. I
am happy to write to him with figures for the country.
That is not a one-off example. It is surprisingly common.
I have spoken to local authority leaders in the past few
weeks who have said, “We are not spending the money
we have got.” We and they need to make sure that the
money that is specifically there for hardship is actually
spent.
Mr Field: The carryover for Wirral is quite modest.
One of the reasons for that is that the Government give
an annual grant that has to be spent over 12 months,
and the local authority is not sure how many will
present themselves in the twelfth month.
Steve Webb: We expect local authorities to budget,
but of course this measure comes into effect on a single
day, and good landlords and good local authorities
have already been looking at the existing stock of people.
26 MARCH 2013
Under-Occupancy Penalty
(Birkenhead)
474WH
It is by definition a stock of people that does not turn
over very much, so it is pretty predictable. My plea to
local authorities is to use the money that we have given
them.
We have given local authorities discretionary money,
initially with two groups in mind. The first is people
whose houses have been substantially adapted for disability.
We accept that if there is a spare bedroom in a house
that has been completely redone to reflect wheelchair
access or whatever, it is not cost-effective, sensible or
humane to say, “You’ve got to move,” and then either
the public purse has to pay for another property to be
done up or the people have to live somewhere inappropriate.
We estimate that, nationwide, roughly £25 million of
the potential saving from the measure would be related
to properties of that sort. Our initial plan was to try to
define that centrally in regulations: what is a substantially
adapted property? We then took the view that it is
better left to local discretion, so we made the money
available locally.
We did the same for foster families who have a spare
room because they are between foster children. Most
people would accept that foster parents need to have a
spare room. Initially, we thought that we would support
that through £5 million of discretionary payments, but
the message we got back was that foster families wanted
to have a right to a room and not to be reliant on a
discretionary payment from the council. We have now
passed regulations, which will come into force next
month, that give foster families the right to a spare
bedroom, subject to certain constraints. We have also
recently made it clear that where, for example, a child
with a disability or health condition cannot sleep in
the same bedroom as a sibling, the family can go to the
local authority, which, having satisfied itself that it is a
valid claim, can allocate an extra bedroom.
I stress that the measure is not a crude one-size-fits-all
cut. We have to save money. The right hon. Gentleman
knows that we have to save money and that housing
benefit is one of the biggest working age benefits that
we have. He knows that two thirds of the housing
benefit bill is for social tenants and that we have already
cut back on the housing benefit bill for private tenants.
In the context of needing to save money on social
tenants’housing benefit bill, not paying for spare bedrooms
seems to be a place where we can find savings, subject to
the crucial proviso that we protect the most vulnerable.
We have protected the most vulnerable through
discretionary housing payments. Of course, although
local authorities can use such payments for substantially
adapted properties, the clue is in the title: they are
“discretionary” payments. Local authorities have the
payments for this purpose and for other changes. They
have core discretionary housing payments that they had
anyway, before any of the measures came in. Local
authorities have that pot of money, which is of course
not limitless and does not cover everybody, but at least
it gives them the flexibility to respond to people as they
come to them. The crucial thing for anybody listening
to our proceedings who is concerned about the impact
of the measure is that if people genuinely need the
additional room, and if the options that some would
take up, such as swapping, taking in a lodger or working
extra hours, are not options for them, they should
approach the local authority.