Danny
Alexander: The Under-Secretary made a sensible point about
pilots. Previous exchanges have brought a question to my mind: if the
sanctions are piloted for two years in certain areas but the national
network of rehabilitation is rolled out throughout the country, does
she foresee the evaluation of comparing performance in areas where
sanctions apply with areas in which they do not apply, so that it is
possible to understand whether sanctions make any difference in
themselves to the success of rehabilitation
processes?
Mrs.
McGuire: I have actually already answered that question
and said that a comparison would be made between the piloted areas
where there would be a sanctions regime, if necessary, and those areas
where there would not be a sanctions
regime. To
pick up on the comment by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, let us
consider the neutral stance of organisations, including the Local
Government Association,
to that particular housing sanction because it is significantly
different from the previous ones. As I have said on a few occasions, it
is post-eviction sanction. We appreciate the grave misgivings and
worries that were expressed about a sanction when someone was in situ
in a house in receipt of benefit. However, although issues have been
raised about some of the details, there is a far more neutral approach
to the benefit sanction in principle that we are discussing. The hon.
Gentleman has highlighted the worries about the previous sanctions that
we had put out for
consultation. The
fact that there was widespread anxiety about such matters meant that we
did not pursue them. However, we still believe that it is important for
those very few people who have tried and tested the system to the nth
degree that we consider another way to deal with such matters. I know
that hon. Members are worried, and rightly so, about people with mental
health difficulties and those who might have behavioural problems. Yes,
that will be part of an assessment involving individuals, households
and their needs. I
reassure the Committee that we do not intend to push people into
rehabilitation services that would not be appropriate for them. I
recognise some of the scenarios that have been presented by members of
the Committee about people with behavioural difficulties that perhaps
can be misinterpreted. We shall obviously be working with local
authorities, many of which will have significant skills in the area of
assessment of those with
difficulties.
Mr.
Ruffley: Can the Under-Secretary say whether she would
like to pilot the proposal from Shelter and Citizens Advice to the
effect that the 30 per cent. docking would be reduced to 10 per cent.
for vulnerable
people?
Mrs.
McGuire: The hon. Gentleman will understand if I do not
give him a definitive answer to that question. We are aware of the
proposal and I am sure that members of the Committee will come back to
it at further points in the
process.
Kali
Mountford: May I pursue the point about
domestic violence? It often happens that the person who ends up being
evicted was the victim of someone else’s crime. I know of cases
when the whole community gangs up on the victim rather than the
offender and the person is misidentified as an offender when they were
not. If we were to pilot such a project, there would have to be a
proper understanding of how those offences are
pursued.
Mrs.
McGuire: My hon. Friend speaks words of
wisdom. I recognise the position that she has highlighted and, once
again, that is an area where we shall be working very closely with
local authorities that have expertise and knowledge. I am sure that
they will engage with the local network of voluntary and charitable
organisations that have front-line experience, not only in domestic
violence but, as I said earlier, in particular
circumstances that, if not handled properly, could result in an eviction
when not all individuals in a household are the perpetrators of
antisocial behaviour. I hope that the Committee will endorse the
clause. Question
put and agreed to.
Clause 28 ordered to stand
part of the Bill.
Clause
29Housing
benefit and council tax benefit for persons taking up
employment
Mr.
Murphy: I beg to move amendment No. 67, in
page 26, line 11, at end
insert— ‘( ) For the
purposes of subsection (1) a person must be treated as entitled to
housing benefit or council tax benefit by virtue of the general
conditions of entitlement
if— (a) he is not so
entitled to that benefit at the time he or his partner ceases to be
entitled to the prescribed benefit as mentioned in subsection (1)(b),
and (b) his entitlement to
housing benefit or council tax benefit (as the case may be) ceased
during the prescribed period before that
time.’. I
am delighted formally and belatedly to welcome you to the Chair,
Mr. Amess, this early evening in
London.
Mr.
Hunt: Has the Minister noticed that the sun is about to
set over the shoulders of the hon. Member for Ochil and South
Perthshire (Gordon Banks)?
Mr.
Murphy: I would have noticed, of course, but my hon.
Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire is in Belfast today,
so it would have been pretty difficult. I notice if I turn around that
the sun is in fact setting behind my hon. Friend the Member for
Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown). Of course, the sun always
shines in Dumfries . The sun may be shining in Belfast, but it
may set a little later there because of its latitudinal
position. We now come
to the substance of the Bill—the extended payment schemes on
housing benefit and council tax benefit. Clauses 29 and 30 are
technical, as is the amendment. With your indulgence, Mr.
Amess, I shall rewind our proceedings—almost halfway—to
clause 15 to confirm formally to the Committee that a request was made
for the paperwork on private and voluntary providers, and that all 240
pages are in the Library. They will also be placed on the DWP website.
After careful consideration, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I
decided to make them available unedited. All paperwork that was made
available to potential private and voluntary sector contractors and
providers is now available to all members of the Committee and, by
extension, all Members of this House and of another place. Thank you,
Mr. Amess, for your indulgence in allowing me to share that
with the Committee.
The extended
payment scheme in the amendment and in the clause is aimed at providing
additional housing benefit and council tax benefit support for people
coming off prescribed benefits for work-related reasons. The structure
of the scheme is similar to existing
schemes, with the detailed entitlement conditions described in secondary
legislation, thus providing the flexibility to keep the schemes under
review. Under the
current schemes, the housing benefit and/or council tax benefit claim
has to be ended before an extended payment can be made. Once the
extended payment ends, a person has to make a new claim if they think
that they might be entitled to housing benefit or council tax benefit.
The purpose of the amendment is to preserve a feature of the current
extended payment scheme. For ease of reference, I shall refer to it
solely as housing benefit, although the same rules will apply for
council tax benefit.
The amendment is concerned with
certain people whose housing benefit stops, for example because they
have moved out of their home to start work in another local authority
area. They would not usually receive an extended payment, because their
entitlement to housing benefit would have ended before they ceased to
be entitled to a qualifying benefit for the extended payment. The
subsequent ending of the qualifying benefit for work-related reasons,
one of the basic conditions for the entitlement to extended payment,
would have no effect as the housing benefit claim would have already
been closed. The current scheme allows a grace period if the move takes
place in the week the person takes up employment or in the preceding
week, and the powers in the clause must be amended to allow that to
continue. The
proposed amendment would give the Secretary of State the power to
prescribe in regulations a period before the cessation of qualifying
benefit, during which the person would be treated as being entitled to
housing benefit or council tax benefit. The intention is that the
period should be the same as that in the current schemes, making
special provision for cases in which housing benefit and/or council tax
benefit ceases due to a person moving out of their home in the week
that they take up employment or in the preceding week.
I have no idea
whether you are minded to have a clause stand part debate on this
important but technical issue, Mr. Amess. However, given my
comments, I hope that both amendment No. 67 and the clause will be
included in the
Bill. Amendment
agreed to.
Clause 29, as amended,
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 30 to 32 ordered to
stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
33Supply
of information by rent
officers
Danny
Alexander: I beg to move amendmentNo. 259, in
clause 33, page 28, leave out lines 21 to
23. This Committee
seems to move in fits and starts: long periods of debate on some
clauses followed immediately by periods of dramatic progress. I intend
to speak to the amendment briefly, because the issues that it seeks to
address have been well aired in earlier debates, not least in remarks
made by the hon. Member for Colne Valley on clause 27. However, it
gives the Under-Secretary the opportunity to answer some of those
points in more detail.
The
amendment seeks to probe the circumstances in which the information
prescribed in subsection (1) is to be provided for use by the
Department. Will the Under-Secretary clarify whether information
relating to individual cases will be required to be provided for those
five areas listed in subsection (1)? Is the intention to prescribe
general information about housing benefit or specific details about a
case, relating, for example, to individual child support cases, when
such information may be shared? Will she explain the
Government’s
intentions?
John
Penrose: I should like to press the
matter a little further. We have discussed, particularly in the debate
on the single room rent restriction, whether rent officers are getting
their decisions right in all cases. There was much disquiet in that
debate about whether they are setting single room rent levels
correctly. It was felt that there could be a vicious downward spiral:
the level was set too low, which led to shortfalls in claimants’
benefits, which in turn they had to make up. That also had a negative
knock-on impact on the supply of suitable properties, which made it
harder for rent officers to determine what the correct rent level
should be.
One obvious
way to deal with some of these problems and allow a degree of external
verification and audit, and justification as to whether the rent
officers are getting such decisions right, is to increase the amount of
transparency. We could shine a little more sunlight into potentially
murky corners by ensuring that rent officers show their workings when
they take the decisions about the local housing allowance in any one
area. I am sure that it is germane and important for the single room
rent restriction, but it will be important in respect of many other
classes of property.
As the
earlier amendment about the single room rent restriction was not agreed
to, my suggestion is an alternative way of dealing with the
problem—a point that I was making at the time of that earlier
debate—and it would be tremendously beneficial. I see no
downsides in making the information available to the public and to all
interested parties, so that they can check that the decisions are
justifiable. In the spirit of open government, I therefore hope that
the proposal will be relatively easy for the Under-Secretary to agree
to. 4.45
pm
Mrs.
McGuire: Once again, I hope I can allay concerns of the
hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey as expressed
in the amendment. Clause 33 establishes a gateway, enabling the
Secretary of State to require rent officers to pass information to him
or to a person providing services to him, for various specified
purposes, including social security purposes. The information is
already being provided under existing powers, but the Secretary of
State can only request the information.
Taking
forward legislation to facilitate the local housing allowance roll-out
has provided a suitable opportunity to enable the Secretary of State to
require rent officers to provide him with information in a manner and
form that is useful to him. The information will include details such
as how many determinations rent officers have made and what proportion
of these have meant that housing benefit has been restricted. In
future, it will also include information about the local housing
allowance rates and the broad rental market rates.
The hon. Member for Inverness,
Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked what personal information would be
transferred, and I can assure him that we do not envisage that personal
information would be transferred through the proposed gateway. Analysts
tend to make broad assumptions based on their analysis, and that detail
is not necessarily appropriate.
May I also
answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare
(John Penrose)? I appreciate that there is some concern about the
transparency of the rent officers’ deliberations and I hope that
in the last debate I highlighted the fact that there is a great deal of
market evidence and information to be gathered, including that from
professional contacts and letting agencies. It is difficult to see
whether that information could be published in full because there would
be potentially serious consequences. For example, the rates might be
seen as an indicator of a customer’s housing benefit
entitlement, and assumptions that would be very misleading to customers
could be drawn from the unexpurgated information. Dare I say it, it
could also encourage landlords to increase rents and we must be careful
that housing benefit and local housing allowance do not start to lead
the market in determining what the rent could be. If landlords increase
rents, that could increase the shortfalls to the customer.
The average data for each local
authority is published in the Rent Service’s annual valuation
report. Concerns were raised by hon. Members on both sides of the
Committee relating to data transparency, and my hon. Friend the
Minister and I will look at the comments that have been made to see
whether there is anything else we can say or do that will give comfort
to hon. Members on the
issue. As with all
benefit information that the Department holds, its use will be strictly
governed and controlled. The information will be accessible, as now,
only to certain officials of the Department and then only on an
“if required” basis. Each time the information is
accessed, the access has to be justified by a business case showing
that it is essential for the effective running of the Department. The
business case also has to show that Data Protection Act and European
convention on human rights issues have been carefully considered. The
information is essential to our ability to monitor the impact of our
policies on all DWP benefits, but it is done within a framework of
safeguards. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn,
Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw the
amendment.
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