John
Penrose: I support the new clause. The hon. Gentleman has
made several important points, and some deserve to be fleshed out more
for the Under-Secretary to deal with. She gave us examples of how the
Government have been pursuing various local authorities so that they
shorten the delay that inevitably is incurred from the start of an
application until payments come through. The various examples of local
authorities that she gave as an illustration were tremendously
impressive. However,
Shelter is clear that there is still an enormous variety of performance
in different parts of the country. In some cases, authorities are at
the worst end of the spectrum, while their neighbouring authorities are
at the best end. Landlords, tenants and all of us as taxpayers are
entitled to expect continued improvement. Many of the figures that the
Under-Secretary quoted were those that had shortened from a 90-plus day
delay to a 30-something day delay. They were excellent, but the new
clause would make it clear that a couple of weeks is what the man in
the street and all of us are instinctively entitled to expect as the
usual level of efficiency from our local authority when it deals with
such an important
issue. Progress may
have been made, but there is still a fair distance to go and an
unacceptable wide variety of performance in respect of the average
figures that have been quoted to us. Those variations create a number
of
effects, such as hardship for tenants, examples of
which we were given when discussing earlier clauses. The variety of
performance also has a negative effect on landlords and on the supply
of particular types of accommodation in the market. We have discussed
the baleful effect of constrictions in supply in such matters and,
thus, on tenants, which implies that a huge amount of work is still to
be done. If, for
whatever reason in the future, the performance of local authorities
either collectively or individually goes backwards and gets worse,
which, goodness knows, given the burden of history might sadly be the
case, we need to have a way to protect tenants from negative
performance. We also need to ensure that a sword of Damocles is hanging
over local authorities so that they know they will not receive a cash
flow benefit from acting slowly and not performing. The new clause is
vital, partly because it would give tenants a degree of certainty and a
reasonable length of time that they are entitled to expect before their
money comes in. It would also mean that local authorities do not have
an incentive to allow their performance to slide. In fact, they would
have a
disincentive.
Mr.
Hunt: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the factors
that can make the process take much longer than it should is the
complexity of the assessment process? My hon. Friend the Member for
Daventry sensibly referred to the minimum constraints and the
Government making swifter progress in the sharing of information. If
there were much better sharing of information, and hence sharing of
verified information that the local authority could trust when making
its assessment of entitlement to housing benefit, we would then be able
to speed up the process considerably and achieve the important two-week
period.
John
Penrose: My hon. Friend is exactly right, and his is a
good example of a wider issue. If one is going to shorten the times
much further, it will not be enough to act like a football coach on the
sidelines and just shout louder and ask people to work harder. That
will not achieve a delay time of two weeks or less, because other
things have to be done too. Among them is a series of efficiency
measures, some of which are concerned with the exchange of verifiable
information, as my hon. Friend says. In addition, and wherever
possible, processes and indeed benefits themselves should be
redesigned—as attempted by many measures in the Bill—to
make the intrinsic process simpler and faster. My hon. Friend the
Member for Bury St. Edmunds spoke about attempting to achieve greater
simplicity. If that can be designed into the system, it inevitably
makes it far easier for the people who are working to achieve such
goals.
Mr.
Ruffley: I wonder whether my hon. Friend misspoke. He said
that I wanted to achieve simplicity, but of course that is in relation
to the benefits system, not in relation to any part of my professional
life.
John
Penrose: I thank my hon. Friend for that
correction. The new
clause is important because it would give a guarantee. From the
tenant’s and the landlord’s points of view, and also from
the point of view of the market, it is important to deliver greater
supply of suitable accommodation.
Mr.
Hunt: Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulty in the
process of obtaining housing benefit acts as a work
disincentive—for example, people might feel that on taking paid
employment they would lose housing benefit, which would be difficult to
recover should they fall on hard times? The complexity and the
difficulty in benefits application procedures are themselves the cause
of the benefits trap. Addressing that would result in my hon.
Friend’s arguments having much wider benefit in encouraging
people to move, when possible, back into the world of
work.
The
Chairman: Order. I have been generous in allowing the hon.
Gentleman to make two long interventions, but they should be
shorter.
John
Penrose: Thank you, Mr. Hood.
I agree with much of what my
hon. Friend said. The benefits of benefit simplification, rather than
just straightforward simplification, go wider than mere cost reduction
and shortened lead times. One such benefit is that it is unquestionably
easier for people to access the benefits system. That is the case for
housing benefit applications, and I am sure that there are other
applications, which we will not consider today, that would nevertheless
benefit from simplification. Simplification has greater benefits than
just cost reduction and process efficiency. Behavioural benefits in how
people react when they try to access the benefits system are a vital
part of that. The Opposition support the new clause, and I hope that
the Minister will respond to those
points.
Kali
Mountford: The Committee owes the hon. Member for
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey a debt of gratitude for the
way in which he has concentrated on the new clauses. He rightly focused
on the circumstances of individuals, their ability to pay rent on time,
and the effect that that has on their lives. However, we should
concentrate on ensuring that assessments are made quickly and are right
first time, with a proper means for reassessment. That, I am afraid,
takes us back a little to previous debates, in which I expressed the
differing opinion that there may be a better way of getting the same
effect. The hon.
Gentleman told the Committee that the measure can be implemented by
regulation, but that he wants to see it in the Bill. However, I want a
set of regulations that are thought through properly and work well
together. I am making a bid for regulations that would fit alongside
the provisions in the Bill and, in particular, that help to make
decisions right first time and speedily.
I direct the Committee to our
previous discussions on what rent officers do, how transparent their
work is, and how well they work with other parts of local authorities
and other agencies. I make a plea to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary
to think back to our discussions when she so kindly met me and the
director CHAS Kirklees. We were thinking about improving the process so
that decisions could be made speedily and more openly to ensure that
information can be made available to everybody in the way in which, I
think, the hon. Member for South-West Surrey indicated. If all the
information is pulled together and open, and is
readily available at the beginning of a process when housing allowance
is set for an area, it would do a great deal to help speed up the
process. I am not
saying that I do not want that measure available to local authorities,
but I would like time to be made available for proper consideration of
regulations and orders in further Committees to ensure that those other
measures are available and are considered together. I make a second
plea to my hon. Friend that during further consideration of the Bill,
perhaps when it goes to the other place, she has another look at the
recommendations and perhaps comes back to the House, either on Report
or Third Reading, with
proposals.
Mrs.
McGuire: I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I
am sure that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and
Stroganoff—sorry, it must be getting near lunch time; I meant to
say Strathspey. The
hon. Gentleman probably expects me to say that the proposal is
unnecessary because the power that he envisages is already in section
5(1)(r) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, but having said
that, he raises an interesting issue and one that is worthy of being
aired in Committee.
The hon. Gentleman had the
Committee’s support when he said that we want to protect tenants
against accumulating rent arrears and, obviously, facing possible
eviction even when they have fulfilled their side of the bargain by
making an effective claim and providing the local authority with all
the information that it needs to decide the claim. I think that that
links in to some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for
Colne Valley. As I
pointed out earlier, we have seen a dramatic improvement in the
processing of housing benefits claims, as the hon. Member for
Weston-super-Mare indicated. We recognise that a minority are still
taking too long to process claims, which can lead to problems for the
tenant. That is not what we want. Individuals should not be in the
middle of a process that is designed to help them but, because of
various failures, either bureaucratic or by individual professionals,
instead leaves them with a liability to pay rent that they palpably
cannot afford to do while they await their housing benefit
claim. As the hon.
Gentleman clearly said, that is why we have the existing requirement
for a payment on account when an authority is unable to decide a claim
within 14 days, subject to the customer having provided all the
necessary information. In some cases, the requirement would be more
stringent than the one that he seeks because the date of the claim can
precede that on which the claim was received. There is that nuance
within the new
clause. As hon.
Members have recognised, we are focusing our efforts on further
improving authorities’ speed of decision making and the making
of the first payment of housing benefit through inspections, quarterly
monitoring and the setting of performance standards. We are dealing
with 408 local authorities. Trying to get them to work to a set of
standards where they have their own statutory responsibility for
implementation has not always been
easy.
12.45
pm We are also
simplifying the housing benefit administration to speed up the
processing times, for example through the local housing allowance. The
hon. Gentleman’s proposal does not fit well into the increasing
trend for housing benefit claims to be received by the Department for
Work and Pensions. Around two thirds of housing benefit applications
are currently made to the DWP initially. The local authorities do not
become part of that process until later on. Increasingly, our intention
is for both Jobcentre Plus and the Pension Service to offer customers a
one-stop shop for benefits where claims to all benefits and information
are provided and, in most cases, verified by a single process. The aim
is to make the process more straightforward so that people do not have
to go from one Department to a local authority and perhaps carry
information back to another
Department. Increasingly
claims for information will be gathered by the Department and then
forwarded to the local authority. That is the point that my hon. Friend
the Member for Colne Valley was highlighting. We want a process that is
efficient and effective, that gathers the right information at the
right time and gives the correct decision at the right time. That is
what important to the individual claimant. While I am on the subject of
my hon. Friend’s contribution, yes we want the housing benefit
process to be as open as possible, consistent with protecting the
independence of the rent officers. That came up in the discussion with
my hon. Friend and her constituency organisations.
Because we are now gathering
the information in the Department more and more through Jobcentre Plus
and then forwarding it to the local authority, we recognise that local
authorities need to wait for the information. But the pay-off for the
local authorities and the individual is that, in many cases, most of
the information will be fit for purpose. In other words and harking
back to what my hon. Friend said, the local authority will have the
information to make a decision on the claim at that first point. That
is obviously something that we would all
support.
Kali
Mountford: I know that when we had our discussions with
CHAS Kirklees, the Under-Secretary seemed surprised that some local
authorities are a bit more restrictive in sharing information than she
expected. Is she willing to look again at advice notes, guidance or
regulations that might free up some of that information to make it the
efficient method that she
seeks?
Mrs.
McGuire: My hon. Friend reflects the discussion that we
had with CHAS, and the answer is yes. Consistent with protecting the
independence of the assessment process so that rent officers are not
unduly influenced either by the local authority, stakeholders or the
private sector landlords, we want to see as much engagement as
possible. I am happy to reiterate the commitment that I gave to her in
private.
Danny
Alexander: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for
describing the administrative improvements. I appreciate that a lot of
hard of
work is going into that and improvements are being made, not least
through the one-stop shop approach. In cases where the benefit
information is collected and processed by the DWP, Jobcentre Plus or
the Pension Service and then forwarded to the local authority, does the
14-day rule also apply to the DWP and its agencies in the collection
and processing of this information or does the clock start only when
that information reaches the local authority? In terms of allowing for
the interim payment of rent on account in the way that the regulations
currently describe, that is an important
point.
Mrs.
McGuire: It is an important point and I hope to give the
hon. Gentleman a definitive response to it during the debate. I put on
record that more than80 per cent. of claims are dealt with
within 14 days from the date of the claim when all the information has
been provided by the customer. Every effort is made to ensure that the
customer gives the information necessary, and some of the time scales
reflect the fact that sometimes customers are not forthcoming with that
information. The blame for delay in the process does not always fall on
the local authority or the Department for Work and Pensions. As we said
during the debates on the housing benefit clauses, we are determined to
ensure that local authorities who have statutory responsibility for the
operation of our housing benefit policy improve their game, as many
have done. The hon.
Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked when the
14-day clock starts ticking. It starts from the date of the claim,
which can be at the time when the claim is received by the DWP. I hope
that that reassures him. A quick decision depends very much on the
co-operation of the individual making the claim in responding to the
request for information.
Our wider policies and approach
on performance improvement, coupled with existing safeguards on the
14-day interim payment, are of greater benefit to customers than
introducing more pre-decision requirements. To be frank, they could
distract authorities from the main priority: getting decisions on
claims made accurately and on time, a matter that was highlighted by my
hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley and by Opposition
Members. With those
points of clarification, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider
withdrawing his new clause. Once again, I thank him for raising an
important issue, which allowed us to reflect on the improvements that
need to be made to the process. I am sure that the officers of the 408
local authorities are hanging on our every word on this
matter.
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