Welfare Reform Bill

What I am about to say will probably result in someone being sacked tomorrow, but if a vulnerable person who receives single room rate has mounting arrears in one local authority area, the authority makes a discretionary payment. My hon. Friend is right that such payments should not be ongoing, but the authority makes the payment to clear the arrears. I do not think that that is what discretionary payments were intended for, but some housing benefit officers believe that the rules that they are asked to implement are not right, so they use their imagination, although I accept that that may not be a good thing. Time is pressing so, finally, the Government must look at the circumstances that lead people to claim single room rent. As I said, many of them have taken part in drug and alcohol abuse programmes, and many of them have mental illnesses and other problems. We must be honest about the impact of non-dependant deductions. In many parts of the country, the maximum non-dependant deduction is greater than the weekly rent that people pay, which leads to one of two results. Either it encourages fraud—the householder declares that someone has left when, in fact, they are still living at the house—or parents are forced to kick out their children because they cannot afford the impact on their benefit. Non-dependant deductions have grown out of proportion to the problem that they were originally designed to tackle. The issues extend beyond the arguments ably made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, and I hope that we receive positive signs of a rethink from my hon. Friend the Minister.