Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, this has been a problem for many years. We have made some movement on the shared room rent philosophy over the years, but there is a problem of supply and demand. We have all had hundreds of cases reported to us of young people who have to top-slice their income support or JSA, let alone their disability benefits, to be able to afford accommodation that is not fully covered by housing benefit. There is undeniably a problem. I have two difficulties with the solution proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Best, which is to bring the age for going on to housing benefit support, or the new housing allowance support, for self-contained accommodation down from 25 to 21. First, there is a problem of work incentive, partly because housing benefit and its tapers are the elephant in the room on all welfare reform policies by virtue of the very steep tapering effect. This is not particularly germane to the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, but we know that where council estates have gone over to being housing associations on the grounds that in housing associations people are in work, the people who are transferred on housing benefit remain out of the labour market because it is so expensive for people on the minimum wage to leapfrog into making work pay. I would not like to attach a figure to that problem. Secondly, there is the big-ticket number. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that the cost of providing for those over 21 to go into self-contained accommodation would be £10 million. My difficulty is that for a lot of social security there is a fulcrum at 25. IS is set at a higher rate for those aged 25 and over, as is JSA. If one were to bring the fulcrum for housing benefit down from 25 to 21, it would be difficult not to argue that IS and JSA rates should follow; otherwise, there would be major disjunctions between rent and income levels and whether a claimant was supposed to be in an independent household. I do not have a clue what the figure would be, but I suspect it would be around £200 million or £400 million. I am guessing because I have done no work on that estimate, but I suspect it would be a big-ticket number to bring the read-across benefits down to the same fulcrum. Having said that, I do not think any of us would feel comfortable walking away from this amendment, so I shall press my noble friend on the discretionary housing payments scheme. It has existed for a number of years and is a central government grant to local authorities to allow them to top up people’s housing benefit and council tax for a good reason, such as because they are vulnerable, pregnant or have a very large family. Very many of the young people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred ought to count as vulnerable and to be eligible for such a fund. There is no reason why that should not be the case since, as I say, some local authorities spend all their money and some spend only 10 per cent of it. It is completely random and most people do not even know about it. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others might feel that this is a reasonable way forward but, as we publicise the new local housing allowance scheme, could we ensure that all the literature makes reference to the discretionary housing payments scheme for those who may be considered vulnerable and that local authorities are circularised with this? Could my noble friend review the adequacy of the fund in the light of that? I cannot remember how much it was; while I have a feeling that it was about £25 million, it could well have gone up by now. That might be a way forward, giving a tailored help to those who need it without it becoming a big-ticket item for the whole field of social security. We have a real problem, but the solution that the noble Lord, Lord Best, suggested is possibly too big for this amendment, given the implications both for work incentives and the social security budget. I believe that there is another way of dealing with it, so could my noble friend help us on that?