Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 36: 36: Clause 11, page 9, line 39, leave out ““and how”” and insert ““, how and with whom”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, in Committee we had a wide-ranging and reasonably productive debate about housing benefit being paid directly to the landlord, as happens in many cases. We established that housing authorities are expected to investigate whether a claimant can indeed handle their finances if a particular case is brought to their attention. That is clearly a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. The obvious person to identify whether a claimant can manage their housing benefit sufficiently well to avoid falling into arrears is the landlord. However, it is likely that the landlord will not even know that his tenant is in receipt of housing benefit and so will not know that informing the local housing authority might be helpful. How do the Government intend the notification procedure to work without increasing landlord awareness of both the possibility of intervention and who among their tenants is a benefit recipient, the latter being a significant infringement of privacy and therefore impractical? The amendment would make it the responsibility of the housing authority to make sure that recipients are indeed capable of handling their finances. If they do not, we run the risk of letting vulnerable claimants sink into arrears and face eviction, which is notthe best way of introducing them to financial independence, which is the whole object of the exercise and on which we on these Benches agree with the Government. The question then is how best to pursue that policy, given the shortage of available private sector housing for people on housing benefit. I hope that the Government will consider the amendment seriously. The housing authority is the obvious body to monitor the benefits that it pays out. Non-governmental organisations have an important role to play in supporting recipients and highlighting problems, but the responsibility for that should not be placed at their door. We really need to know where we are going and what the result will be. I beg to move.