Housing Benefit (Local Housing Allowance and Information Sharing) Amendment Regulations 2007

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, for bringing these orders on the new local housing allowance to our attention this evening. I certainly do not agree with him, as he knows well, on the last point that he made in his introductory speech. I noticed that all the orders were made on 2 October this year. My first question is rather technical but, given my interest in statutory instruments, it is this: we have one Explanatory Memorandum covering all four instruments. Why then were four instruments required in the first place, especially as Nos. 2868 and 2869 have exactly the same title? Surely, these and the consequential amendment regulations could have been combined. In other words, we could have had not four in one, but three plus one. To turn to the nuts and bolts of the orders, my party's position on local housing allowance was set out in Grand Committee on the Welfare Reform Bill by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. Pilots—I do not like the word Pathfinders—were already in existence when that debate was held on 1 March and our concerns revolved around the Government's intention to allow housing benefit claimants to handle their own housing benefit rather than having it paid direct to the landlord. We felt and still feel that, even though the pilots have shown, for a limited period anyway, that double the number of self-handlers were capable of paying rent subsidy and indeed did—rent subsidy is housing benefit—there would be those customers who, for many reasons, do not hand the benefit to the landlord. I understand that that figure is about 16 per cent of all housing benefit recipients. At the time, I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, say that funding to support the financial advice services had been set aside for the national rollout of local housing allowance. Set aside is one thing, but will the Minister say whether this money is now in place or whether it will be on 7 April next year? I was also reassured by her statement that regulations will ensure that payments can be made to the landlord where customers are known to have difficulty managing their financial affairs. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, has said, housing departments are not expected to be proactive in this matter. Indeed, they seem to be almost prohibited by the guidance. Waiting for non-payment for eight weeks will only mean that the private rented sector will dwindle more and more for housing benefit recipients—a point that I made back in March. I was therefore alarmed to read in paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum: "““Unlike the current system customers will not be able to elect for payments to be made to their landlord””." Although I accept that customer election does not preclude payments to landlords direct from the local housing authority, how does the Minister square those two statements? What authority remains to allow such direct payments? Where can I find the information in the orders—I looked, I searched and combed through them and failed to find it. Perhaps the Minister can do better for me. My other concern about these orders lies in the apparent untoward speed with which they have been made. Prompted by the comments by your Lordship's Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee earlier this week, I looked at the department's website in general and housing benefits/LHA/evaluation in particular. I was alarmed to find only remarks on how and when the evaluation was to be conducted. There was nothing about the completion of such evaluation. Eventually, with further searching, I discovered report No. 10 dated 5 October 2006, which I assume is the most recent report and is headed in part ““final evaluation””. I would not describe it as an evaluation at all. It is a press release giving a rather gloomy summary, especially as it concludes with a bullet point saying the following: "““On balance the net effect, after allowing for set up costs and some specific implementation difficulties, is positive, but not considered a ‘substantial advantage to housing benefits administration and delivery’””." Why, then, is the department rushing these regulations for a national rollout through, or has something happened since October last that the department has not revealed, in which case will the Minister kindly reveal it now? Talking of revelations, the paper Evaluating the Local Housing Allowance Pathfinders, referred to an independent consortium of the universities of Birmingham, Loughborough and York, along with the National Centre for Social Research, "““being commissioned to carry out the evaluation””." I failed to find any references to that evaluation. Has it reported and what, in essence, did it say? We are being asked to approve these regulations on what I regard as the flimsiest of evidence. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott—although he did not quite put it this way—that it simply is not good enough.