My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the amendment and, if I may, I will turn to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about the commitments I made on Report. We have confirmed that a taper will be in place. Our preferred approach is for a taper of 20%, although clearly noble Lords disagreed and have decided to include a taper of 10%. I do not want to say any more about that today, but I am sure we will return to the operation of the taper in due course.
I said that our preferred income thresholds were £31,000 nationally and £40,000 in London. Again, noble Lords disagreed and this is another area where we will need to agree to disagree at this point in the Bill. I can confirm that the definition of income for the purposes of the policy will be taxable income, which means that certain state benefits would not count when a household is determining what income to declare. DLA and tax credits will not need to be included. The definition of a household will be the tenant, joint tenants and their spouses, partners and civil partners. This will ensure that non-dependent children living at home who are not a joint tenant will not have their income counted for the purposes of determining the rent payable. Finally, I confirmed that
anyone in receipt of housing benefit and universal credit will not pay any additional rent. This is important as it will protect those most in need and ensure that state resources are not used to fund the increase in rent.
The noble Baroness asked whether PIP would be exempt, and I can confirm that it will be. She also talked about victims of domestic violence, to whom I am very committed. That would be one of the considerations that I have committed to dealing with in regulations. I hope that that gives her comfort about my intentions.