My Lords, I will speak briefly. I welcome the movement by the Minister on this issue, and there has been significant movement during the Bill’s passage through this House, which is entirely to be accepted gratefully. However, I remain fundamentally concerned about the pay-to-stay policy, which is effectively a form of tax collection but done by people who are not tax collectors. The income comes back to the Chancellor and is not reinvested in housing.
It is important to be clear that that the people in question are not on high incomes. Given where the thresholds are, we are talking, in London, about people such as teaching assistants and caretakers, and household incomes, not individual incomes. We will catch a lot of ordinary people on fairly ordinary incomes through this change. That is why I moved the amendment—to get the threshold up—and why I would have supported the amendment to keep the taper at 10p in the pound for those at the lower rate. It is important to be aware that the bulk of the people who will be caught by pay to stay are in the £10,000 bracket. Those who earn over £60,000 number fewer than 40,000.
Therefore, through this measure we are effectively taxing households on slightly higher incomes. I believe strongly that it will be very difficult to implement and that it will cost more than it raises in income in many places. That said, I want to finish on a positive note: there has been movement, so I entirely support my noble friend Lord Best’s decision not to move his amendment.