The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Mr.
Eric
Martlew
Alexander,
Danny
(Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
(LD)
Betts,
Mr. Clive
(Sheffield, Attercliffe)
(Lab)
Brown,
Lyn
(West Ham)
(Lab)
Cawsey,
Mr. Ian
(Brigg and Goole)
(Lab)
David,
Mr. Wayne
(Caerphilly)
(Lab)
Engel,
Natascha
(North-East Derbyshire)
(Lab)
Jackson,
Glenda
(Hampstead and Highgate)
(Lab)
Morgan,
Julie
(Cardiff, North)
(Lab)
Plaskitt,
Mr. James
(Parliamentary Under-
Secretary of State
for Work and
Pensions)
Rowen,
Paul
(Rochdale)
(LD)
Selous,
Andrew
(South-West Bedfordshire)
(Con)
Smith,
Geraldine
(Morecambe and Lunesdale)
(Lab)
Tapsell,
Sir Peter
(Louth and Horncastle)
(Con)
Tredinnick,
David
(Bosworth)
(Con)
Trickett,
Jon
(Hemsworth)
(Lab)
Walter,
Mr. Robert
(North Dorset)
(Con)
Wright,
Mr. Anthony
(Great Yarmouth)
(Lab)
Hannah
Weston, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committeec
Fourth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 10
July
2007
[Mr.
Eric Martlew
in the
Chair]
Draft Housing Benefit (Loss of Benefit) (Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2007
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(Mr. James Plaskitt):
I beg to move,
That the Committee
has considered the draft Housing Benefit (Loss of Benefit) (Pilot
Scheme) Regulations
2007.
Good afternoon,
Mr. Martlew, it is a pleasure to serve under your
chairmanship. Antisocial behaviour remains a key area of concern for
the public and can blight the lives of individuals and whole
communities. It is estimated that antisocial behaviour costs public
services around £3.5 billion every year. One of the commitments
in the Governments respect action plan, launched in January
2006, was to consider how to encourage those involved in persistent
antisocial behaviour to engage with intensive family support. That led
to the decision to introduce a housing benefit sanction for those
people who have been evicted for antisocial behaviour but who have
refused to take up offers of help.
The aim is to
provide a strong incentive for households to undertake rehabilitation
when they have refused other offers of help. Such households have and
create multiple problems. The cost to the taxpayer can be between
£250,000 and £350,000 per family per year for a range of
interventions by public services, including the costs of social,
childrens and housing services, policing, court services,
criminal justice agencies and others. We are keen to reinforce the link
between rights and responsibilities in the benefit system. The deal is
that the right to housing benefit must come with the responsibility to
be a decent
neighbour.
The policy
is intended to tackle the hardest-to-reach householdsthose that
have refused offers of help. In practice, the local authority will have
met with the majority of such households and offered support prior to
eviction. Many households co-operate at that stage and avoid eviction,
but there is a hard-to-reach group for whom the threat of eviction is
not enough.
As part
of the scheme, eviction and a sanction of loss of housing benefit will
be raised as possible consequences of not co-operating with support. It
is hoped that the combined threat will increase the number of people
who co-operate prior to eviction. However, some households may continue
to be evicted for antisocial behaviour. Post eviction, the local
authority may engage with the household, at which point an assessment
will be made of the households needs, and an action plan drawn
up in co-operation with them. If people accept help at that stage and
continue with the programme of support, no sanction of loss of housing
benefit will be made. If they choose not to co-operate, the local
authority can issue a
sanction warning notice, which will warn a household that housing
benefit will be reduced if they do not carry out the actions listed in
the notice within the stated time scale. If they do not comply with the
warning notice, the sanction will be applied unless the household can
show that they had good cause not
to.
The household may
bring the sanction to an end at any time by complying with the notice
and taking up the offer of support. The local authority also has
discretion to bring the sanction to an end at any time. If a household
initially co-operate and then stop, the sanction can be restarted at
the rate at which it was applied previously.
Under the scheme, pilots can
run for a maximum of two years, in eight local authorities. The
regulations apply only to those pilot areas. The enabling power, which
is set out in primary legislation, is time limited and will come to an
end on 31 December 2010. Provided that the regulations are approved, it
is our intention to begin the pilots in November 2007. They will
therefore conclude in November 2009. For a scheme to continue beyond
2010 there would need to be further primary legislation. The
regulations underpin the possible sanction of reduction of housing
benefit and set the rate for the reduction. It is right that they are
subject to affirmative procedure. They will allow the pilot schemes to
run for two years, starting from 1 November.
Under the primary legislation,
the conditions that must be satisfied for a sanction to be applied are
that the former occupier has been evicted on grounds of antisocial
behaviour; that they have secured alternative accommodation and a new
claim for housing benefit has been made; that they have been issued
with a warning notice that requires them to take specified action to
avoid the sanction, and finally, that they have failed, without good
cause, to comply with the warning notice.
Regulation 3 states that all of
the conditions must take place within the pilot area and during the
pilot period. Under regulation 4, if the conditions are satisfied,
housing benefit will be reduced gradually in three phasesthe
intention being that the increasing deduction will act as a rolling
incentive to take up support. The sanction will start with a 10 per
cent. reduction in housing benefit for a period of four weeks. That
will be followed by a 20 per cent. reduction for a further four-week
period. After that eight-week period, the reduction will become 100 per
cent.
We want this
measure to be a strong incentive, so it is a severe sanction that could
take away up to 100 per cent. of a persons housing benefit.
However, if the person falls into the category of a person in
hardship, the maximum reduction will be only 30 per cent.
Hardship is defined in regulation 5. Those who qualify for hardship
include households in which a member is pregnant. Hardship also covers
people under the age of 18, people over 60, those with responsibility
for a child, those in receipt or in the process of claiming disability
living allowance at the higher rate and those in receipt or in the
process of claiming attendance allowance at the higher rate. Beyond
that, local authorities have discretion to award hardship in cases
when, having taken account of all of the circumstances of the
household, they are satisfied that such households will suffer
hardship. That should
take account of the resources that may be available to a household, and
whether there is a substantial risk that essential items such as food,
clothing or heating would cease to be
available.
The
proposed regulations would amend the Social Security (Loss of Benefit)
Regulations 2001, so that where another sanction is already applied to
the households housing benefit for benefit offences, the rate
of reduction that will apply is the greater of the two rates. For
example, if a person is subject to a loss of housing benefit of 40 per
cent., because of a benefit fraud sanction and, at the same time, is
subject to an antisocial behaviour sanction at 30 per cent., the full
housing benefit sanction applied would be 40 per cent. If the fraud
sanction ended, but the antisocial behaviour sanction continued,
housing benefit would be sanctioned at 30 per cent.
The schedule to the regulations
lists the local authorities in which the pilot schemes will take place.
Only claimants in those local authorities may be subject to the
sanction of reduced housing benefit. The local authorities piloting the
scheme are volunteers that all believe that such a tool will be useful
to them.
Further
detail on the sanction scheme will be provided in negative regulations,
the Housing Benefit (Loss of Benefit) (Pilot Scheme) (Supplementary)
Regulations 2007. Those regulations will contain details of appeal
rights and of what would be considered good cause not to comply with a
warning notice. They will provide rules for discretionary housing
payments, and arrangements for sharing that information between the
courts, the Department for Work and Pensions and local
authorities.
Detailed
guidance will be provided for housing benefit administrators, the
courts and local authorities. That is being drafted in conjunction with
the piloting local authorities and relevant stakeholders. We hope to
publish the guidance in August and we will be revising it throughout
the pilots as best practice emerges. In addition, details of the
measure will be included in information for tenants of local
authorities. The pilot authorities will also be working with other
local landlords to ensure that tenants are aware of the
measure.
In my view,
the provisions of the draft Housing Benefit (Loss of Benefit) (Pilot
Scheme) Regulations are compatible with the European convention on
human rights and I commend them to the
Committee.
4.40
pm
Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): It is a pleasure
to serve again in Committee under your chairmanship, Mr.
Martlew. It is worth reflecting briefly on the history of the
regulations. I was a member of the Standing Committee that discussed
the Housing Benefit (Withholding of Payment) Bill in the previous
Parliament. It was a private Members Bill introduced by the
right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) with which the
Government were sympathetic, although it ran out of time. As a result,
the Government commissioned a consultation in 2003 of which again I was
part because one of the Ministers predecessors came to my
constituency when we and about 30 constituents considered a similar
measure.
However, due to the result of the consultations that the Government
received then, they decided not to
proceed.
The
Government are now introducing the regulations as a result of the
Welfare Reform Act 2007. The official Opposition very much support the
principle behind the measure. The idea that benefits provided by the
state require the recipient to behave responsibly towards neighbours in
the community is good and one to which I and my party would want to
sign up. The Minister has outlined carefully a carrot-and-stick
approach and it is absolutely right that the two are together. Were we
only withdrawing housing benefit for antisocial behaviour and not doing
anything to modify behaviour, I am not sure that I could support
the Minister, but as he painstakingly said, there are measures to
change behaviour that every one of us in this room knows from our
constituency surgeries causes real misery to the lives of our
constituents.
My
comment, however, on the measure is that we are dealing with a small
proportion of the perpetrators of antisocial behaviour. The worst case
in my constituency started just before I was elected and I have dealt
with it for more than six years. It has resulted in antisocial
behaviour orders imposed on the perpetrators, numerous dealings with
the police and court appearances. However, because of the policy of the
particular housing association property in which the perpetrator
resides, that gentleman has not been evicted from his housing, so the
very worthy regulations that we are discussing cannot be applied. That
is just one constituency example, but the excellent and full
explanatory note in respect of the regulations highlights the fact that
they could apply to no more than 1,500 people per year who have been
evicted as a result of antisocial
behaviour.
The scheme
is a pilot for two years in only eight areas, so it is important to put
on the record the fact that we are talking about a thin segment
overall. If it works and achieves good results at the end of the
two-year pilot, will that be the end of the road? Will the Government
do more? In the previous Parliament, they were sympathetic with the
proposals to do considerably more, and I should be interested to hear
whether the Minister says anything today about whether we shall go
slightly further and deal with more perpetrators of antisocial
behaviour who make peoples livessometimes entire
streets and neighbourhoodsa complete
misery.
The
regulations are yet another pilot from a Department that is famed for
pilots. We have heard all the jokes about the Department having more
pilots than British Airways. It occasionally looks as though the
Department is treating the United Kingdom as one giant laboratory for
various experiments of social measures. I sometimes long for the
Department to take a decision and say, This works and we are
going to roll it out nationally. Lets go for it because we have
a lot of pilots here. These are sensitive and important areas,
and I understand the need for a pilot. We have a three-and-a-half month
delay until these regulations start and two years of assessment. If
these measures are deemed to be useful and effective and able to reduce
antisocial behaviour, it will be some time before most Members will see
the benefit. We are moving quite slowly here.
I should like to ask the
Minister a couple of specific questions. Is there evidence of people
moderating their behaviour if they are threatened with, or face,
eviction? By definition, the regulations deal with people who have been
through that stage. Does the Department, in conjunction with the local
authorities and the Home Office, have any evidence of the impact on
behaviour that the threat of eviction or actual eviction has? I am
wondering whether the Department knows the circumstances of the people
who are evicted as a result of antisocial behaviour. Presumably, those
people have had all the warnings, yet they have carried on behaving in
that way. Does that mean that we are dealing with people who have
family members who can house them and a source of incomeperhaps
unknown to her Majestys Revenue and Customswith which
they are able to secure other accommodation, even though they are
claiming housing benefit?
I am curious to know about the
decisions that these people have made and the circumstances in which
they find themselves. They go through eviction and carry on behaving in
an antisocial way, knowing that eviction will be the consequence
again.
The explanatory
memorandum mentions the Dundee families project quite a lot and sings
its praises. I heard about the project during discussions on the
Housing Benefit (Withholding of Payment) Bill as well. Is that the only
project that the Government have looked at across the UK? Are there
others that are doing similarly good work?
The explanatory memorandum is
not very clear about how this intervention and rehabilitation work will
be paid for. From my understanding, the Government are not providing
additional resources to fund rehabilitation to the eight local
authorities in the regulations. Is this just another demand that will
fall on the council tax payers of those areas, and will that be the
case if the scheme is rolled out nationally? I would be grateful if the
Minister could address those
points.
4.49
pm
Geraldine
Smith:
I did not intend to speak in this Committee, so I
will be brief. I want to put on record my strong support for the
measure. I have experienced such cases first hand. One family in my
constituency have made many peoples lives a misery. They have
been evicted. They have single-handedly brought down the reputation of
one street and forced many people to move out.
They were
evicted and were placed in accommodation with a housing association.
They then did the same thing. They smashed the windows of people living
next door for no apparent reason, stayed up all night making all sorts
of noise and completely wrecked the property that they were living in.
Those people probably need help; I cannot understand why they behave in
that fashion. Of course, we have to go through all the procedures of
antisocial behaviour orders and court appearances. We must find ways of
dealing with those people. The Government are right to pilot this
scheme. I am not sure whether it will work, but it is certainly worth a
try. I also ask the Government to be bold, and to perhaps go further.
Sometimes, in the most extreme
cases, when there is nothing else, people might need to be put in
supervised accommodation if they cannot live with the rest of society.
It is unfair on hard-working people to be kept awake half the night and
have their lives made a misery, while they pay taxes to keep people in
accommodation. That is not fair, and the Government are right to tackle
the
problem.
4.50
pm
Paul
Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): Mr. Martlew, it is a
pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairmanship.
I speak for the Liberal
Democrats, but also from my own experience in my constituency, and like
other hon. Members I feel that the issue of antisocial behaviour is
probably the greatest single issue on some estates. I wish to see
strong action to deal with the problem, but we have real concerns about
the measure and about whether it will be effective in terms of
delivering a reduction in antisocial behaviour, as I am sure the
Minister will be aware following the debates on the Welfare Reform
Bill.
There are many
reasons for our concerns. Page 12 of the explanatory memorandum states
that the Government have no idea how many people with mental health or
other health problems might be affected by the legislation. I have
information from the Crime and Society Foundation for ASBO Concern that
says that
two thirds of
those...involved
in
antisocial
behaviour
have some form
of vulnerability.
Of
those, 18 per cent. have a mental disability, and 9 per cent.
a physical
disability.
Forcing
people to comply and behave themselves after they have been evicted so
that they are rehabilitated before they are given them fresh
accommodation is right, and I would like to see such action made
compulsory. I am not convinced, however, that withdrawing benefit for
people with problems, be they to do with drugs, alcohol or whatever,
will necessarily solve the problem.
Some people would not be
bothered, so what would be the net effect of the measure? The report
from the local authority consultation stated that their major concern
was that the effect of the measure would be an increase in housing
arrears, because people will not bother. Money goes directly to
claimants, but they will not be especially bothered about how much
money they owe because if they are subject to the sanctions, they will
go on to the next round and will move elsewhere. I do not think that
such an outcome would be
effective.
Why have
the eight authorities been chosen for the pilot and by what criteria?
The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked about the chosen
authorities rehabilitation services. We have to do something
about the problem because the costs associated with the families who
are subject to the regulations are real and worrying, but without
substantial rehabilitation services in place, the measure will not be
effective. It will be a busted flush, because people will move to the
next local authority area, where they will not be subject to the
measures.
I look at the effect of
Government policy on failed asylum seekers, whose benefits have been
withdrawn, and I ask whether it has resulted in people volunteering to
remove themselves from the country. The answer is that it has not; the
evidence suggests the opposite. Those people have gone underground or
their children have been placed in care, and costs far in excess of
those that might have been incurred by an alternative Government policy
have been dumped on local
authorities.
Although
I understand the Governments intent, I believe that the measure
is a blunt instrument that will not deliver the changes that they want.
It will force people underground. The eight pilot areas will mean that
people are forced elsewhere, which will cause problems. We should be
focusing more strongly on some form of introductory tenancy such as my
local authority has introduced, which has to be signed and has a
package agreed. The fact of peoples being on benefitnot
everybody is on benefitshould not determine whether they get
support.
Why have the
eight authorities been chosen? What provision is being made to ensure
that they have rehabilitation services in place? What numbers will be
involvedof the 1,500 people evicted a year, how many people
will lose housing benefit? What do the Government intend to do to
ensure that people with a mental or other illness are not thrown out on
the streets because their problem is not recognised? That is a problem
now.
Although giving
an ASBO may solve the problem, it does not necessarily solve it;
dealing with the underlying issues solves the problem. The regulations
will not deliver what the Government want to
achieve.
4.56
pm
Glenda
Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab): Mr.
Martlew, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I presume
that the Government are attempting to attract problem families to be
assisted. I presuppose that because the list of households that will
not be affected by the regulations will include practically every one
in my constituency that is causing problems for its neighbours. I
wonder why the regulations have been so narrowly drawn. I should also
like to know whether the regulations will apply to tenants in the
private sector as well as those in local authority and social
housing.
I am puzzled
about why the threat of the removal of housing benefit is being staged.
Surely, the overall threat is that housing benefit will be removed.
There are certain private sector tenants in my constituency, for
example, who may certainly be engaging in what I believeand
what their neighbours believeis antisocial behaviour, although
the rent officer has decided that the rent that should be paid for that
property is lower than the rent that the landlord is charging. So we
are already looking at people who are finding it difficult to meet
their rent, if it is exclusively based on housing
benefit.
I cannot see
how this kind of a threat, which will be phased in, will occasion a
change in the behaviour of people who undoubtedly make their neighbours
lives a misery. Again, why have the regulations been so narrowly drawn?
I understand that that is part and
parcel of introducing a pilot scheme that could be deemed to be somewhat
draconian. Given the points made by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the
hon. Member for Rochdale, it is heartening to realise that, having
voted against the introduction of antisocial behaviour orders, the
Liberal Democrats are now acknowledging that antisocial behaviour is a
problem in most of our
constituencies.
I
should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to address the issues
raised by the hon. Gentleman. Certainly, I think it highly unlikely
that the Government intend that such regulations should impact on
people with a mental health disorder. However, that does not remove the
fact that it is not infrequently people with serious mental health
disorders who cause the most distress to their neighbours. It is
difficult, in my experience at any rate, for local authorities, even
with combined services, to bring about a change in their behaviour. If
an individual or a household does not respond to the threats in the
regulationsthey are threatswill they be taken through
the existing legal process of eviction or will there be a coup de
grace? Will they still have the right to appeal, should the court find
for the owner of the property and in favour of an eviction order? Will
there be a time scale before that house or living quarters can be
returned, either to the local authority or the private
landlord?
I am a
strong supporter of ASBOs and I strongly support the
Governments acknowledgement of the serious damage done to so
many by the inexplicable and utterly unacceptable behaviour of a small
number of people. On the point made about children by my hon. Friend
the Under-Secretary in his introduction, I acknowledge that the
Government must take that consideration on board. Equally, however, the
lives of neighbours children are made a misery and something
has to be done to protect
them.
5
pm
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I am grateful to Committee members for their
contributions to the debate. I shall begin by mentioning the support
for the proposals expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe
and Lunesdale. I appreciate what she said. There is often tragedy
within the families that are perpetrating the antisocial
behaviourthat has certainly been my experience in my
constituencywhich is why the measure is cast in the way that it
is. We know that the ultimate solution to dealing with antisocial
behaviourrelieving those who are on the receiving end of
italso involves resolving the issues within the families that
can give rise to
it.
There are many
families responsible for behaviour that is sometimes appalling, for
whom getting to grips with the core problems is not terribly difficult.
However, that requires a fairly concentrated engagement with that
family in a very intimate way to find out what has gone
wrong.
As part of the
preparation for introducing the regulations, I have also met families
who have been through family intervention programmes and received
support to deal with their antisocial behaviour. Some of those families
are as appreciative of those programmes as the neighbours who have been
relieved of the problem of being on the receiving end of their
behaviour. So from that point of view, we are trying to address both
symptoms and causes.
I appreciate the support for the
measure from the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire. If it were
not attached in the way that it is to the provision of family support
projects, I would not support it either. I am grateful that he has
underlined that point. I can help with his questions about the scale of
the measure, about which other Committee members also asked. As we
know, some 1,500 families a year in the United Kingdom are evicted from
their properties for antisocial behaviour. The eight authorities that
have volunteered to pilot the scheme evicted 28 families in the last
year for which we have figures. The pilot is based on quite a small
sample, but it is of a sufficient size and duration to enable us to
judge the effectiveness of the measure. Our conclusion, as a
Government, will be that the measure will have been effective if the
sanction never has to be applied. It will be effective if all the
families have engaged with the support services and start to tackle
their antisocial behaviour. That will be the real test of whether it
has worked.
The hon.
Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked whether there were too many
pilots. I know it sometimes feels like that. I, too, see another pilot
coming my way. However, I can reassure him that pilots do not remain as
pilots. Although we all see pilots coming into the Department, many of
the previous oneshaving worked and proven that they
workbecome policy and are applied universally. Some pilots are
leaving as others come in, so there is not an ever-accumulating
number.
The
hon. Gentleman asked, reasonably, what is the evidence that such
intervention works with these families. So far we have established 53
family intervention projects around the country, as we promised to do
under the respect action plan. The evidence, drawing not just from the
Dundee project, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but also from
independent analysis of about eight projects, done by Sheffield Hallam
university, is that they are effective. All the evidence shows a
dramatic reduction in the incidence of antisocial behaviour by the
families that engaged with the projects. In so far as it can be
measured, Sheffield Hallam university has suggested that there is about
an 80 per cent. reduction in the incidence of antisocial behaviour. The
evidence suggests that this is well worth
doing.
Finally, the
hon. Gentleman asked about resources. I can confirm that there are
additional resources for local authorities helping us with the
pilots.
The hon.
Member for Rochdale likewise asked whether the scheme would be
effective. I think I have covered that question in response to issues
that were raised by other hon. Members. He asked about people with
mental vulnerability, and he rightly said that such vulnerability could
contribute to inability to deal with antisocial behaviour, or inability
to know how to begin to deal with it.
I hope that I
can reassure him by saying that leading charities in the field,
including Mind and Rethink, are working with us in devising and
drafting the guidance to the pilot local authorities. They support our
objectives. I remind him that each of the local authorities involved
will have power to decide whether it is appropriate to apply the
sanction in individual cases. It is right that that should be so, and I
hope that that also reassures the
hon. Gentleman about the safeguards and about inappropriate application.
Inappropriate application would be pointless. All of the volunteering
pilot local authorities have rehabilitation services. Indeed, they
would not have been admitted as pilot authorities had that not been the
case, because those services are a sine qua non of the
scheme.
The hon.
Gentleman suggested that we should perhaps consider alternative
measures to tackle antisocial behaviour. I do not see the issue as
being one of either/or. The other measures that the Government have
introduced during the past 10 years to help tackle antisocial behaviour
all have their part to play, and the present instrument is an
additional one which, if it proves effective in pilots, will be applied
more widely. I take on board what the hon. Gentleman said about
introductory tenancies. They have their place; my own local authority
has them. However, they come at a different point in the drive to
reinforce socially responsible behaviour on the part of neighbours. The
regulations will apply at a much later, post-eviction stage when things
have become really desperate. In those circumstances, the provisional
tenancy agreements would presumably not have done the job, and there
needs to be some kind of fall-back.
Andrew
Selous:
Before the Minister concludes, will he say
whether, at some stage in the future, the Government might be prepared
to extend the scope of this or another similar measure so as to cover
more perpetrators of antisocial behaviour? I referred to that earlier
and so did the hon. Member for Hampstead and
Highgate.
Mr.
Plaskitt:
Well, now I am going to advocate the use of
pilots, because their purpose is to allow us to obtain evidence and
experience on which to proceed. We believe that the pilots are
sufficient in scale and number to give us an indication of how the
sanction will work and whether it will have the effect that we want. It
would be improper to pre-judge the outcome of the pilots, so I shall
not do so. However, if they point to a helpful effect for families who
might not otherwise have engaged with the relevant support, that would
be an indication of success, and we shall of course think about wider
application. The point is that we shall do that in the light of what we
learn from the two years of
piloting.
My
hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate asked whether the
measure would apply in the private sector. The answer is that it will
in the case of any private sector tenant who is on housing benefit. We
know that landlords in the private sector frequently find it difficult
to deal with tenants who perpetrate antisocial behaviour. It is often
harder for them to gather the evidence or to take the necessary
preliminary steps that are easier for a local authority or social
landlord.
Many
private landlords might choose to go down a different route and get rid
of the tenant by way of a two-month eviction notice for which no reason
is required, rather than prove antisocial behaviour. That means that
they are not as good at engaging in tackling the core of the problem as
are local authorities. Happily, some local authorities work closely
with private landlords to try to assist them in helping families
heading towards eviction and to address the core problem. However,
there are only a few examples of that.
Paul
Rowen:
The Ministers point about private sector
landlords prompts me to ask whether the Department has assessed how
likely it is that the regulations will deter private landlords from
taking on such tenants. I know that private landlords are concerned
that benefits are now being paid direct to the tenant rather than to
them. If someone has been evicted, they are going to find it difficult
to find accommodation anyway. Surely the introduction of this measure
will make it even more unlikely that a private landlord will give a
tenancy to such a person?
Mr.
Plaskitt:
Well, the thing that will make it most
difficult for a family to secure a new tenancy is if they have not
corrected their antisocial behaviour. It is for that reason that our
policy thrust is to secure the engagement of the services that tackle
the causes of antisocial behaviour.
I know that the hon. Gentleman
thinks that private sector landlords are concerned about the switch in
the local housing allowance. Here again, I can preach the virtue of
pilots. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the local housing allowance was
extensively piloted in 14 different areas. The evidence was very
encouraging. We have not seen any of the problems that the hon.
Gentleman has mentioned. Therefore, as the local housing allowance
takes effect across the private sector next April, we are expecting to
see quite positive
outcomes.
Jon
Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab): In my constituency, half the
problems with tenancies are with the private sector. We have some very
good private landlords, and some very bad ones. By choosing particular
types of tenants, and putting them together in houses, one can often
aggregate the problems which eventually lead to antisocial behaviour
and neighbour nuisance.
What evidence does the Minister
have that by driving further into debt the tenants of private
landlordsby cutting their housing benefitthe private
landlord will then engage better with the enforcement of the rent
book?
Mr.
Plaskitt:
May I stress that this is an after-eviction
sanction. It comes into effect after a family have lost their housing.
If they have never engaged and refuse to engage with the support
services and the sanctions come into effect, it bites at the point when
they re-apply for housing benefit. The measure will not put into debt
people who are already tenants because by definition, they have lost
their tenancy as a result of antisocial behaviour. That comes back to
the basic proposition. There is an issue that we have to tackle here.
Why should the rest of the community give financial support to a family
to move back into housing if they are going to wreak havoc on the rest
of that community? That is the deal implied by the rights and
responsibilities formula that drives the thinking of the measure and
the wider agenda.
Jon
Trickett:
I accept the objective and the method by which
we are trying to achieve it. Does the Minister think that private
landlords will have a greater propensity to take on such people who are
looking for homes, or will the problem be thrown on to the social
landlords, particularly the councils, which are increasingly having
their housing stock
reduced?
Mr.
Plaskitt:
I understand my hon. Friends concern.
However, if the sanction is effective in encouraging people to
participate in the support and intervention projects, it tackles the
problems that could be faced by both the private and social landlords.
I hope that we will see its effectiveness applied across both forms of
tenancies.
My
hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate wanted to know why we
had staged the penalty. The thinking behind that is that it creates a
rolling incentive. Rather than plunging someone into a 100 per cent.
cut-off, one would initially say, You are facing a smaller
withdrawal of housing benefit, which will be ramped up. We
think that that will have the effect of engaging that family in a
continued discussion as they can see that the potential loss will get
worse and worse.
The
measure is designed to deal with families on the cusp of deciding
whether to participate. We thought that it was reasonable to have a
phased introduction of the penalty rather than an immediate move to 100
per cent. We will judge the effectiveness of the regulations by whether
it has incentivised families to engage with the process. The thought of
seeing an even worse penalty looming in the future will encourage them
to make a response before it is too late. In that sense, I am not sure
that I agree that the measure is too narrow. I think I can see what my
hon. Friend is saying, but we need to proceed carefully with this. This
is a very severe sanction and we have tried to craft it as carefully as
we can.
In the light
of earlier debate and discussion that we had on previous private
Members legislationalthough that was directed at the
pre-eviction stagewe decided that this measure had the right
blend. I hope that that has addressed the points that have been
raised.
We strongly
believe that the welfare state should combine rights with
responsibilities. The right to benefit can come only with the
responsibility to behave with respect to others. I hope that I have
managed to reassure hon. Members that this measure strikes the right
balance between competing obligations. On that basis, I commend it to
the House.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Resolved,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Housing Benefit (Loss of
Benefit) (Pilot Scheme) Regulations
2007.
Committee
rose at sixteen minutes past Five
oclock.