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Lords amendment 2 disagreed to.
Government amendment (a) made in lieu of Lords amendment 2.
Consequential amendment (b) made.
Jim Knight: I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments 13, 14, 16 to 24, 29, 51, 52, 60, 92, 93 and 95 to 102.
Jim Knight: Many of the amendments in this group are technical and consequential, and I shall therefore not linger on them. I anticipate that there will be most interest in the proposals on renaming council tax benefit as council tax rebate and on uprating, so I shall dwell on those at slightly more length.
There are six amendments that end provision for pilot schemes that impose a benefit sanction on people who breach a community order. They have been superseded by new measures and are no longer necessary.
There is then a group containing four amendments in respect of the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, following a very useful report that I am sure all parts of the House welcomed. The amendments will put them into effect.
Amendment 16 will resolve a technical issue in respect of disability living allowance and remove what is effectively a duplicate clause. Amendments 19 to 22 will resolve a further technical issue in payments on account and achieve better benefit alignment in respect of the use of the social fund. Our own internal scrutiny found that there was no need to include housing benefit in the scope of that measure.
Amendments 23 and 52 deal with the uprating of benefits. That important change will enable us to meet our promise to pensioners to increase basic state pension from April by 2.5 per cent., which will be worth about £1 billion over the course of the year. The amendments will allow the Secretary of State to consider uprating certain social security benefits in April 2010, even if
there is no increase in the general level of prices. The retail prices index has been traditionally used to determine an increase in the general level of prices.
Steve Webb: The amendments, as I read them, relate only to 2010. Will the Minister explain why he has not given the Secretary of State a general power? In 12 months' time, the RPI could still be negative and we would need primary legislation again. Why not provide for a general power?
Jim Knight: As hon. Members will be aware, next year's benefit rates will be announced at the pre-Budget report and in the subsequent uprating statement, and I am therefore unable to pre-empt those announcements this afternoon by legislating accordingly.
These measures are, of course, a further demonstration of the Government's commitment to tackling pensioner poverty, which has resulted in almost 1 million fewer pensioners in poverty than when we came to office in 1997. Poverty is clearly a topical issue.
Amendments 29 and 51 are very important measures that would rename council tax benefit. I should like to start by paying tribute to the Royal British Legion not just for the services that right hon. and hon. Members will have attended throughout the country last Sunday, including the excellent services that I attended at Portland and Swanage in my constituency, or for the importance of the act of remembrance that we will observe tomorrow morning, but for its campaign to rename council tax benefit "council tax rebate". It has led an impressive campaign against pensioner poverty generally, and in particular it has clearly demonstrated how important a name change might be for many of the people whom it represents. It speaks for all pensioners, but particularly for ex-service personnel, who have given so much to this country. We want to ensure that they are afforded the dignity that they deserve and are not put off from receiving what they are most certainly entitled to.
I should like also to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan), whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber. She has not just raised the issue with the Prime Minister in the House, but met the Secretary of State and given sterling support to the campaign. The amendments will insert a new clause that requires the Secretary of State, by order, to change the name of council tax benefit to council tax rebate. They will allow for consequential changes to references to council tax benefit in other legislation and documents. The first use of the power will require the approval of Parliament through the affirmative procedure. That will provide a further opportunity to debate the precise details of how the measure will be implemented, following proper consultation with interested parties, especially local government and pensioner groups.
The Government have introduced the amendments to help address the low take-up of council tax benefit by removing a barrier that many pensioners face in claiming help with the payment of their council tax bill. We believe that some people, particularly pensioners, are deterred from claiming benefits but would be much more comfortable about claiming once they understood the true nature of the help to which they are entitled-in this case, a rebate on their council tax bill.
When I spoke to the previous amendments, I referred to this Government's excellent record on tackling pensioner poverty. We continue to do all we can to encourage
pensioners to take up the benefits and help to which they are entitled, but the take-up of some key benefits, including council tax benefit, is still disappointing. We believe that the renaming is right, and it has received unanimous support from all parties in the House.
In summary, the amendments contain important measures that will enable the Government to continue to act on our commitment to help pensioners to receive the help that we have put in place and to which they are entitled.
Mr. Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con): As the Minister said, this is a miscellaneous group of amendments-and I shall speak to a few of them. Lords amendments 1 and 24 deal with pilots. I agree with the Minister that the need for those pilots has been superseded by a change in legislation, but I want to press him in one area that may provide a lesson on how Ministers conduct pilots in future. The pilots were originally introduced in 2001. Given that they are no longer needed, it is right to remove their legislative basis, but eight years seems like a fair wait. In the other place, there was a debate about how long the pilots had run for, how long the assessment had taken, and how long the decision had taken to introduce something else. We need to ensure that the pilots on new measures in the Bill run for no longer than is necessary to establish whether there is sufficient evidence as to whether they work-and that if they do work, we should not necessarily run them for their full period, but should learn from them and then decide whether they should be rolled out more widely. That would be a sensible lesson to draw from the amendments.
Lords amendments 13, 14, 17 and 18 improve the extent to which this House and the other place have control over some of the proposals in the Bill, by inserting affirmative resolutions and replacing ministerial direction with a need for regulations. Those measures are welcome, as they strengthen the powers of this House.
Lords amendment 16 relates to disability living allowance and the extension of higher-rate mobility allowance to people with a visual impairment. Will the Minister clarify where the funding for that will come from? When we discussed the relevant new clause on Report, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), who is in his place, announced the Government's decision to support it right at the end of the debate, so there was insufficient opportunity to probe him on the date of the introduction of the change, and exactly where the Government had found the funding for it.
Steve Webb: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's call for clarity. For the avoidance of doubt, could he confirm whether this policy would be implemented if his party were in power in 2011?
Mr. Harper: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will be able to state our position at the end of my remarks, and I think he will be pleased with the answer.
When we debated this matter in the Public Bill Committee- [ Interruption. ] I hear the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) chuckling away; I will refer to our exchanges on Report as well. In Committee, the Under-Secretary said:
"While the Government fully recognise the intentions behind the new clause, accepting it without having the funding to support
it would require us to withdraw funding from elsewhere in the benefit system." --[ Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 270.]
He said that he was not in a position to give a time scale showing when he would be in a position to finance a change to the rules. Two weeks later, when the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), was asked the same question at Work and Pensions questions, he was unable to give a commitment on being able to fund it.
The very next day, 17 March, when we debated the matter on Report, we had a lively debate in which a number of Members took part. The Under-Secretary said right at the end of his remarks that he was
"delighted to announce today that we are now in a position to agree to fund this proposal".-[ Official Report, 17 March 2009; Vol. 489, c. 855.]
He said that he took great pleasure in accepting what was then new clause 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), who was in his place earlier but is not here now.
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