David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Housing benefit reform

Mr. David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion): I thank the Minister and his officials for spending time in discussions with officers and leading councillors at Brighton and Hove city council about the proposed pathfinder status. I am glad that my city council has agreed to be one of the pathfinders. I also thank the Minister for the time that he spent discussing the proposals with representatives of local agencies in the city of Brighton and Hove that are working on housing issues.

I said to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, privately, when he first announced the proposals, "I think they are good and if they work in Brighton and Hove, they will work anywhere." I felt that then and I feel it now because affordable housing is the big issue in the Brighton and Hove city area, perhaps even more than in some other parts of south-east England. Strategies, such as quotas in planning, the Government's starter homes initiative, the NHS housing allowances for some of its staff, the rent deposit scheme and the proposals in the Local Government Bill, which is at present before the House, to allow council tax discounts on empty properties and second homes to be varied help us locally to deal with the problem.

However, Brighton and Hove relies far more heavily on the private rented sector for housing than most other parts of the country do. It is an area of very high house prices, it is a high-rent area and it is a popular area for second homes. That is not new; it can be traced back to the Prince Regent's deciding to build his winter palace in Brighton at the start of the nineteenth century. Ever since, it has been a popular place for second home owners. It is worth remembering that when he built his palace he was converting a local farmhouse into something rather more palatial. That trend has continued. All these factors put pressure on the unemployed and those who are on low wages when they try to find somewhere to live.

The Minister stressed the importance of housing choice. However, many in my constituency feel that where there is housing choice it is on the part of the landlords, who can choose who will rent their property. It is right that they should, but they know that however high the rent, there will always be somebody in the queue for a property who is willing and able to pay the high price.I will give my very sympathetic support to the pathfinder status of Brighton and Hove city council area. The Minister will not be surprised that I have concerns that I wish to raise with him. I spoke of landlords having the choice of whom they should rent to. Some council officers, councillors and housing agencies in Brighton and Hove are concerned that the unfortunate bias against housing benefit tenants might

be aggravated by the proposal of further direct payment to the tenant. Direct payment is good; it should be the responsibility of the tenant to decide how to pay their rent. However, the proposals, if they are to be successful, must be presented in such a way that they help to overcome such discrimination.

There are also concerns about how the scheme will be delivered. Training and retaining skilled housing benefit staff is a real problem for my city council. There is a simple explanation for that: once staff have been trained they can earn much higher pay working for agencies, often across south-east England. They use the skills that they developed working for my council. There are severe resource implications for my city council and its housing department services. They may have to buy back some of the agency staff on higher rates of pay as well as attempting to recruit their own staff. It would be helpful if the Minister could suggest the level of support, with respect to resources for staffing and the training and retention of staff. What I am discussing is part of a vicious circle. Who can blame housing benefit staff who have been attracted away by the higher rates of pay at agencies in a high rent, high housing cost area such as Brighton and Hove?

I should be grateful if the Minister could say something about the level of support and planning that is already being carried out in relation to information and communications technology. We have already had mention of occasional unfortunate ICT support programmes that are found wanting at an early stage in the introduction of a new project. I should welcome the Minister's thoughts about how to ensure plainer sailing than has been the case with some other new schemes.

I welcome what the Minister has said about guarding against the possibility of fraud and his statement about the flexibility that will be allowed, particularly in relation to vulnerable tenants. It would be helpful to know to what extent it will be possible to exercise that flexibility at a local level, or whether it will be subject to strict national guidelines. I hope, also, that the Minister will comment on the question, which I know the National Housing Federation has raised, of moving away from the four-weekly arrears payment system for benefit. That is a matter of some concern to people working in the housing field.

My hon. Friend will not be surprised at my mentioning an omission from the proposals, because it concerns the issue on which I have had more conversations with him and his predecessors than any other since I was elected. It is what is now called young people's rent—the single room rent. I welcomed the decision that the Government took in 1997 not to extend the restrictions involved in the single room rent to those aged over 25, as the outgoing Conservative Government had planned to do. Minor, but nevertheless welcome, changes were made to the single room rent last year. I like to think that not least among the reasons for the changes was lobbying by me and other hon. Members because of what was happening in our constituencies. Nevertheless, for 18 to 25-year-olds in my constituency, there are continuing and, I believe, worsening problems in relation to housing. I am not sure that the current proposals will address them.

Prior to the introduction of the single room rent by the Conservative Government in 1996 a major local agency in my city, the Brighton Housing Trust, was ableto house 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the young people who approached it for housing advice. It would house them in the private rented sector. By December 2000, following the introduction of the single room rent restriction, that proportion was down to 11 per cent.

I talked this morning to representatives of the Brighton Housing Trust and of Hove YMCA youth advisory service, which is the other major agency working with young people in the Brighton and Hove city area. They told me that it is now virtually impossible for them to place young people on housing benefit with landlords in that area. In 1996 there were 25 landlords quite willing to accept young people as tenants. By June 2000 that number had dwindled to two and, as I was told this morning, it is now none.

The need to consider again the single-room rent for young people was one aspect of the Brighton and Hove City private sector housing forum's manifesto on housing benefit, which I presented to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—by chance, exactly one year ago today. I am pleased that many of the other things that local agencies, tenants and councillors in my constituency asked for or suggested in that manifesto are included in the proposals that we are debating.

However, the special needs of our young people need to be recognised by further steps in relation to their right to housing benefit. I do not argue that that should be by further shifts in the definition of their entitlement, but by an ending of the system that discriminates against the under-25-year-olds.