Ashdown and Greaves on Benefit Reform

• [Jan 23] Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (Liberal Democrat): MY Lords, I feel that this debate is probably drawing to a close, and I want to address particularly the last point made by my noble friend about transitional measures. I fear that I do not agree with him.

I speak as somebody who has voted consistently with this Government for every single one of the very tough benefit reform proposals. I think that Mr Duncan Smith and my good colleague Steve Webb in the other place are doing something extremely important. They are at last reforming the welfare system root and branch. I agree with the point made by my noble friend that there is a huge prize to be gained here, namely the universal credit and genuine reform. I am strongly in favour of that, as indeed I am in favour of a benefit cap, contrary to what was said in certain broadcasts yesterday which inaccurately reported comments that I had made. It is important and I strongly favour it. But I believe that, before we vote for this, it is important-for exactly the reasons that have been given earlier-to have a look, at least in outline, at some of the transitional mechanisms.

I hope that the Minister in answering this debate will address that, not least because that was what was promised by Mr Duncan Smith in the other place. I shall quote what he said:

"We recognise that there must be transitional arrangements ... We will make sure" - this is his promise - "that families who need transitional support will receive it".-[Hansard, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 922.]

When he answers this very important debate I hope that the Minister will tell us whether those measures have been advanced and whether any proposals have been made. If they have not, surely it would have been better to consider this with at least some outline of what those measures-to fulfil a promise made by the Secretary of State himself-will be. If he cannot do that now, will he at least tell us when he will be able to bring them forward?

Like my noble friend Lady Walmsley, who spoke from our Benches a moment ago, I believe that this should be passed. But I cannot pass it without at least some sight of the Government's outline proposals for those transitional measures. If the Government cannot offer that to us now, let them at least say when those proposals will be published.

• . . Lord Greaves (Liberal Democrat): My Lords, I have not spoken in the Welfare Reform Bill debates so far and I will be brief now. On the specific issue of child benefit, the Government seem to have got it seriously wrong. What is being proposed undermines the whole principle on which child benefit-and before that, as many of us will remember, the family allowance-has been based. If the Government are going to do that, I fear that that is the beginning of a slippery slope, and they will have to explain to us very carefully why they think the basic principles no longer apply.

In illustration, I go back to the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about typical, ordinary-perhaps very ordinary-accommodation in the East End. There has been lots of fancy new development in the East End in the past decade or two, but most of it is still not regarded as being the most desirable part of London. People living in other parts of London in particular usually find themselves paying a great deal more than £350 a week for an ordinary two or perhaps three-bedroom flat. According to the paper today, for a four-bedroom house in the least salubrious part of Kingston-I did not know that such places existed, but it appears that they do-£400 a week is not unusual. That is four times what you would pay for an ordinary, perfectly decent house in my part of the world, but there you go.

If as a family whose benefits are being capped you receive £500 a week, and you are paying out £400 a week for rent, that leaves you £100 for everything else. I challenge any Members of your Lordships' House to tell us how well they would do at bringing up a family of two, three or four-or perhaps more-children, plus one or two adults in the house, on £100 a week. It can be done, and many people in many parts of the world survive on far less than that, but this country is now almost the most prosperous that it has even been, if you take away the last five years. We are still incredibly well-off. If Members of your Lordships' House think back-most of us are getting on a bit-to our childhoods and the circumstances that we were brought up in, they will see that this country is now incredibly rich and well-off. To require families to bring children up on £100 a week for everything apart from their rent is unacceptable.

When the media are encouraged, I have to say by some politicians in this country, to rant and rave about how these people are getting £26,000 a week and that everyone ought to be able to live on that-I apologise, £26,000 a year; some people are on £26,000 a week, but they are rather different-the debate really ought to start at what you have left after your rent. The state of the private housing market, and indeed rents in the public sector, is not the fault of people who have to live in these houses. There is a scandalous situation in which commercial landlords are ripping off people-indeed, they are ripping off the state, if people are getting housing benefit-by charging ludicrously high rents that are not justified by the cost of maintaining those properties but that are what the market will bear. If the Government and the rest of us want to do something about the state of the private housing market, we should look at housing policy and perhaps at the way in which the private housing market works. But that is a different issue all together. It is not the fault of the people. To try to do this-to try to force rents down or to try to regulate the markets and move people around the country by capping the benefits of the people living in those houses so that they can no longer live there-is penalising the tenants when the people who ought to be penalised are the landlords.

I have digressed a little from child benefit. I apologise for that. Child benefit, as my noble friend and others have said, has always been a non-means-tested benefit that goes as of right to families with children. It has always been paid on a per capita, per child, basis. That is a fundamental principle. The first child gets more nowadays, then each child after that gets the same, in order to assist the work of bringing up that child. To abolish child benefit, which is what is actually being done in this Bill, for people who are at the benefit cap and who are getting other benefits that take them up and beyond that cap, as is highly likely, is a fundamental attack on the whole principle of child benefit.

This ought to be resisted. Your Lordships ought to resist it, and we really ought to ask the Government very seriously to think again on this particular issue.

• . . Division on Amendment 59:Contents 252; Not-Contents 237. Amendment 59 agreed.

• Full Debate in Parliament