Clause 27
Welfare Reform Bill
1:30 pm
John Penrose (Weston-Super-Mare, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is right. When discussing the single room rent restriction, we spoke of the difficulty of finding an accurate factual basis on which the rent officers could make decisions affecting various parts of the country. This is a similar example, but based on a different set of facts.
Another point will cause difficulties. Not only will the disabled have to find places that can be adjusted to meet their needs, but they have what may be classed a non-standard shape of household—for instance, the carer may or may not be a member of the family. That can give rise to an unusual type of family geometry when compared with the normal run of family types for which rent officers will be declaring local housing allowances.
The Under-Secretary may have started to prefigure her answer when summing up this morning in our debate on the single room rent restriction. However, I hope that she can explain a little more about how the Government plan to deal with the problem and that she can reassure us about the steps that they plan to ensure that this important and vulnerable group will be properly looked after when local housing allowances are decided.