Clause 33
Welfare Reform Bill
4:45 pm
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
Once again, I hope I can allay concerns of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey as expressed in the amendment. Clause 33 establishes a gateway, enabling the Secretary of State to require rent officers to pass information to him or to a person providing services to him, for various specified purposes, including social security purposes. The information is already being provided under existing powers, but the Secretary of State can only request the information.
Taking forward legislation to facilitate the local housing allowance roll-out has provided a suitable opportunity to enable the Secretary of State to require rent officers to provide him with information in a manner and form that is useful to him. The information will include details such as how many determinations rent officers have made and what proportion of these have meant that housing benefit has been restricted. In future, it will also include information about the local housing allowance rates and the broad rental market rates.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked what personal information would be transferred, and I can assure him that we do not envisage that personal information would be transferred through the proposed gateway. Analysts tend to make broad assumptions based on their analysis, and that detail is not necessarily appropriate.
May I also answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)? I appreciate that there is some concern about the transparency of the rent officers’ deliberations and I hope that in the last debate I highlighted the fact that there is a great deal of market evidence and information to be gathered, including that from professional contacts and letting agencies. It is difficult to see whether that information could be published in full because there would be potentially serious consequences. For example, the rates might be seen as an indicator of a customer’s housing benefit entitlement, and assumptions that would be very misleading to customers could be drawn from the unexpurgated information. Dare I say it, it could also encourage landlords to increase rents and we must be careful that housing benefit and local housing allowance do not start to lead the market in determining what the rent could be. If landlords increase rents, that could increase the shortfalls to the customer.
The average data for each local authority is published in the Rent Service’s annual valuation report. Concerns were raised by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee relating to data transparency, and my hon. Friend the Minister and I will look at the comments that have been made to see whether there is anything else we can say or do that will give comfort to hon. Members on the issue.
As with all benefit information that the Department holds, its use will be strictly governed and controlled. The information will be accessible, as now, only to certain officials of the Department and then only on an “if required” basis. Each time the information is accessed, the access has to be justified by a business case showing that it is essential for the effective running of the Department. The business case also has to show that Data Protection Act and European convention on human rights issues have been carefully considered. The information is essential to our ability to monitor the impact of our policies on all DWP benefits, but it is done within a framework of safeguards. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw the amendment.