I support the two Motions moved by my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth and that moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The noble Lord, Lord Best, anticipates a significant statement from the Minister, and I look forward to that as well. If it were to signify the withdrawal of these orders at the twelfth hour, the Minister would become an even greater national treasure than that described by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, but I do not hold my breath.

My noble friend was right to signify that he was not going to press his Motions. In many ways, it would be good to test the view of the House to see if we could stop these orders in their tracks, but I think it has helped the tenor of our debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has said. Of course, if we did defeat the orders, we would have to carve out, perhaps through the welfare reform Bill, those two parts of the order that we do support, as my noble friend has said: the provisions relating to carers and an additional room being allowed, and the removal of the £15 excess. We sought to do this before the election, and some noble Lords may recall that one party represented here was quite opposed to that. I think it is right now to remove that excess.

Others have explored the thrust of these orders. The most damaging are the setting of the local housing allowance at the 30th percentile of rents in each broad rental market area and the introduction of absolute caps relating to the number of bedrooms in a property. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked whether the Minister could say what proportion of the rental market is in fact available to housing benefit claimants. I understand that the 30th percentile would mean, at least on day one, that 30 per cent of rents would potentially be affordable. It does not mean that 30 per cent would be available, and once we move to uprating by CPI, not even that first proposition would hold true.

Who bears the cost of the benefit savings is at the heart of the debate we are having. Will it fall wholly or mainly on landlords or on tenants who are, by definition, the poor? In considering these matters, we need to be mindful that they are just part of a package of measures aimed at cutting the cost of housing benefit. Still to come are increases in non-dependant deductions, the uprating of LHAs by CPI rather than by actual movements of rents, the docking of 10 per cent for those on JSA for more than 12 months and the extension of the single room rate for individuals up to the age of 35.

The need to tackle the budget deficit is acknowledged, which is why we accept and, indeed, initiated the withdrawal of the £15 excess, but the speed and depth of the cuts proposed is not something we support, as my noble friend has explained. The distribution of the cuts, which the IFS analyses will mean that by 2013-14 there will be an increase in absolute poverty by 300,000 children and 200,000 working-age parents, largely driven by the housing benefit cuts, is simply not acceptable. The DWP issued an impact assessment in November, together with an equality impact assessment. My noble friend Lady Sherlock spoke with some passion about this. The DWP suggests that it cannot assess the behavioural effects of the housing benefit proposals, although it provided an assessment on the assumption that housing choices on rent levels would be unaffected. As we have heard, it estimated that households would lose £12 a week on average, but declared itself unable to estimate the number of households that may move. In contrast, Shelter estimated that 68,000 to 134,000 would move nationally, and the GLA estimated that some 9,000 households may need to move in London.

In the context of our debates, £12 is sometimes not seen as a meaningful figure, but the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford brought us down to earth on that, as did my noble friend Lady Sherlock who said that it is better to talk of terms of a pair of shoes or enough food on the table. Excluding the removal of the £15 a week excess, the impact assessment still shows that 68 per cent of LHA claimant households will lose on average £10 a week and that losses for those in five-bedroom accommodation will average £74 a week.

Another consequence the impact assessment acknowledges but does not quantify is the prospect of increased homelessness. It also acknowledges that local authorities have a duty to find school places for children moving into their area and that that can lead to increased costs and that children who experience disruption in their schooling may do less well than would otherwise be the case. It recognises that there may be additional burdens on local authorities when families move into an area requiring a care-and-support package, and for disabled people, as we have heard, the DWP states that the LHA proposals could reduce options to help independence and lead to the loss of informal carers and support networks. They are retrograde provisions indeed, as explained by my noble friend Lady Wilkins. For individuals in work, an enforced move could extend their commute to their place of work.

There is a list of probable consequences, but there is no fundamental assessment of or research into the extent to which these circumstances will arise or into how people's lives will be affected. There is just a cruel acceptance of the traumas that these proposals will visit on poor families and the damage they will inflict on them, their families and their communities. All of this has to be considered in the context of 48 per cent of people on LHA already facing shortfalls between their benefit and their rent. It is inevitable that people having to move, homelessness increasing and debt rising will become a reality. The Government assert that these matters will be mitigated principally by downward pressure on private sector rents, by transitional relief, by households choosing more appropriate accommodation, and by additional funding for discretionary payments.

Transitional relief is welcome as far as it goes, but as Steve Webb said in Another place when these orders were debated, no new resources of any magnitude are being made available. The relief extended to existing claimants is to be funded out of accelerated pain for new claimants, including those low-income families either in or out of work. How does it help with work incentives in the transition when the cost of trying employment but not succeeding could be returning to a more draconian LHA regime? The additional funding for discretionary payments is again to be welcomed, but it is a fraction of the money which these changes are to withdraw from the system. In so far as downward pressure on rents is concerned-the nub of the debate-to rest one's case on a certainty that this will happen in a comprehensive way is, on the basis of the evidence, speculative, to say the least.

What are the pressures on private sector rents? We know that in the decade to 2009, the number of households in England increased by 7 per cent or 1.3 million. This is a trend which, because of increasing longevity and changing lifestyles, is likely to continue. The dramatic fall-off in mortgage lending and the huge cuts in capital financing for social renting households will mean that the private rented sector will bear the strain for some time to come. To the extent that HB claimants do what the Government hope and focus their housing opportunities on the 30th percentile, will this not have the effect of bunching claimants around fewer properties, again potentially putting upward pressure on rents?

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee considered a range of submissions on the private rented sector's response to these reforms. The Resolution Foundation argued:

"Many low earners are already experiencing difficulties accessing the PRS [private rental sector] due to poor local supply, lack of decent accommodation and few landlords willing to let to this market. The Government's proposed changes to Local Housing Allowance will further reduce choice for low earners and may encourage landlords to stop letting to this group entirely".

The Building of Social Housing Foundation submitted on the following lines:

"As tenants' benefits payments seem even more uncertain ... the ability of private landlords to finance the acquisition and improvement of homes may be hindered. Private landlords may decide to stop renting to Housing Benefit recipients altogether if they can find alternative tenants".

The Residential Landlords Association argued:

"The shortages of available affordable accommodation, with the problems facing the owner/occupier market, are one of the reasons why the private rented sector is now such an important expanding sector".

This could mean that claimants of housing benefit will be squeezed out of the private rented market. The BPF criticised the Government's own impact assessment for failing to provide any consideration of the wider property market. It concluded:

"A significant proportion of LHA claimants, probably more than half, live in areas of high demand for housing and therefore are going to find it difficult to compete for available homes".

A study suggested:

"Landlords may be willing to accept falls in rents ... if the loss in immediate rental yield is compensated for by strong expectation of capital yield. However, many independent forecasters expect weak growth in house prices in the near future".

The Government have put a lot behind the argument that when you are a 40 per cent purchaser, you are changing the terms of trade because there is nowhere else to go. Shelter points out:

"By the Department's own estimations almost 50% of claimants make up a shortfall between what they get in payments and what they pay in rent".

The BPF, when expressing the view that downward pressure on rents would be limited, stated:

"So, it would simply be a small stone in the Atlantic. There is this huge tsunami of different people trying to get into the private rented sector at the moment".

Direct payments to landlords would lower risks to landlords and could lead to lower rents. However, it seems that this could not be delivered sustainably once the universal credit arrives. Nevertheless, adopting the best practice of some local authorities-Edinburgh was cited in the evidence-could go some way towards encouraging landlords to continue serving LHA clients.

On the one hand, the proposals recognise the range of negative consequences which will flow from the changes to LHA without a full assessment of their extent; on the other, the Government place their faith in substantial mitigation because of downward pressure on rents, which has not been demonstrated to be a probable outcome. It is time to think again.