Baroness Pinnock (LD)

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Thornhill set out the case for the Government to rethink their decision to freeze local housing allowance. She set it out superbly, with all the consequences that will occur as a result of a further year’s freeze on local housing allowance. I want to paint a picture of what that means to families in the small town in Yorkshire where I live and where I am an elected councillor. You would not say that where I live is the richest of places on the planet; all the information indicates that some parts of my town are in the bottom 10% of the deprivation scores and most of the town is between 30% and 40% in the deprivation scores. That is the general picture of the town. It is a Victorian town with lots of Victorian terraces, two-up, two-downs, some back-to-backs—if anybody in London knows what that means—and the sort of places that open straight on to the street. I looked this afternoon at a private-rented two-bed property—that means a two-up, two-down—and it is £750 per calendar month, or £173.05 per week. What is the local housing allowance for that part of Kirklees Council? It is £120.82. What that means is that families are having to find £50 a week extra. If they qualify for LHA, they are already not well off, and they are having to find £50 a week for that property. That is the cheapest I could find. I found another one, also a terrace, slightly larger but still a two-bed, and the rent is £825 a month, or £190 a week, so there will be a much bigger difference. I understand where the Government are coming from, because the housing benefit bill has zoomed upwards. What my noble friend and I are arguing is that it needs a total rethink. I know that the Minister would not want what I have just described to be the case, and that equally, the country cannot keep spending billions of pounds on housing benefit. Some of us round this table in the Grand Committee know that this is one of the consequences of right to buy. If you live in a council property or a housing association property, the difference will not be as high, and most council house rents match local housing allowance. That is the background problem. How we solve it, I do not know, but the Government need to put their mind to it.