Actividades con perspectiva de género por distritos

11.35 It is essential that Housing Benefit actively supports the transition into work. This means a fast, efficient, integrated service where the customer only has to give information once. It means ensuring claimants understand what benefits they are entitled to when they go into work. And it means getting benefit to claimants quickly so they are not worried about arrears. We have already begun to tackle these issues.

11.36 Our tax and benefit reforms are ensuring that work pays. We have introduced the first national minimum wage. And from October 1999 we have introduced the new Working Families’ Tax Credit. This has reduced the number of claimants with very high marginal deduction rates (the rate at which tax and benefits reduce any increase in earnings). The lower rate at which Working Families’ Tax Credit is reduced as income rises (the taper), reduces marginal deduction rates for claimants who were previously on Family Credit. And the combination of this shallower taper and the more generous threshold has raised some claimants’ incomes to a level which moves them off the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit tapers. We estimate that the introduction of Working Families’ Tax Credit will move about 90,000 claimants off Housing Benefit in 2000/2001.

11.37 We are getting people back to work – more than 250,000 people have already been helped to get jobs through the New Deal.

11.38 The ONE service is developing a new approach to how we provide support for the working age group. ONE aims to change the culture of welfare by actively helping people to

become more independent and making the benefit system more integrated and more efficient. ONE is operated by a partnership of Employment Service, Benefits Agency and the local authorities in each pilot area. In addition, private and voluntary sector

organisations are involved in developing innovative and flexible ways of delivering the ONE service. It offers a single entry point to the benefit system for all working age clients – where they may be able to deal with all their employment and benefit needs in one place and through a single personal adviser.

TAKING THIS FORWARD

11.39 During 2001/2 we will establish a brand new agency with a clear focus on work. This will draw together the Employment Service and parts of the Benefits Agency which support people of working age. The ONE service will provide the template for establishing the new organisation. It will deliver a single, integrated service to benefit claimants of working age, and employers. The new agency will operate a personal advisory service as in the New Deal and the ONE pilots. It will provide a better and more responsive benefits service to all people of working age, tailored to individual needs. The new agency will not take over administration of Housing Benefit, but – as in the current ONE pilots – where the ONE service is operating we would expect the new agency to work in partnership with Local Authorities to provide access to these benefits through ONE.

11.40 The transition from unemployment to work can be a particularly difficult time for many people. Therefore we must make this transition as simple and straightforward as possible. One way of improving the transition which we announced in the Budget is reform of the Housing Benefit Extended Payment scheme from April 2001.

11.41 Currently, many claimants who have recently returned to work are entitled to their Housing Benefit in payment at the full rate for 4 weeks, to help them through this period. However the policy intention gets thwarted by the delivery. Housing Benefit recipients are given just 7 days from the day after Income Support or Jobseeker’s Allowance ceases to make a claim for this extra help. By making payments more automatic we will improve the effectiveness of this policy. This simplified access to Extended Payments linked with the existing fast-tracking of claims for in-work Housing Benefit (which should make sure that in-work claims are assessed before the Extended Payment finishes), will make a significant contribution to ensuring that people moving into low paid work do not face lengthy periods without Housing Benefit – a concern that was raised in the report of the Policy Action Team on Jobs.

11.42 The improvements we are making and propose to make to the delivery of Housing Benefit will reduce the barriers to work. In addition there are a number of other options for improving incentives to work which merit further consideration.

11.43 A simple and understandable way of increasing the incentive to work is to increase the income difference between income in work and out of work. For tenants on low earnings, one option is to increase earnings disregards – that is, the amount that can be earned before Housing Benefit is reduced. However, the costs of increasing earnings disregards can be high. Increasing earnings disregards also brings more people on to Housing Benefit, and for this group it will reduce the amount of income they receive for any further increase in earnings (as for an extra £1 earned they will lose both through tax and reduced Housing Benefit).

11.44 Alternative options to consider might target increased disregards more effectively by setting higher disregards for certain groups of people or in more deprived areas of the country, for example areas with higher unemployment (perhaps working alongside initiatives such as Employment Zones, Social Inclusion Partnerships or New Deal for Communities). We announced in the Budget our intention to raise earnings disregards for carers and people with disabilities from £15 to £20 to reward those who are able to do some form of paid work. However, introducing different schemes for different locations risks complicating the nationwide Housing Benefit system, and its effects on encouraging people into work in these areas are not clear.

11.45 Another option to improve incentives to work for lone parents in particular that has been advocated is to increase the Housing Benefit disregard for maintenance payments received. This would give lone parents an additional incentive to work. But the effect on work incentives is not as simple nor as transparent as increasing earnings disregards.

11.46 The rate at which Housing Benefit is withdrawn as earnings rise can also affect incentives to work. Housing Benefit is withdrawn as income rises at a rate of 65p for every extra £1 (the Housing Benefit taper). It is argued that the high overall marginal deduction rate can make it unattractive to work or earn more. But, the overall effects of reducing the rate at which Housing Benefit is taken away as income rises either by lowering the taper or integrating housing support within the tax credit system need to be considered with care. The costs of reducing the taper can be considerable, for what might be a marginal effect on work incentives. We have already made significant progress in this area by introducing Working Families’ Tax Credit.

11.47 A stable home provides a secure foundation from which to find work, and Housing Benefit should help provide this environment. A number of commentators believe that the Single Room Rent restriction (which limits the amount of rent that Housing Benefit will meet for people under 25 years of age) is making it difficult for young single people to access and maintain accommodation. For example, critics say that landlords are refusing to rent to under 25s.

11.48 To meet our objectives for welfare reform, and for ending rough sleeping, we must make sure that young people have access to accommodation, so that they can concentrate on finding work. But it is important to balance this against our aim of making sure that the benefit system does not provide out of work young adults with better housing than their working peers could attain. One option to consider is to broaden the definition of the Single Room Rent so that a range of rents for shared accommodation is used (eg. shared houses, flats and bedsits) instead of the current restrictive one room non-self contained accommodation definition. By doing this the rent that Housing Benefit would pay might better reflect the type of shared accommodation which is available for rent in the private sector. It might help young people obtain and maintain accommodation which can give them a secure base for job search and job security.

11.49 In summary, this Government inherited a fragmented, confused and failing Housing Benefit system. Since we came to office we have received many representations on how to improve Housing Benefit. Clearly in this Chapter we cannot respond to every point made, but we have considered them with care in the development of our proposals for Housing Benefit. Acting on just some of the changes discussed in this section of the Green Paper would improve the system as it exists, reducing the levels of fraud and error and improving the value for money of the scheme for taxpayers. At the same time we need to keep expenditure under control. We welcome your views.

Longer term aims for supporting tenants on