§ Mr. David PorterTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security whether arrangements to recover rent arrears from local authority tenants by charging rent supplements to individual tenants with rent arrears in addition to their normal rent qualify for housing benefit.
§ Miss WiddecombeHousing benefit is designed to help people meet their current rent liabilities. It is clearly inappropriate that individual rent supplements levied on tenants to recover their arrears of rent, which may not originally have been met through housing benefit, should now qualify for it. I have therefore today laid before Parliament the Housing Benefit (General) Amendment Regulations 1992, in order to put beyond doubt that such supplements should not form part of eligible rent for housing benefit purposes.