Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith was last week widely reported to have held meetings with junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, London Mayor Boris Johnson and local authority chiefs to consider whether his proposed cap on housing benefit to £400 a week should be reconsidered.
But Downing Street and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the Government is standing firm on the proposals – which it considers fair and sensible – despite warnings from Lib Dem deputy leader
Simon Hughes that the bill will not be supported by his party’s rank and file without amendments.
Mr Hughes, who represents one of London’s poorest constituencies, said he and fellow party members were unhappy about housing benefit being cut by 10 per cent from 2013 for anyone on the Jobseeker’s Allowance for a year.
“My message to the Government is: ‘I don’t think you will get parliamentary approval for your current plans’. I think the Government understands there has to be negotiations”, he said.
Some London local authorities have told Mr Duncan Smith that they have block booked bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Hastings, Reading, Luton and other towns outside the capital because up to 200,000 people from 82,000 families will no longer be able to afford to stay in private rented housing if housing benefit is capped.
Earlier this month, Chancellor George Osborne announced that from next April housing benefit will be capped at £400 a week for a four-bedroom house, £340 for a three-bedroom home, £290 for a two-bedroom property and £250 for a one-bedroom property.
Mr Clegg, who angrily rounded on MPs such as Chris Bryant and Jon Cruddas for accusing him of “social cleansing”, said it simply was not fair that jobless households had homes rented for them in areas where working families and private tenants could not afford to live.
The cap on family homes will still be worth £21,000 a year, he said.
“Something has gone seriously wrong with a housing benefit system that has more than doubled in recent years, from £10 billion to £21 billion, and has locked many people into long-term dependency. It has not created incentives to work or incentives for house builders to build more affordable homes.
“We plan to increase capital investment in house building, reform housing benefit, and build up to 400,000 affordable homes over the coming decade”, said Mr Clegg.
Mr Cruddas, whose Dagenham and Rainham constituency has a large proportion of social housing, called the cap “an exercise in social and economic cleansing tantamount to cleansing the poor out of rich areas – a brutal piece of social engineering.”
Mr Bryant, Labour’s shadow Justice spokesman, told MPs that forcing 200,000 people of major metropolitan areas “will turn London into Paris. with the poor consigned to the outer ring”.
