Labour’s Stephen Timms, speaking on Radio 4 yesterday, criticised the controversial policy, under which benefit claimants in social housing of working age with spare rooms will have their benefit cut from 1 April.
Mr Timms said: ‘We have argued for the last two years that it would be fine to apply the penalty where people have refused to take smaller accommodation, but to penalise people when there’s nowhere smaller to move to is perverse.’
A London council is considering shipping tenants that'll be hit by the coming benefit cuts as far away as Leicester and Birmingham.
Camden Council's Tory leader, Andrew Mennear, has backed the plan, saying that "London's not everything. There is a life outside of London".
A flagship Conservative council is housing families in hotels costing more than £1,000 a week because it cannot find alternative accommodation.
Figures released by Westminster Council show it has used six hotels where a room for a week costs more than £1,000, with the most expensive, the Royal Eagle Hotel, costing £1,540.
Liberal Democrat peers have called for there to be no fresh welfare cuts before the next general election.
Peers yesterday debated the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill, which will cap increases in a number of benefits at 1 per cent rather than the level of inflation as is currently the case.
'Vulnerable' claimants will get personalised help with their Universal Credit claims, and some may even continue to see their housing benefits paid directly to their landlords, ministers have confirmed today.
Split payments between different household members could also be considered.
Plans to cut housing benefit from households if a young adult member of the family is seeking work could increase homelessness, charities have warned.
Government proposals being voted on today could result in an £800 annual cut from housing benefit paid to parents or guardians with a young person aged under 25 who is living at home and seeking work. Current rules make a deduction only if the young person is in employment.
For the first time since the 1960's there are more people in England renting from private landlords than from councils or housing associations.
The English Housing Survey for 2011-12 shows that the rising number of private tenants, 3.84 million, outnumbered the 3.8 million in social housing.
The number of households with children in the private rented sector has increased by 103 per cent in the past 10 years, according to a report from a research charity.
Families with children in higher income households were the group with the greatest proportional rise in the Building and Social Housing Foundation’s analysis of data from a variety of sources.
The boss of a collapsed letting agency which lost £1.2m of money belonging to over 300 soldiers, including those serving in Afghanistan, has been disqualified for nine years.
Paul Smith, 47, director of Blue Force Property, a letting agency in Hornchurch, Essex, was disqualified following an investigation by the Insolvency Service.
The four boroughs forced to trial a £500-a-week benefit cap will spend their whole share of an emergency hardship fund within five months unless they move people to cheaper areas or obtain more funding.
Research by London Councils for Inside Housing reveals the four London boroughs unexpectedly having to trial the government’s £26,000-a-year benefit cap could spend their share of the pot before their peers are affected at all.