Government figures came from website
Figures used by the government to claim private landlords are driving up housing benefit bills came from a property website, it has emerged.
During a debate on housing benefit reform in Parliament last week, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said data from the Office for National Statistics showed private rents were falling at a time when local housing allowance rates were climbing.
However the Department for Work and Pensions has now said the figures came from website findaproperty.com, rather than the official source.
Mr Duncan Smith told the House of Commons: ‘We now know that, according to the Office for National Statistics, the private marketplace in housing fell by around 5 per cent last year. At the same time, LHA rates had risen by 3 per cent. There is thus a 7 per cent gap with what is going on in the marketplace.’
The figures are central to the government’s claim that private landlords took advantage of the Labour government’s local housing allowance to increase their rates, helping to push housing benefit towards its current £21 billion annual cost.
Rival politicians, and landlords, claim the rising housing benefit bill has instead been driven by increasing demand, and that cutting payments will cause the most vulnerable in society to suffer.
Mr Duncan Smith said Labour ‘ended up allowing LHA to rocket to provide landlords with excess amounts of money for providing housing that would have cost less’.
He said: ‘What we want to do, by working with councils, is to drive those rents back down. The purpose of these changes is to give a real impetus to getting the rents down to make affordable housing more available in some areas.’
Inside Housing is running a campaign, What’s the Benefit?, calling on the government of find fairer ways to reduce the housing benefit bill
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 17/11/2010 9:55 am
What exactly is this article trying to convey?
I have no doubt that private landlords would try to obtain the highest returns possible from their properties, so if tenants on housing benefits deliver higher returns than private tenants, they would seek to take tenants on benefits to get the greater income. That is how the free market works!!! Why should anyone be surprised by this?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Bernard Townroe | 17/11/2010 9:56 am
'Lies, damned lies and Coalition statistics'? I thought they came from some bloke down the pub, that or the Daily Mail. That seems to be the basis for policy-making these days.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17/11/2010 10:48 am
Bernard Townroe
You where right the website, the cons got it from is owned by the company which prints the Daily Mail.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Joe Halewood | 17/11/2010 1:03 pm
What this article does convey is that IDS has misled Parliament, however inadvertantly.
It also conveys that IDS is basing government policy on inaccurate figures and using that premise to justify a political point that cannot hold.
It is also the same IDS who stated that the 10% cut will not affect anyone as all will be on workfare as IDS stated in the debate, yet he would not answer why the Red Book states it would achieve a £110m yearly saving!!
In summary and very succinctly, the word of IDS is not factual but rather politically expedient and cannot be trusted.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 17/11/2010 2:11 pm
In other words he is like 99.9% of politicians.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment