Benefit dependency, yes please

Ed Miliband decided to preach to the converted at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He asked about housing benefit. And he won the debating-society points. He had better jokes, an old line about why he asks the questions (“the clue’s in the title”) and won on the substance. David Cameron replied to repeated questions about whether it was right to cut housing benefit by 10 per cent for people who have been out of work for a year by saying that it was fair to limit housing benefit claims to £20,000 a year.

Good tactics on Miliband’s part; poor strategy. He succeeded in winding up Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, standing at the end opposite the Speaker’s chair, shouting, “Absolute rubbish!” He succeeded in dividing the left-wing of the Liberal Democrats from their colleagues on the Government benches. (Miliband had a good line about Simon Hughes looking glum and Nick Clegg glummer, and Bob Russell, the rebellious Lib Dem MP got up at the end and asked the Prime Minister to look again at the proposals.)

But I suspect Miliband conveyed the wrong message to the country, which simply cannot understand why so many billions of taxpayers’ money is poured into such a badly-designed benefit that undermines work incentives, profits landlords and keeps property prices higher than they would otherwise be.

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