To think that MP's should have their wages capped at £500 a week?

[ValarMorghulis]

No access to expenses as that is a perfectly acceptable amount to live on apparently.

They are of course usually managing a hand span big enough to house fingers in pies elsewhere so have additional income anyway.

I just find it infuriating that they are pushing through the £26k limit to benefits despite knowing that it will push thousands into poverty and homelessness, yet they recently voted to award themselves £20k payrises.

even a one bedroom property gives rise to £13,000 in HB.

If they want to be fair they need to address the rents as a seperate issue, and then look at capping what is left over to be just under what you would get for a minimum wage plus any benefits (WTC/CTC/CB) so that a job would pay better. Of course other benefits such as free school dinners/school trips/access to social fund would need to be taken into account as well, but it would certainly make things seem fairer to those who are working.

"The majority of people who receive benefits do work. So commuting is a consideration and moving not always the best option."

Surely if someone works then they have their own income on top of any benefits they recieve. Their total income would be what the earn + housing benefits. If some earns money then they would be paying some of their rent.

Clearly I'm missing something. I am confused. A lots of families have a total income of a lot less than 26K and they don't get masses of benefits.

I am in favour of supporting people to work, but at what point does it start to get silly? Ie. paying the housing and childcare costs for two children to allow someone to do a minimum wage cleaning job in London. I think a benefits cap is fair.

I think that private companies should be allowed to set the pay levels of their own workers. There is already a minimum wage and the tax system redistrutes wealth to a certain extent.

Some posters have clearly never worked or prehaps have worked in la la land.

"How come it's only benefit claimants who can pick and choose where they live? The rest of the country are condemned to living only in houses that they can afford".

So private landlords must be queuing up to take on unemployed tenants! Benefit claimants can PICK AND CHOOSE which luxury houses they want to live in and WE have to pay for it!

Err, except the terms and conditions of their mortgages FORBID landlords from taking on unemployed tenants. End Of.

And - the terms and conditions of their mortgages also insist that they charge rent at a certain percentage above repayment costs, even for tenants in work, which artificially inflates the rental market, because ALL the landlords out there are doing the same thing.

By the way, it isn't just London where ludicrous rents are charged. In Bath loads of former council houses are rented out, not to the student population, but to University lecturers and hospital doctors. The cheapest 1 bed flats in the city are £500 per month. And the city has some of the most deprived wards in the country. Average wages are less than £20,000 pa.

"as it's ridiculous what some get paid for doing work which is really no harder than being a SAHM as a single parent to an under-5 or an older disabled child (who would be affected by the benefits cap)."

Now that's just silly. I've done the caring for under 5s and a massively disabled child and it was a breeze compared to doing my job as a divorce lawyer (which I did p/t whilst doing all the above).

So my dh, who works 80 plus hours a week, all over the world, with a team of people of over 500, should get paid the same as a SAHM? wake up.

In Belfast the alloance is from £83 for a 1 bed place to £123.00 per week for a 4bed dwelling. Even here that is not going to pay the rental prices asked in the private sector, so if you are on benefits, the roof over your head costs. Another problem with private landlords is that many do not like tenancies to go on longer than 2 years, forcing people to move and undermining communities.

reallytired what's confusing?

Housing benefit is means-tested. Each council sets a cap for how much they will pay for each type of housing, and then you get a percentage of that depending on your income.

Some people get all their rent paid but I think for most it's more of a top-up.

My point is that HB money isn't just sitting around in your bank account. It comes in, it goes right out to pay the landlord.

If we could do something about the astronomical rents which are only enriching landlords then we would need to pay less in HB and the government could save money.

And yes, the idea that HB claimants can pick and choose their property is laughable. So many landlords refuse HB and have very high salary requirements.

reallytired can I highlight this please?

I am in favour of supporting people to work, but at what point does it start to get silly? Ie. paying the housing and childcare costs for two children to allow someone to do a minimum wage cleaning job in London. I think a benefits cap is fair.

So what do you propose? If the mother stops working she will lose all benefit entitlement. If she continues working but has a cap, she will probably be working at a loss and will end up going hungry and losing her home. Unless we can make childcare free and subsidise commuting, in some areas it is always going to be more cost-effective to let people live on benefits rather than get them working. It's crazy but childcare, housing and commuting costs are responsible for that, not the claimant who can't win whether she works or not.

NettleTea in my area (god I feel like I'm repeating this on every thread) the LHA cap is £400 pcm for a three-bed house. They are available but in tiny numbers, meaning that along with the dearth of social housing there are too many people chasing not enough houses. This means people on benefits are having to top up their rents, which will result in many of them getting into arrears and facing eviction or sacrificing heating and food instead.

It kind of illustrates where most of this money is actually going - into the pockets of the landlords.

No, most landlords will have mortgages, insurance, certificates, repairs and possible management fees to pay for. They'll need to pay tax on any profits and of course cover the void periods where they still have all the bills but no income.

They way some people prattle on about evil landlords you'd think they believe it's 100% profit all the way. Most will be lucky to make a decent return at all and all it needs is one tenant from hell and you can kiss any profits at all goodbye.

Does anyone know what is the AVERAGE income for a household in which no-one works?

The way it comes across on the news, is that everyone is getting £26k cash, which is obviously nonsense.
[goes off to google, may be some time]

MPs don't run the country. Some do, but MPS actually are supposed to represent their consituencies and get a decent salary to cover it. Plus expenses.

The debate about the welfare reforms is a different matter IMO. Change is needed because it's so complicated.

Well this is interesting (inspired by choccy's google quest )

From poverty.org.uk

Sickness or disability is overwhelmingly the single most important reason why working-age people claim out-of-work benefits over a long period. Three-quarters of working-age people ? 2 million people ? receiving an out-of-work benefit for two years or more are classified as sick or disabled.

By contrast, the number of long-term recipients of out-of-work benefits who are not sick or disabled has fallen over the last decade. In particular, the number who are long-term unemployed has fallen sharply, from 140,000 in February 2000 to 60,000 in February 2010.

So basically, this whole firestorm about benefit reform, and all the nastiness it's brought out, is based on the idea that there's a gazillion people lying around not working when they could be. But it's 60,000 people! Yes, a decent amount, but 1 percent of the population.

Is there really no better way to target that 1 percent than to screw around with benefits for everyone?

There are many changes to benefits. This particular one is designed to 'screw around' with that 1% (actually it's lower 0.26%) of the population who do get more than £26,000 a year on benefits. If you multiply 67,000 x £26,000 that's a LOT of money being spent on a very very few families. Is it fair on both the taxpayer and every other family struggling to make ends meet (on benefits or not) that a few should take up so much of our dwindling resources?

I don't think so.

Buy to let LLs are getting FREE houses from you taxes via HB payments. Why do the claimants anger you and not the landlords? Not to mention the fact that the sheer number of buy to lets are pushing up housing prices for everyone and many of them are ex council stock, so have also added to the depletion of affordable social housing.

Cap rents at a fair rate. So fucking what if the LLs need to get 120% of their mortgage in rent? If they cannot find someone who can pay that they will have to sell. More houses on the market = cheaper house prices. The councils could use some of the money they save to buy back some of their council stock.

And before anyone starts, yes, I know it will never be that simple, but it would be damn sight fairer than capping benefits and would still solve the problem of the rising HB costs.

niceguy - while many landlords may struggle to make a profit out of renting, at the end of it they will own a property outright - a tangible asset.

I'm no communist, but I think it's a sad state of affairs when one person's financial asset is more important than anyone else's need to maintain a roof over their head at a reasonable price.

choccy - having a play on entitledto.com has shown me that if you take HB and council tax credit out of the equation, a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 school age children) completely dependent on benefits will get a little under £13000 per year.

£26,000 a year (after tax) is more than 75% of the population get.

The average (mean) wage is £26,000 (before tax) but that is skewed by millionaires and 65% of the country earn less than that.

The median wage - the one where half the country earn above and half earn below is £18,500

IMHO that is where the benefits cap should be.
Child benefit should be excluded - as it is currently not means tested - but should be limited to 4 children.
And the rule that children in socially funded housing should not have to share bedrooms needs to be abolished PDQ

Where is this rule that children in socially funded (I take it you mean council) housing should not have to share bedrooms? First I've heard of it. I'm not going to get drawn into the rest of the debate, but this is the first time I've heard that one.

Spike that is at current levels though and will be reduced come April and every year thereafter, then significantly reduced come the introduction of Universal Credit. And of course the HB cap means that some families may be using at least 20% of that income as top-up for rent, etc.

Don't assume that the 2-parent model I've given you is composed of people who've never had a job and don't want one.

Many will be desperate for a job and did have a job til the recession took it from them. Should they be penalised for it? It makes more economic sense to support people to continue their normal lifestyle for the short-term until they can get back on their feet, rather than taking it all away so they lose their home and need rehousing, etc. That actually costs more money.

Some will be unable to work because they are caring for other members of the family. That's a valuable role that deserves a decent standard of living.

Single people with no children claiming benefits will get £64 per week to live off, so nowhere near that amount.

Single mothers will have to juggle working with childcare, which will eat into their income even if they qualify for help (the rate is reduced from 70% as soon as you start earning more than NMW). If they live on benefits they are 2x more likely than others to be living in poverty.

I wouldn't deny that there are very many working poor who have less income than that after paying their rent. It is true that some people on benefits have more money than those who work.

I still wouldn't want to change places with them though. They have to deal with the insecurity of knowing it could all be taken away at any time and other people's low opinion of them. For some people, that's as good as it's ever going to get, while for those in work there is always the opportunity for things improving, however unlikely it may seem at the time.

The truth is it's hard whether you're working poor or benefit poor. Both have to struggle and shouldn't be fighting over the scraps but uniting and fighting for a better redistribution of wealth and a fairer society.

It just cannot be right that last year the richest section of society saw their salaries rise 18x more than those at the bottom. It cannot be right that the top 10% of the country own 90% of it's assets. It cannot be right that the divide between rich and poor (and I include most working people in this) is bigger now that at any time in the last 40 years.

Cutting benefits may give the working poor or even the squeezed middle short term satisfaction that someone is suffering more than they are, but it won't improve their own lives. Taxation won't be cut for them and housing/commuting/childcare costs will continue to rise because the rich aren't affected by these things and therefore will not have the drive to bring them down - indeed in some cases they will fight to increase prices since housing and commuting generate a lot of wealth for those who own them.

somethingwillturnup
www.westminster.gov.uk/services/housing/choicebasedlettings/afterviewing/permanentha/rpbeds/
and its the same on other local authority websites

That doesn't say every child is entitled to their own room.

read carefully
The main applicant must have a double bedroom even if they are a single parent.
Two same sex children can share a room up to the age of 13 after which time they are entitled to own room.
Two children of the opposite sex can share up to the age of 5 after which time they are entitled to their own room.

mixed sex no sharing after 5
single sex no sharing in teens
paid for by us
and yet if I had a mortgage and lots of kids they would just have to live with bunk beds

Sing it, sunshine

Agree with every word

Niceguy I think the 1% figure refers to the number of long term unemployed. Where did your figure of 67,000 in receipt of benefits more than 26k come from?

Dione, those rates look fine for Belfast. I just looked on propertynews and there are places available in both of the price ranges you gave. More 4 beds than 1 beds tbh but they're still there.