Welfare Reform Bill

Of course people on lower incomes can receive housing benefit, but I am not aware that it is paid to families earning £35,000 a year. Surely that is the point. We are setting a dividing line. The Opposition say that they agree with the principle of a cap, but they have been an unedifying sight in the past few weeks. Labour has said one thing one day and another the next. Let us take the example of the former Minister and now Opposition spokesman in the House of Lords, Lord McKenzie. On Second Reading, he described the cap as an ““arbitrary measure””. On Report, however, he said that he was in favour of a benefit cap. Then bizarrely, no doubt at the instigation of the shadow Secretary of State, he tabled an amendment that was officially judged to be a wrecking amendment. When the vote on it was lost, the Opposition decided that they would support the exclusion of child benefit, and the new clause that they tabled effectively stated that they believed £26,000 a year was not enough. Of course, if child benefit were excluded from the cap, a household in work would have to earn a gross salary of around £40,000 a year to receive as much as a household with four children would get in benefits.