I am not resiling from the numbers. Welfare spending has gone up over this Parliament, but it has done so at the lowest rate since the creation of the welfare state. The reforms that we have made to various welfare policies will have saved £50 billion over this Parliament compared with what would have happened if we had not made those reforms, and I think that that is sensible.
We have dealt with some of the issues that we inherited from the Labour party, and our changes are largely supported by the public. One such change is the benefit cap, and public support for that is very clear. The Opposition are not so enthusiastic about it, but 73% of the public support it and 77% of them agree that it is fair that no out-of-work household should get more than the average working household. In terms of fairness, that seems a pretty unremarkable policy, and it is one that we support even if the Labour party is unenthusiastic about it.
Our reforms to housing benefit, including the removal of the spare room subsidy, are dealing with some of the issues relating to using the housing stock more efficiently and dealing with overcrowding. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) drew our attention to overcrowding, and to the fact that not all local authorities are good at dealing with situations in which smaller families want to move to a smaller property while other properties are overcrowded. He made a sensible point.