Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 82 of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, entitled UK Poverty: Causes and Solutions, if he will make it his policy to scrap the housing benefit cap in favour of more fundamental reform of the housing market.

The benefit cap sets a limit on the total amount of welfare benefits that non-working households can receive.

The Government believes that it is not fair for someone on benefits to be receiving more than many people in similar circumstances who are in work and we intend to continue this approach. Since the benefit cap was introduced in 2013, people in tens of thousands of households have moved into work. The new lower cap continues to build on that success by incentivising work.

We believe that work greatly benefits people and families. Children can have their life chances and opportunities damaged as a result of living in households where no-one has worked for years and where no-one considers work is an option.

We continue to work to target services on the issues that prevent parents moving into work and cause instability in family life, to help workless families and their children overcome their problems and improve their lives.

The recent White Paper from the Department for Communities and Local Government, “Fixing Our Broken Housing Market”, offers a comprehensive approach which tackles failure at every point in the system. Its starting point is to build more homes, which will slow the rise in housing costs, so that housing is more affordable, and which will bring the cost of renting down.