EXCLUSIVE: What about those who aren’t pulling a housing benefit scam?

Most sensible taxpayers think Britain’s current housing benefit costs to be a terrific scam. In the last five years the bill has risen by 25 percent. We now pay £21billion each year, a good chunk of which flows private landlords turning a healthy profit from the state’s responsibility to the poor. We all know by now that a slew of reforms designed to cut the bill by at least £2bn will stop the indefensible abuses of taxpayers’ money like this and this. That’s why Danny Alexander, among others, claims that the coalition must be ‘brave’ on housing benefit.

But cast aside the most extreme exploiters of the system and ask what happens to the rest. The effects of the reform will to be much more widespread. Here is a little more detail on some figures I refer to in this week’s Spectator which give the best possible estimates of what the post-2011 benefit landscape will look like.