Why Mike Penning can afford to be so aggressive about the benefit cap

What a combative interviewee Mike Penning made on the Today programme. The new work and pensions minister clearly felt that given the benefit cap is the most popular policy pollsters have touched in a long while (73% support the cap in principle), he could take the presenters and the Chartered Institute of Housing, which criticises the policy in a report today, to task in the most direct way possible. ‘I’m really disappointed,’ he said, adding that the work was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and scolding the BBC for even reporting it:

‘I’m really disappointed with the work that’s been done there because it’s fundamentally flawed, and actually disappointed again with the BBC’s reporting of it this morning. Interestingly enough, only the BBC and the Guardian bothered to call us about this because the research is flawed. It doesn’t take into consideration the 16,500, at least, people that were contacted by JobCentre Plus before we brought this programme in.’