housing benefit Articles

For a government desperate for power, giving free cash to individuals is a giveaway that’s hard to beat. This is what Chancellor George Osborne did with the Help to Buy scheme aimed at helping people buy a new home with a government-backed mortgage. Parliament’s...

We now know the second line on Labour’s 2015 pledge card: long-term tenancies and stable rents for private sector housing tenants will follow Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices. This is a bold policy offer that will resonate powerfully with nine million...

Welcome to the Department for Work and Pensions. Your new department spends more public money than we spend on the police, schools, hospitals, railways and international development combined. Nearly 20 per cent of government expenditure is spent on benefits, excluding...

A fiercely political chancellor, George Osborne has long been a better reader of the opinion polls than steward of the nation’s economy. Unsurprisingly, he has homed in on public perceptions that Labour cannot be trusted to run the economy in general, and control...