Labour Fails to Force Housing Benefit Rethink

Labour MPs failed in a bid to force the government to modify its plans for housing benefit reform. A motion calling for the plans to be altered was defeated by 61 votes after a lengthy and heated debate in the House of Commons. Labour had hoped to make ministers back down on plans to cut housing benefit payments by 10 per cent for claimants who have been on jobseeker’s allowance for more than a year, and slow the pace of other reforms. During the debate, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the government will publish impact assessments into all the cuts made to housing benefit. Mr Duncan Smith told MPs that he plans to publish impact assessments on the extension of the shared room rate to those under 35 years old, the decision to link housing benefit to the consumer price index, and the 10 per cent cut. Read more on Inside Housing.