How Housing Benefit Caps and Rising Rents Will Squeeze London's Low Paid

Information supplied to Westminster North MP Karen Buck by pensions minister Steve Webb shows the national figure for LHA recipients who are in work had by August this year gone up by a gigantic 42% compared with the figure for May 2010 - a rise from 273,000 to 388,000. The figure, which is for the whole of Britain, is a useful reminder of two things: one, that housing benefit is indeed an in-work benefit, and not only for the unemployed; two, when the private sector rents of low-paid people increase faster than their wages, more of them become entitled to it. Except that when the government's caps start coming into effect on a large scale next year, many claimants in work will start getting less of it than before. Read more on the Guardian website.