Working it out
Posted: August 5, 2014 Filed under: Housing benefit, Labour market | Tags: Rachel Reeves 1 CommentAs Labour and the Conservatives renew hostilities about the housing benefit bill, which of them will do something about it?
In the latest round of Labour’s The Choice summer offensive, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves released figures from the House of Commons Library showing that the total bill is set to rise to £27 billion by 2018/19.
Within that, she highlighted the soaring number of claims by people in work from 617,000 at the last election to 962,000 now and 1.2 million by 2018/19. That doubling in working claims will cost a total of £12.9 billion or £488 for every household in Britain between 2010/11 and 2018/19.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 
Pension Credit ends with the Flat Rate Pension. Current claimants will keep Pension Credit, but Housing Benefit will be merged within it for pensioners.
Housewives and widows will get no state pension, therefore no pension credit (savings) to those born from 1953, and the poorest workers including men born from 1951 will get no state pension at all.
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
The welfare state is in the process of ending.