Private landlords will pocket almost £8.5bn from the taxpayer this year through housing benefit - more than a third of the total £21.5bn bill, according to figures from the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).
In the past decade, the cost of providing housing to claimants through the private rented sector has soared by 36pc above the rate of inflation to £5,720. Other providers of social accommodation have raised their charges by just 19pc over inflation to £3,991. Lord Freud said: "This confirms what we have long suspected, that some unscrupulous landlords are charging benefit claimants over the odds to make a quick buck at the expense of the taxpayer."
This amounts to nearly to a £4 billion plundering by the private sector of public funds. To put that into perspective, thats almost the entire amount IDS wants to save by removing incapacity to work benefit from the sick and disabled.
I guess we are "all in this together", unless of course "we" are private landlords and bankers.
Or the tax avoiders and evaders who trouser £120 billion a year in uncollected tax. To put that in context, thats nearly the entire national defecit! On the bright side the ConDems are proposing to tighten up some loopholes in the system that they say will gather in £7 billion, or about a 5% target. In reality all that will happen is that the PAYE system will be tweaked, at great expense and benefit to some shoddy American company, to ensure that salaried staff are kept tightly controlled. In the meanwhile the usual suspects, one of whom was described on Have I Got News For You as a "Greedy, fat s***", will go on shipping vast quantities of wealth abroad, untouched by the revenue.
Since when were we "all in this together"?