What's Housing Benefit For?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, asks why Britain spends such vast sums on Housing Benefit - now £25 billion. He examines the history of these payments and how government funding for house-building has gradually changed into subsidies for rents, especially to private landlords. 40% of tenants in private housing receive Housing Benefit. Critics argue that these have distorted the market and failed to address the fundamental shortage of housing supply. Paul asks how we got here and whether anything can change.
Producer: Adam Bowen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading the first in a new series of analysis. |
| 0:03.0 | Hurrah! We're back! |
| 0:05.0 | And we're starting with a riddle. |
| 0:07.0 | What costs us 500 million pounds a week, |
| 0:10.0 | but no one quite knows what it's for. |
| 0:12.0 | Here with the answers, or some of them at least is Paul Johnson, |
| 0:15.7 | the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Just a little milk, and there you go, thank you. |
| 0:23.7 | Carol is making me a cup of tea before showing me round her home. |
| 0:27.9 | It doesn't take long. |
| 0:29.5 | It's a very small one, one bedroom flat. |
| 0:32.3 | If you have a look at the walls and the carpet and in the |
| 0:35.1 | bathroom you can see that not a lot of money has been spending renovating the |
| 0:39.2 | flat. Yes I can see that. You've got some moth infestation here. |
| 0:45.2 | And if you have a look in the kitchen, we can see that this hasn't been touched for over |
| 0:49.8 | a decade either. |
| 0:51.2 | Carol is the new normal. She has a white-collar professional job, but even so she still relies on some housing benefit to help pay her rent. |
| 1:00.0 | It doesn't pay all of your rent, it's just a top up because of course you are in work. |
| 1:04.8 | Yes, it tops me up with approximately 15 to 20 percent. |
| 1:08.4 | Yes. |
| 1:09.4 | Carol isn't her real name. |
| 1:11.1 | She's worried about her landlord finding out that she receives housing benefit, |
| 1:15.2 | something she believes could lead to her eviction. |
... |
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