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Welfare Reform

I want to take the Secretary of State back to the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). The universal cap of £500 a week will have a devastating impact on people living in inner-London areas such as mine, where private sector rents—paid for by housing benefit—are exorbitant, to put it mildly. The cap will result in desperate poverty for those people who try to remain living where their children go to school and near their families and community. The effect will be one of social cleansing over a vast area of inner-city Britain. Is that what the Secretary of State really wants to achieve? ... Look at the figures.