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Comprehensive Spending Review

I appreciate the opportunity to make a brief contribution, which I shall limit to my constituency, and to housing benefit in particular. Lewisham is a relatively poor borough, where wages are around £26,500 per annum on average and where the mean house price in sales last year was £240,000. In common with most London boroughs, we are an area of extreme housing stress, brought about primarily by population growth and the fragmentation of households. Changes in housing benefit will have a devastating effect on people who seek to be decently housed in Lewisham. Ministers have sought to present their cuts and their new proposals in the light of a few absolutely extortionate rents. They have spoken continuously about the cap and the fact that people should not be able to claim benefits to live in what they deem to be luxury accommodation. That is not something that affects the majority of housing benefit claimants in this country. When he sums up, will the Minister, who is not paying attention—[Interruption] I am glad to see that he now is paying attention. Will he tell us what proportion of all housing benefit claimants in the UK are affected by the cap? In Lewisham, fewer than one in 1,000 people will be affected. Our people are not living in luxury, but let me tell him that this change will be a tragedy for the biggest families, living in the biggest properties—often in quite squalid conditions—and they will be evicted. The fact is that a conservative estimate made by my local authority finds that 9,050 households are affected by the generality of changes that are proposed by this Government. I further tell the Minister, to nail another myth perpetrated by this Government, that 5,000 of those are people in work.