CLLR Martyn Cox says Paul Egan is playing fast and loose with the facts.

He says the spare room subsidy is not a tax and to refer to it as the bedroom tax is designed to mislead.

Oh please! We all know very well what the bedroom tax actually is. It is this Tory-led government’s ruthless method of robbing tenants of a means-tested rent subsidy.

These tenants have been adjudged to need this subsidy to be able to pay the rent on the house they live in.

It seems logical then that when this money is taken off them, they will get into rent arrears or into debt. It is madness!

Cllr Cox admits that more affordable housing is badly needed, but says there is no money to do this unless we raise income tax which, he says, will put more people on welfare.

We could, it has been estimated, build 80,000 affordable homes every year with half the money spent on housing benefit.

The reason the housing benefit bill has rocketed is because tenants have been forced to rent from private landlords, due to the dire shortage of social homes. It has been estimated also, that about 30 per cent of local authority houses sold under the Tories’ Right to Buy, are now rented out by private landlords.

In London, tenants are paying £212 a week to private landlords, compared to £121 for a similar council house.

Private rents across England and Wales rose to a record £757 a month, on average, last year and, as house prices continue to rise, so to do rents, adding even more to the housing benefit bill.

Brian Derbyshire Ribchester Grove Bolton