The bedroom tax should be widened to include pensioners, a Conservative MP has said.
Julian Brazier, MP for Canterbury, made the claim in a letter to a constituent, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper and reported in Inside Housing.
He said: ‘There are 250,000 social housing tenants living in overcrowded accommodation and over two million people on waiting lists. It is unacceptable for the Government to subsidise people to live in accommodation that is too big for their needs’
’He added: ‘There are a lot of young families desperate to move to larger accommodation, and older people who could downsize. ’I am not particularly happy at the fact that pensioners were made exempt from this measure.
Under the policy popularly known as the bedroom tax, but referred to by ministers as the ‘spare room subsidy’, social housing tenants deemed to have spare rooms have their housing benefit deducted. The policy is estimated to effect 660,000 households and the average penalty is £14 a week. The penalty only applies to working age tenants.