SIR – The Government’s campaign to justify benefitcapping, now supported by the Labour opposition, is dishonest and designed to divert attention from the excesses of the rich.

The assertion that no one should receive more than £26,000 per year in benefits is based on a false premise.

All claimants are assessed for benefit based on their circumstances and receive the same rates. What they ‘receive’ does not include housing benefit. That goes straight to landlords.

The annual cost of housing benefit has nearly doubled from £11 billion in 1999 to more than £21 billion today.

To claim that this has been caused by a few people living it up in expensive properties in the centre of London is dishonest.

The real cause is that New Labour did nothing about building up the social housing stock during its 13 years in power but preferred to leave renting to private landlords and the buy-to-let sector.

They could charge benefit claimants what rents they liked because the State would pay.

Landlords thus belong to the long list of rich recipients of New Labour’s generosity under [Gordon] Brown and [Tony] Blair (and now [David] Cameron and [Nick] Clegg) at the expense of the poor.

In 12 years, landlords received something like £170 billion in housing benefit from the Government.

You could build a lot of housing with a fraction of that.

PETER NIELSEN
Worcester