"Thatcherite think-tank slams Housing Benefit cap plan"

From The Evening Standard:

Millions of Londoners in family homes would be unfairly penalised if George Osborne brings in a £400-a-week cap on Housing Benefit in this month’s Budget, a report claimed.

In a hard-hitting report, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tank, said widows, savers and people with large families would be losers under the policy. It said some three in ten households affected had been claiming Housing Benefit for family homes in London for a decade or more, opening up the claimants to the threat of deductions from their other benefit income based more on rising rental values than how well off they are.

“This strikes at the heart of the importance of aspiration and of property ownership,” said CPS director Tim Knox.

Warning that very wealthy landlords could sell their homes in the capital while breadwinners on relatively modest incomes would lose out, he added: “A Housing Benefit cap based on market rents is therefore a discouragement to aspiration. The probable result: brain drain and capital flight.”