HOW providential it is that in the same week in which you report that hundreds of victims of the ‘bedroom tax’ in the county have fallen behind with their rents, the Coalition’s justification for this wicked tax has been blown apart.

The Labour MP Karen Buck has unearthed figures from the House of Commons library which show that since the introduction of the tax, total housing benefit costs have increased. This is because some councils have been forced to re-house tenants in more-expensive private rental properties. The government was warned that this would happen, but they knew it would anyway.

Helping people on low incomes to live in decent accommodation is not a priority for this government: handing over public funds to greedy landlords is more important. Plainly the savage cuts in welfare payments in general have nothing to do with cutting the deficit. This is merely a pretext for the Tories to do what they always wanted to do, abolish the welfare state.

It is part of a more general strategy which includes privatising state enterprises, contracting out services and freezing the pay of public service workers. Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine explains what this is all about.

Clive Shakesheff Lewis Way Chepstow