THANK GOODNESS SOMEONE IS PUSHING FOR ACTION ON THIS SERIOUSLY MISGUIDED POLICY

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Housing Benefit costs a fortune.

No one can deny that.

Simply put, the value of property, particularly in London and the south east of England, has rocketed over the last 15 years. And with that increase in value, along with the lack of state owned housing, private landlords have been able to increase their rents by enormous amounts.

At the same time the value of the minimum wage has decreased, the  percentage of jobs which pay this niggardly amount, and the number of part time, or zero hour contract positions has dramatically increased making it almost impossible to pay rent from what Mr or Mrs Average earns.

At which point the government has to provide assistance.

Both working people and those on unemployment and sickness type benefits would be homeless without this help.

Since he was appointed to the post of Work and Pensions Secretary in the Westminster parliament, but with power over benefits in Scotland, Iain Duncan Smith has set about cutting the amount that is paid in what he likes to call "welfare", but what is, in fact, social security: part of the contract we have with the Uk government, in that we pay them Nation Insurance from our income and they provide us with cover when times get hard.

Encouraged by multimillionaire finance secretary, George Osborne (a man not averse to a bit of benefit grabbing for himself), who doesn't have a clue what a poor person actually looks like, Duncan Smith (who is also fond of his benefits like £39 breakfasts) has set about dismantling social security, in some cases carrying on from work started by Labour in the previous administration.

All this has been happening while the economy has been in pretty much permanent depression, a time when you would have expected there to be a higher call on social security. 

Now Nicola has pointed out to him how this affects Scotland, as is her duty. This is, yet again, a largely English problem being paid for in Scotland.

The other day, on one of the posts where this subject had come up in an off topic comment, I painted a little picture. It went like this:

Lad goes to uni at 18; moves out of family home; parents can't afford spare bedroom; parents move to smaller house with 1 bedroom. Lad kips on settee when he pops home from uni to see his folks.

Skip a few years…

Lad, now 21/22, graduates (in England with HUGE debts); lad manages to get a job in town where he has spent 3/4 years at uni; he rents flat in said town.

Skip 9 months…

The company he works for goes under or runs into hard times; the lad is made redundant at 23; he can't get housing benefit for his flat; he has perhaps up to £50,000 of debt; he can't get another job; he is thrown out of his flat; he can't go home because parents no longer have room for him on a permanent basis; he is homeless.

It's probably difficult for someone who lives in a lordly mansion owned by his father in law to see how this would work. In IDS’ world there is are spare bedrooms, or someone who can build another wing on the already massive house, or maybe a wife who can claim a salary for not doing a job …but in the real world with real people, it happens.

It is a hell of a pity no one in the UKOK government is a real person or lives in the real world. Fortunately in Edinburgh there are some people who know how the other half lives.

This isn't about making political points. Really it isn't. If Johann Lamont or Wee Willie Rennie were writing to IDS I'd be behind them too.

At worst it's about kids and/or people in their 20s being homeless, but with no space back in the family home to take refuge. At very least it's about people living in cramped and overcrowded conditions like they were doing in the 1930s and 40s as three or four generations have no alternative but to crowd into tiny flats.

And it's about greedy landlords, who are the only people who benefit from this. What about rent controls Duncan Smith?