David Cameron suggests cutting housing benefit for under-25s

The prime minister has suggested that people under the age of 25 could lose the right to housing benefit, as part of moves to cut the welfare bill.

Scrapping the benefit for that age group would save almost £2bn a year.

In an interview in the Mail on Sunday, David Cameron said he wanted to stop workers resenting people on benefits.

But a senior Lib Dem warned that the priority was to get young people into work, training or education to avoid "repeating the mistakes of the 1980s".

In his newspaper article, which comes ahead of an expected speech on the subject this week, Mr Cameron said the existing system was sending out "strange signals" on working, housing and families.

He called for a wider debate on issues including the cost of benefits.

BBC political correspondent Vicki Young said the article was a clear appeal to core Tory voters and MPs who have criticised Mr Cameron for failing to promote Conservative values while in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

'Trapped in welfare''Not palatable'

For the Lib Dems, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, told BBC One's Sunday Politics he was "very relaxed" about the prime minister "setting out his own thinking".

But the coalition government had already brought in radical welfare reform and "the right thing to do" was to let them "bed in before we take further decisions".

He added that the immediate priority with young people was stopping them being "blighted by long periods of unemployment" as they had in the 1980s - a reference to the decade when there was a Conservative government.

The Mail quoted Mr Cameron contrasting a couple living with their parents and saving before getting married and having children, with a couple who have a child and get a council home.

"One is trapped in a welfare system that discourages them from working, the other is doing the right thing and getting no help," he said.

Mr Cameron said the welfare system sent out the signal that people were "better off not working, or working less".

"It encourages people not to work and have children, but we should help people to work and have children," he said.

He said that he also favoured new curbs on the Jobseeker's Allowance.

Later this week, Mr Cameron will set out more proposals for proposals aimed at cutting the UK's welfare bill, which could include forcing some unemployed to do community work after two years on benefits.

In March, the government's Welfare Reform Act received Royal Assent. That act - which applies to England, Scotland and Wales - introduces an annual cap on benefits and overhauls many welfare payments.

A Downing Street source said on Sunday that Mr Cameron was "starting a debate and setting out some ideas. We are realistic that some of them might not be achievable politically because they're not palatable to our coalition partners.

"We would like to get moving on these as soon as possible but we might not be able to get it done until after 2015."

In recent weeks the numbers of people claiming housing benefit reached five million for the first time.

Chancellor George Osborne indicated in his March Budget that the welfare bill should be cut by another £10bn between 2015 - the expected year of the next election - and 2017. That is on top of the £18bn of cuts during the current parliament.

For Labour, shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne called it a "very hazy and half-baked plan from the prime minister when what we really need is a serious back to work programme".

"You have to remember that housing benefit is available to a lot of people who are in work and perhaps on low incomes so for a lot of young families with their first feet on the career ladder this plan could actually knock them off the career ladder," he told the BBC.

Sourced:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18567855

Cameron: Hunt appointment to BSkyB case was not a 'botched' decision

David Cameron told the Leveson Inquiry he had not seen memo from Hunt outlining support for News Corp's bid. Photograph: Pool/Reuters

David Cameron insisted he did not make a "rushed" or "botched" decision to hand responsibility for News Corp's BSkyB bid to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt after he stripped business secretary Vince Cable of the role.
But the Leveson inquiry heard how the prime minister and other officials discussed detailed legal evidence from government lawyers justifying the decision to give Hunt the role long after he had taken the baton from Cable.
Cameron says he remembers hearing that Cable had been secretly recorded saying that he was "declaring war" on Murdoch at about 3pm on 21 December 2010. At 4pm, a meeting was convened to discuss the matter, which was attended by chancellor George Osborne, the permanent secretary to No 10 and the cabinet secretary, among others.
Earlier evidence to Leveson, submitted by Hunt and Osborne, shows that the meeting broke up just before 5pm when the chancellor then discovered two texts from Hunt, desperately seeking contact with him. One, timed 4.08pm, read: "Could we chat about Murdoch Sky bid? Am seriously worried we are going to screw this up."
Osborne replied at 4.58pm: "I hope you like our solution."
Hunt's evidence is that at that point he was aware he was going to be handed the key job. So, the decision was made, but Cameron's evidence laid bare the frantic calls and email exchanges that ensued the meeting to provide the legal cover for the appointment.
Concerns had been raised in the meeting that just as Cable's anti-Murdoch remarks had disqualified him from being in charge of the BSkyB bid, so too might Hunt's pro-Murdoch remarks in a Financial Times article earlier that year.
At 4.55pm Cameron had a meeting with the cabinet secretary who said they should get "rapid legal advice" on the FT article. At 5.24pm the legal director of the department of culture media and sport sent an email saying his remarks were "not helpful and tends towards an element of pre-judging". Further advice was given, over the phone by Paul Jenkins, the government solicitor between "4.30pm and 5.30pm". Cameron revealed that Hunt's remarks did not present a "legal impediment".
This was not formally noted until the following day in a memo from the then cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell.
At 5.45pm, Hunt's appointment was announced. Cameron admits there may have been some haste but denies it was the wrong decision.
"The haste was it was 3pm. The business secretary had said something which couldn't stand," Cameron said.
"In this 24-hour news environment, you cannot just spend hours or half days working out what you are going to do next."
But he added: "It was not some rushed, botched political decision."
Cameron was also quizzed about a memo Hunt had sent him in November warning that if the BSkyB bid didn't go through, the media sector would suffer for years. He dismissed suggestions that the strongly worded note was clear evidence of pro-Murdoch bias and told the inquiry, that in any case, he hadn't read it. Even if he had, he would have still arrived at the same conclusion.
"I'm quite clear that my advice to Sir Gus would not have been any different had I seen the note at the time," Cameron said. When pressed on the matter by Leveson, he conceded that it did, however, raise questions about putting a minister in charge of such a key decision "who had his own views, who has developed his own policy".

Sourced:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/14/leveson-cameron-defends-hunt-bskyb?newsfeed=true