Richest MP in Britain slams welfare state but makes £625k a year in housing benefit

Home sweet home: Benyon's manor and with fellow Tory landlords Earl Cadogan, Sir Richard Drax and Lord Cavendish

A Tory MP worth £110million is raking in £625,000 a year from his hard-up tenants’ housing benefit – despite blasting the “something for nothing” welfare state.

Richard Benyon – Britain’s richest MP – runs his vast property empire from a mansion on his sprawling country pile.

But last night he was accused of cashing in off the back of the very handouts his party pledged to slash – as it emerged a string of other Tories were doing the same.

Just last month the MP, 53, said: “The average household spends £3,000 per year on the welfare state. This figure had been rising inexorably and unaffordably.”

Mr Benyon has also attacked the Labour Party over payments and said: “Labour want benefits to go up more than the earnings of people in work. It isn’t fair and we will not let them bring back their something for nothing culture.” He is a director of the Englefield Estate Trust Corporation Limited, which owns most of the land and property linked to his family.

It got £625,964 in housing benefit from West Berkshire council last year, more than any other private landlord in the area.

Eileen Short, of Defend Council Housing, fumed: “How dare Richard Benyon lecture us about ‘something for nothing’ when he is living off the poorest and milking taxpayers all the way to the bank?

“It’s not tenants who gain from housing benefit, but some of the richest people in Britain. They get richer at our expense – and blame us while they’re at it.”

Mr Benyon is likely to pull in thousands of pounds more from properties in other areas, too, as his firm owns 20,000 acres of land from Hampshire to Scotland and 300 houses in Hackney, East London.

His office refused to comment on the figures or confirm whether Englefield got more housing benefit from other councils. Buy-to-let landlords and property tycoons like him will bank a total of £9.2billion in housing benefit this year.

It costs more than £23 a week, or 29% more in housing benefit, for a council to house a tenant with a private landlord than with a housing association or social not-for-profit landlord, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. Mrs Short added: “It’s time we stopped greedy private landlords living off housing benefit. Instead of subsidising them, we ought to cut rents not benefits, and invest in housing that’s really affordable. Let’s get these people off our backs.”

Our investigation, with the GMB union, comes after it was revealed yesterday that UKIP’s housing spokesman Andrew Charalambous was making a fortune off migrant tenants on welfare – despite leader Nigel Farage calling for a ban on foreigners claiming the cash.

The millionaire pocketed £745,351 in housing benefit from occupants, who he admitted included immigrants.

Our probe also uncovered a number of other Tories and donors who also bagged cash through housing benefit tenants last year. Baron Iliffe’s firm got £195,072 from West Berkshire council. His estate is worth an estimated £245million. He and his wife have donated £50,000 to the Tories.

Peer Lord Cavendish benefitted from £106,938 in housing welfare last year from Barrow council in Cumbria through his shareholding in Holker Estates.

The Earl of Cadogan, who has given £23,000 to the Tories, has received £116,400 in benefits from Kensington and Chelsea. And MP Richard Drax’s 7,000-acre Morden Estate got £13,830 from Purbeck council, South Dorset, last year. A Morden spokesman said: “We don’t comment on these things.”

On top of Mr Benyon’s haul from tenants, his family farms have also received more than £2million in EU subsidies since 2000.

Once a year the multi-millionaire – whose great great grandad was PM Lord Salisbury – hands out food to poor families as part of a 16th century tradition. He recently came under fire for scrapping plans to dredge the Somerset Levels. He was also criticised for claiming poor families wasted too much food.

Our investigation is based on Freedom of Information Act requests made by the GMB union, which has many members who rely on social housing. There are 1.8 million households on the waiting list for council homes. Despite ­Government pledges to tackle the welfare bill, the annual cost hit £24billion this year.

The DWP said: “Housing benefit provides a meaningful safety net for people, whether they live in social housing or in private rental properties, and it’s sensible that both of these options are available to people.”

See which private landlords are making the most in housing benefits from your council:


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/richest-mp-britain-slams-welfare-3178089

    

that makes sense...  

So what do you expect him to do? Kick the tenants out? Let them stay in the property for nothing?

sphinx wrote:So what do you expect him to do?  Kick the tenants out?  Let them stay in the property for nothing?

Apparently so. If Catman owned the properties he would let them stay for free. Do we believe that. Philips? well he's changed a lot if he would. Phil you've always been a taker not a giver.

Please suggest an alternative I'm really interested.

sphinx wrote:So what do you expect him to do?  Kick the tenants out?  Let them stay in the property for nothing?

Well if he is so anti poor and welfare state, why didn't he just go into private renting in the first place.   

Catman wrote:

sphinx wrote:So what do you expect him to do?  Kick the tenants out?  Let them stay in the property for nothing?

Well if he is so anti poor and welfare state, why didn't he just go into private renting in the first place.   

I see discriminate against state benefit recipients. What would you have called him them Elitist landlord? That's your answer is it discrimination.

Catman wrote:

sphinx wrote:So what do you expect him to do?  Kick the tenants out?  Let them stay in the property for nothing?

Well if he is so anti poor and welfare state, why didn't he just go into private renting in the first place.   

Uh he is in private renting isnt he? He is not a social not for profit landlord is he?

You object when private landlords refuse to rent to those on benefits - now you are objecting to private landlords because they do rent to those on benefits because *shock horror* they are making money from the rents.

What exactly do you think private landlords rent property out for?

If he was anti poor and anti welfare he would be evicting tenants that have to claim benefits. There is a difference between believing people should have to expend effort to gain money and being anti poor.

sphinx wrote:

Catman wrote:

Well if he is so anti poor and welfare state, why didn't he just go into private renting in the first place.   

Uh he is in private renting isnt he?  He is not a social not for profit landlord is he?

You object when private landlords refuse to rent to those on benefits - now you are objecting to private landlords because they do rent to those on benefits because *shock horror* they are making money from the rents.

What exactly do you think private landlords rent property out for?

If he was anti poor and anti welfare he would be evicting tenants that have to claim benefits.  There is a difference between believing people should have to expend effort to gain money and being anti poor.

Well why did he let to people on benefits then, it's quite obvious that he's being another RW scum hypocrite, a point that you are choosing to ignore, in your usual RW cap doffing way.

Catman wrote:

sphinx wrote:

Uh he is in private renting isnt he?  He is not a social not for profit landlord is he?

You object when private landlords refuse to rent to those on benefits - now you are objecting to private landlords because they do rent to those on benefits because *shock horror* they are making money from the rents.

What exactly do you think private landlords rent property out for?

If he was anti poor and anti welfare he would be evicting tenants that have to claim benefits.  There is a difference between believing people should have to expend effort to gain money and being anti poor.

Well why did he let to people on benefits then, it's quite obvious that he's being another RW scum hypocrite, a point that you are choosing to ignore, in your usual RW cap doffing way.

Phil everyone is RW scum to you - its a meaningless phrase when you use it.

Maybe he did not let to people on benefits but understood if something went wrong leaving his tenants needing benefits. Or maybe he does not have a problem with poor people just with lazy ones.

You see Phil there is a difference between poor people and lazy people - most Tories have a problem with lazy people but not with poor people. Labour for some reason think that because some people are poor because they are lazy and that they are the party of the poor that they must defend the lazy - generally by denying they exist.