from the telegraph comments

We spend £25 billion on working tax credits, in effect subsiding poor paying businesses and creating awful incentives for both employer and employee. Wouldn't it be simpler to get rid of working tax credits and increase the minimum wage, instead of having an inefficient bureaucracy in the middle collecting tax to only redistribute it back as a wage subsidy?
Similarly, instead of continuing with the £25 billion housing benefit bill madness, which is trapping ever more working people as rents rise whilst wages stagnate, shouldn't we be building social not for profit housing to house people in long-term affordable rents and remove the market distorting housing benefit from the for profit housing sector which only works to inflate rental prices for everyone? Over 90% of new housing benefit claimants are working and the housing benefit bill increased by £700 million last year, a £27k cap on the outliers is not going to dent the overall cost of this benefit