Dubbed "the bedroom tax" if you are claiming housing benefit then if it is considered that you have a spare bedroom which is not used then you will lose some benefit or be forced to move to smaller accommodation. The minister in charge of implementing this draconian bullying policy is Iain Duncan Smith.
So where does IDS live?
The man behind the controversial bedroom tax lives rent-free in a £2million aristocratic country house… with at least FOUR spare bedrooms.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is a tenant of the landed gentry Fremantle family.
But unlike the 660,000 families in social housing who are being forced to pay an average of £14 a week extra for a spare bedroom, Mr Duncan Smith can live happily knowing he has to pay no rent or mortgage.
The 16th-century Tudor house on a sprawling estate in Buckinghamshire originally had five bedrooms but has had wings added down the centuries.
With a swimming pool, tennis courts and set in acres of countryside, it’s a far-cry from the social housing his bedroom tax victims live in.
It’s also a world away from the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green’s London constituency – and is sure to further enrage the thousands of protesters who marched around Britain against his hated tax yesterday.
But Old Etonian IDS lives free on the estate like a Lord.
The former Tory leader – who lost the top job after a no confidence vote by his party in 2003 – married into the Fremantle family in 1982 and was given use of the mansion by his father-in-law, the 5th Baron Cottesloe, in 2001.
Mr Duncan Smith and his wife Betsy Cottesloe moved there and brought up their four children in the peaceful, privileged, countryside setting.
One local said: “It is in a beautiful area. I don’t know how many bedrooms it has but I’d say there are more than five now after all the extensions that have gone up over the years.
“It must be worth millions.”
[source : Bedroom tax: Iain Duncan Smith lives rent free in £2million country home with at least FOUR spare bedrooms, The Daily Mirror, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-iain-duncan-smith-1794517, 30th March 2013]
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