Mr. Paul Johnson:

There is quite a lot in that. We have covered most of it one way or another. When it comes to benefits below pension age, most of them just go up in line with inflation pretty much automatically. Different choices are made at times to freeze them to save money. The Deputy mentioned housing benefits, which is quite an interesting issue. I refer to where there are thresholds in the system. The maximum housing benefit one can get is set according to the local area in which a person lives, the size of his or her family and so on. It is set at the 20th percentile of rent for a property for that family type in that area. However, it is set at that level at a particular date and that maximum amount is then indexed in line with inflation each year.

That has a number of curious effects. Given that on the whole, rental costs go up faster than other prices, the real amount of housing you can buy with that maximum allowance goes down over time. The more curious one is that because rental costs go up at different rates in different areas, we get a world in which these are much more generous in some parts of the country than in other parts of the country due to the way-----