Flaws in the housing benefit system allowing families on low incomes to live in properties that most taxpayers can only dream about have been apparent for some time.
In 2008 James Purnell, then the Work and Pensions Secretary, promised an overhaul of the system after it emerged that Toorpakai Saiedi, a single mother of seven from Afghanistan, was living with her children in a seven-bedroom, £1.2 million house in West London with her rent of £12,458 a month paid by taxpayers.
In another case, a couple from Somalia and their eight children were paid £1,600 a week in housing benefit to live in a £1.8 million house in Central London. Then, shortly before Christmas 2008, it was reported that Francesca Walker and her four children had been living in a three-storey home in Kensington that had five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The cost to the taxpayer was more than £91,000 a year.
The scale of the benefit payouts continued to surface. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act in October 2009 revealed housing benefit payments of nearly £190,000 over five years to a family in Oxford for a seven-bedroom house.
The 2009 figures also showed a family of seven in Camden, North London, had received £189,653 since August 2001, while a family in Brent, northwest London, was paid £2,827 a week and received £177,497 since the claims began in 2004.
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Earlier this year, freedom of information data showed that 108 town halls found the average cost of providing housing to the biggest family in each area was £17,500 a year, or £1,450 a month. A couple with 14 children had their £1,700-a-month rent paid by the local council and received £50,000 a year in benefits.
The Department for Work and Pensions estimated that the amount of public money spent on benefit intended to help to cover the cost of renting accommodation, rose to £14.2 billion in 2009-10.
Yesterday it emerged that nearly 100 families in Central London were claiming the maximum housing benefit — more than £100,000 a year.