WEBVTT 00:00:03.088 --> 00:00:08.034 Hello and welcome to another Full Fact video fact check. 00:00:08.034 --> 00:00:20.032 David Cameron gave an interview with the Mail on Sunday this week in which he suggested that the government may cut housing benefits for the under 25s, saving the government £2 billion. 00:00:20.032 --> 00:00:29.072 Is this a big number? Where is it from? And how many housing benefits claimants are actually out of work as some people have been claiming today? 00:00:29.072 --> 00:00:33.044 Well, the first thing to do is to look at the numbers in context. 00:00:33.044 --> 00:00:39.095 The biggest number we can start with is £1.5 trillion. 00:00:39.095 --> 00:00:49.055 That’s the size of the UK’s GDP. Compare that to our public spending: £700 billion. 00:00:49.055 --> 00:00:54.045 And compare that to what we spend on benefits: £152 billion. 00:00:54.045 --> 00:00:57.086 You can see what the figures mean when put side by side. 00:00:57.086 --> 00:01:05.032 Now the government announced in the Budget earlier this year that a further £10 billion would be cut from the welfare budget after 2015. 00:01:05.032 --> 00:01:10.025 As you can see, that’s what £10 billion looks like in this context. 00:01:10.025 --> 00:01:15.087 Looking more closely at our spending on welfare, we can see where the money actually goes. 00:01:15.087 --> 00:01:22.008 The biggest chunk of this money goes on state pensions: £74 billion in total last year. 00:01:22.008 --> 00:01:29.004 Housing benefit, on the other hand, cost the government £22.7 billion in payments. 00:01:29.004 --> 00:01:33.035 But we also need to consider fraud and error in the benefits system. 00:01:33.035 --> 00:01:39.051 As you can see there, the total fraud and error across all benefits totals to £3.2 billion. 00:01:39.051 --> 00:01:48.052 That’s either because claimants are fraudulently getting money they shouldn’t be or administrative error is given them more than they should. 00:01:48.052 --> 00:01:54.046 But there’s also underpayment as well which you can see there: £1.3 billion. 00:01:54.046 --> 00:02:01.035 That’s because people aren’t claiming benefits that they’re entitled to, or again, a cause of administrative error. 00:02:01.035 --> 00:02:10.065 As you can see in housing benefit, £1 billion is lost to fraud and error, and £230 million in underpayments. 00:02:10.065 --> 00:02:16.068 Now, remember David Cameron’s £2 billion figure that he planned to save? 00:02:16.068 --> 00:02:22.081 That’s what it looks like in the context of the total housing benefit bill. 00:02:22.081 --> 00:02:25.087 So where is the £2 billion figure from? 00:02:25.087 --> 00:02:31.045 Well, the Department for Work and Pensions has statistics on the age groups who receive housing benefit. 00:02:31.045 --> 00:02:39.082 If we look at the average benefit received by these groups, we can calculate the spending on the under-25 00:02:39.082 --> 00:02:45.097 age group category amounts just under £2 billion as you can see from this graph here. 00:02:45.097 --> 00:02:55.089 Now you can see that far more is spent on the other age groups, a total of just over £5 billion on the over-65s for instance. 00:02:55.089 --> 00:03:03.083 But we can see definitely where the Prime Minister is getting his £2 billion saving from by cutting it from the under-25s. 00:03:03.083 --> 00:03:09.051 But another debate we’ve seen today is whether those on housing benefit are actually in work. 00:03:09.051 --> 00:03:14.018 The New Statesman report that just one in eight claimants is out of work. 00:03:14.018 --> 00:03:25.063 Well fortunately, the Department of Work and Pensions also record the status of housing benefit claimants, and this is broken down in the pie chart here. 00:03:25.063 --> 00:03:32.042 Now you can see 13% of housing benefit claimants are on Jobseekers Allowance. 00:03:32.042 --> 00:03:36.006 This may well be where the New Statesman is getting its figure from. 00:03:36.006 --> 00:03:43.072 Now Jobseeker’s Allowance is an out of work benefit, but if you look at the graph, there are other out of work benefits here. 00:03:43.072 --> 00:03:49.085 Income support and Employment and Support Allowance go to people out of full time work. 00:03:49.085 --> 00:04:00.072 The Department for Work and Pensions do make clear that they could be in some kind of part time work, but certainly not enough to justify not being eligible for those benefits. 00:04:00.072 --> 00:04:11.017 We can also see 18% of the people claiming are definitely in employment as measured by the Department of Work and Pensions. 00:04:11.017 --> 00:04:22.059 So we can see that it’s very unlikely that there are only one in eight claimants out of work, the sheer volumes claiming the other kinds of benefits. 00:04:22.059 --> 00:04:27.098 So this is very likely a severe underestimate of the statistics. 00:04:27.098 --> 00:04:31.018 Well I hope you found that useful. 00:04:31.018 --> 00:04:44.084 If you want to find out more housing benefits statistics of course you can visit our website at Fullfact.org and if you have more questions about housing benefit, do send them in on our suggestions page. 00:04:44.084 --> 00:04:49.004 But until then, do stay tuned for more video fact checks.