THE spare room subsidy or bedroom tax, whatever you choose to call it, the effects will be the same.

I have more respect for Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith than most other politicians. His work over many years on the issues of work and benefits is based on personal research and the fundamental principle that it should always be better to work than to be on benefits.

Ultimately, we have to stop the inexorable and unsustainable rise in welfare costs which now soak up around a third of all the tax we pay.

But, and there is always a but, the spare room subsidy, where housing benefits will be reduced to claimants who have “spare bedrooms”, seems to me to be destined to fail in several ways.

The purpose of the plan is to release unused rooms into the social housing market and this would work if there were enough one and two bedroom properties to accommodate all the people who may want to downsize.

The problem is that there are nowhere near enough smaller properties and so people will be stuck in larger properties having to manage on reduced benefits, whether they want to move or not.There will be very little extra social housing available as a result of the scheme.

The other main issue is that many people will simply not pay the difference between their reduced benefit and the rent amount, so they will build up arrears of between £700 and £1,200 in a year.

This will mean even more court orders and debt which, ultimately, will have to be met by increases in rent.

Finally, and by no means least, there are many anomalies in the application of the plan.

Some of the most vulnerable residents — disabled and seriously ill people with night carers, single parents with child access arrangements and, from October, couples where one is a pensioner and the other is not — could suffer real hardship.

So while I support Ian Duncan Smith in most of his plans to make work pay, I am afraid the spare room subsidy is one cut too many for me.

Cllr Bob Allen Heaton and Lostock Ward