LANDLORDS in East Lancashire are raking in £60 to £70 a week in housing benefit for letting out slums and hovels not worth £5 a week, protests Burnley councillor Stephen Wolski.

But this, we hear, is happening when the council operates an 'approved landlord' scheme.

Clearly, despite such checks, the system is open to abuse. But rather than tightening up the controls with proposals to stop direct payments of housing benefit to landlords who, as the town's resources committee was told, were not operating fairly and properly, why does not someone think the unthinkable when it comes to widely abused housing benefit-- and stop to altogether?

After all, if the government thinks it wrong for the state to subsidise people buying their own homes--- as is the case with the scrapping of tax relief on mortgage repayments -- why should it be right for taxpayers to subsidise those renting their homes?

If this practical approach was applied, we would be rid of the wholesale fraud that surrounds housing benefit and with a real market in rented accommodation, slum landlords might only get £5 a week for their hovels, rather than the £60 or £70 a week that comes when local authorities are issuing other people's money without restraint.