Lunchtime news Wednesday 28 November 2023

A 17-year-old student who became an orphan has been told that the only way she can get financial help to continue her A-levels is to become pregnant. A spokesperson with the Department of Work and Pensions said that a girl aged 17 who has a child and was not working would be eligible to claim child benefit and tax credits, housing benefit, council tax benefit and income support. Instead the girl earns £46 a week working part-time and gets a further £30 a week maintenance allowance.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has estimated that the UK’s population could almost double within the next 75 years to more than 100 million as a result of immigration, an increase in the size of the average family and longer life expectancy. The numbers were issued during a parliamentary committee hearing on the impact of immigration on schools, hospitals and other services.

A BBC freedom of information (FOI) request has discovered that 40 per cent of the £5 billion set aside to improve military housing (£2 billion) will be spent in renting the buildings sold off by the conservative government in 1996 to the private landlord, Annington. In July, Defence Secretary Des Browne said the MOD planned to spend the money upgrading and maintaining services accommodation, but the response to the FOI request said: ‘This deal [with Annington] means that the MOD is contractually obliged to pay rent on the homes occupied by service families.’

The Housing Federation has warned that house prices in London are creating a social housing problem. Its report found that first-time buyers need to earn more than £100,000 a year to buy an average priced home (£318,000) in 25 per cent of the boroughs, while an estimated 330,000 families were registered on waiting lists for social housing, a figure which has grown by 57 per cent in five years. Only three boroughs saw a decrease in the numbers waiting for an affordable home.

Meanwhile, house prices in the US have fallen to their lowest point in 21 years. A Standards & Poor survey, shows prices fell 4.5 per cent for the quarter from a year earlier, and down 1.7 per cent from the previous quarter.