Conservatives back down over benefit cap - Telegraph.co.uk

The proposed cap of £26,000 was described by George Osborne as the amount "the average family gets for going out to work" when he announced it last year.

It came as ministers scrapped child benefits for people paying the higher rate of tax, in a bid to convince voters of the Tory claim that "We're all in this together".

The new benefit limit will affect about 50,000 families, and will come into force in 2013, costing an average of £93 a week in benefits.

One in three of the families affected consists of a single mother with more than five children.

Lord Freud's remarks suggest that the upper limit will remain in place, but that the largest families will be given exemptions on a case by case basis.

Almost 100,000 benefit claimants have four or more children, with more than 900 having eight or more.

Last year Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, warned of "Kosovo–style ethnic cleansing" if poorer families were rehoused in the outer suburbs of the capital.

Earlier this year, figures showed that 10 families in England were sharing £1million a year in housing benefit.

Jenny Willott, who co–chairs the Lib Dem backbench committee on Welfare reform, said: "We do need to make sure that those larger families, where there are exceptional circumstances, get the benefits that they need."

Priti Patel, Tory MP for Witham, said: "Work has to pay. These are long overdue reforms and they have cross–party backing."

War widows and families where people claim disability living allowance will not be subjected to the new limit.

Last week Prime Minister David Cameron said he understood the complaints of working families who complained that others had children they could not support because the taxpayer would pay for them.

Last year Jeremy Hunt was criticised for suggesting that unemployed people should not have children if they could not afford to take care of them.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "We have always said that we wanted to look at the sort of help available for those people in particularly difficult circumstances.

"However, the point of the benefit cap is to set a limit as to what people can expect from the system when they are not working.

"The Government believes it is not fair that people who are in work can earn less than those who are on benefits."