Bedroom tax will hit disabled hard

According to the National Housing Federation around 660,000 people will be hit by benefit reforms causing a rise of up to £16 a week for having an extra bedroom.

This includes disabled people living in adapted or specially designed properties and families with disabled children.

Also targeted are parents whose children visit but are not part of the permanent household, foster carers - since foster children are not counted as part of the household for benefit purposes - and separated parents who share the care of children and may have been allocated an extra bedroom for this arrangement.

The Camerons, rattling around in Chequers, Downing Street or their Oxfordshire mansion, are deciding that the children cared for by others, often the most vulnerable of all, have no right to their own space, something essential for self-esteem and development.

Today I was told of a couple, one of whom is near crippled with multiple sclerosis.

They sleep in separate rooms in their two-bedroom flat for both their comfort and her dignity.

They have to move to a one-bedroom flat or pay what is to them an impossible amount.

It has to be wondered how the appalling regime in power in Whitehall can override binding, legal tenancy agreements, human rights and indeed humanity.

Felicity Arbuthnot

London E9