SIR – You have reported healthy disagreement in the council chamber about bedroom tax.

Councillor Marc Bayliss appears to have been a staunch advocate for the controversial policy but will he be so keen when the number of people calling on the council’s homelessness support starts to grow and overwhelm its resources?

I completely agree with him that we have an absolutely enormous welfare bill which needs to be tamed but the fact is the majority of it relates to pensioners, who are a ring-fenced group.

The touch paper has been lit on this politically incendiary policy which ironically comes into force on April Fool’s Day and will make model tenants into debtors and evictees.

It is even being applied to parents with shared care where the child does not live all the time with either parent and the legal action group Liberty is taking test cases to the courts based on the argument that this is destructive to family life under the European Convention.

There is nothing fair, progressive or responsible about causing such misery and mayhem when in any event there are simply too few smaller homes.

Frank Field has been a great advocate of welfare reform, no one could accuse him of being an apologist for scroungers, but he has likened it to the window tax – a grossly unpopular measure which led to bricking up of windows which we can still see on the streets today.

He has called for bricking up spare rooms to avoid it.

I have heard women talking about planning another child as a strategy to avoid the bedroom tax.

The Government is going to find itself the target of numerous distressing news stories and pressure from councils and housing associations whose own resources are going to be greatly impacted.

ANDREW BROWN

Worcester