The figures on the plummeting home ownership rate would have helped hugely with this argument.

1979 Thatcher inherits 59% rate

1997 Blair inherits 64%

2005 Blair takes to record high 71%

2015 (latest accurate figures) under 63% and falling still

It is projected by some that 2018 we will return to Thatcher inherited 59%!

Then interpose data from CML 2017 which says for the period 2007 to 2017 for first-time buyers:

Regions: 17% average household income rise yet 109% average mortgage deposit increase
London: 24% average household income rise yet 460% average mortgage deposit increase

With home ownership / getting on housing ladder almost impossible then home ownership rates (and associated economic growth fuelled by it) is a thing of the past

"Work will always pay more" is the mantra yet is a factually false claim

Universal Credit is being exposed for what it is - a failure - and that is the chief reason for the roll out delays. And they are some delays too with original projections being fully complete by 2015 and now sees 2021/22 as the anticipated roll out or working-age persons.

The roll out to date is around 5% of those it was expected to deal with so it has to expand 20 times.

The costs of the IT alone were said in 2014 to then be £3.1 billion and will now be more and the CSJ is now asking for more.

There is a perverse campaign by opposition parties and CAB and others to get a delay - on the basis the increased roll out will leave people with no money at Christmas. An argument of Happy Christmas but a bloody awful New Year and truly bizarre.

Universal Credit does NOT always make work pay more as IDS repeatedly claimed and in many cases it pays less than work.

Universal Credit totally missed out supported housing in its design and by that I mean it failed to consider how it would work in homeless hostels, DV refuges, supported living services and sheltered housing. This prompted a new separate policy while will close supported housing and two weeks ago the Salvation Army who have 152 years of putting a roof over the head over homeless people announced they were to close the majority of its 6000 hostel spaces and some 16% of the UK total hostel space because of this policy.

Universal Credit will also cost over £30 billion per year MORE in 'welfare' (social security benefit & tax credits) as it is a one-stop-shop policy of ALL the welfare you are entitled to will be paid on a not a penny more not a penny less. The £30 billion added cost is a cautious figure for the amount of welfare the DWP admits people are entitled to yet goes UNCLAIMED. UC assumes a 100% take-up of welfare hence the massive added cost.

UC is chronically designed. It is ill-conceived and ill-considered. It is a disaster in practice that has already been exposed with the 5% thus far take-up yet it is also a disaster in theory with its £30 billion + per year added cost of welfare.

We now see a political cliff edge where the Government face abandonment and saving £30 bn+ per year yet in doing so lose political face. UC was the big idea, the swansong for IDS's political career, his place in political history as the man who saved us all from the 'burgeoning' welfare state. That was always a false premise and UC was always ill-conceived and ideologically driven not fact driven. IDS even created the CSJ to come up with this policy and he is still its chief director. UC is and always has been a vanity project for IDS and a very costly one. It is time it was abandoned because it can never work. You can't even roll the policy in glitter ...