Why we shouldn’t get worked up about the ‘bedroom tax’

The so-called bedroom tax is touted as a cruel attack on the vulnerable. But it is nothing of the sort, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

A furious email arrived on Sunday evening from MoneyWeek regular James Ferguson of MacroStrategy.James had been reading the Observer and its coverage of the so-called bedroom tax' had pushed him over the edge. Why?

First, it isn't a tax. David Cameron calls it "the removal of the spare room subsidy" - which, while it maddens some people, is a rather more accurate description than bedroom tax'.A tax is when the government takes from you what you have earned. A reduced benefit is when it gives you less of what you have not. This is the latter.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.