TO SAY we should look after the next generation, David Cameron has a strange way of showing it.

Despite the largest slice of welfare going on pension benefits (£110bn), he leaves millionaire pensioners entirely unaffected.

Instead he focuses on housing benefit, in which 95 per cent of the £1bn increase in the last year went to people in work. Seven out of eight housing benefit claimants work.

There has been considerable coverage in these pages on how the high level of rents will result in people being forced out of York – policies such as these will only exacerbate the situation.

They demonstrate the fallacy of compassionate Conservatism as it will destroy social mobility. Many youngsters who seek a life and career outside of their own city can only do so with the supplement of housing benefit.

There are solutions to the rising cost of housing benefit, the main one being a massive house-building program which would in itself create jobs, increased taxation and lower welfare costs.

Instead, Mr Cameron seems intent on a crusade against the country’s youth.

Richard Bridge, Holgate Road, York.