VERY few people in the North will be affected by the “benefits cap”, that so inflamed bishops in the House of Lords, but a similar crackdown is already underway.

The famous cap will impose a strict £500 weekly limit on the total benefits that can be claimed by any family, equivalent to the average wage earned by working households after tax.

It’s either a necessary curb on families having babies-for-benefits (one Cabinet minister’s incendiary claim) or a cruel attack on vulnerable families, forcing them out of their homes.

Because by far the biggest handout is housing benefit, and because rents are highest in the South, 54 per cent of the 67,000 affected households are in Greater London, with under 4,000 in the North-East and Yorkshire combined.

However, the furore has distracted attention from steep cuts to housing benefit across the entire country, that are predicted to have a similar affect.

The clampdown will dramatically cut the maximum payments of local housing allowance (LHA), claimed by tenants on housing benefit in private accommodation.

Instead of being capped at the median rent in the area concerned, around 50 per cent of the highest rent charged, it will be tagged to the lowest 30 per cent of rents.

These new rules will leave 37,000 families across the North-East and North Yorkshire in properties that will be too expensive threatening them with eviction, unless their landlords slash their rents.

In County Durham, 92 per cent of households will be affected, with the impact almost as harsh in Darlington (87 per cent), Hartlepool (87.7 per cent), Redcar and Cleveland (86.3 per cent), Middlesbrough (83.8 per cent).

Ministers have poured scorn on the idea of mass evictions, attacking greedy landlords for enjoying a “bonanza” out of housing benefit and insisting rents must fall.

But the British Property Federation, which represents landlords, has insisted they cannot afford a sudden dip in income and will be forced to turf out families instead.

A year ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned about “social zoning”, forcing poorer families out of wealthier neighbourhoods.

After such protests, existing tenants were given nine months longer to prepare for “necessary changes to their arrangements”.

That means the new rules will hit them in the next few months, when they will find out whether the government, or their landlords, were right.

AS my office is in the shadow of Britain’s most famous clock, I was, naturally, concerned by eye-grabbing headlines such as “Alarm bells ring as Big Ben starts to lean”

and “Commons sinking into Thames mud”.

However, a rather different picture emerged from the parliamentary authorities, who said: “It would take 10,000 years for the Clock Tower (commonly referred to as Big Ben) to reach the inclination of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s moving incredibly slowly and always has done so and there really is no immediate danger at all.”

MEANWHILE, there is tension between two North-East Labour MPs – but it’s not over economic policy, or the performance of under-fire leader Ed Miliband. No, the friction is caused by Hartlepool MP Iain Wright’s success in grabbing a hotter-than-hot-cakes ticket to watch a comeback gig by the Stone Roses.

Tom Blenkinsop, the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, is still looking.