 Last week I asked you the question, what would you like to see the housing market deliver? And I'll be looking at some of your suggestions at the end of this video. For this week, I want to talk about universal credit. Universal credit or UC is a reform to the welfare system to simplify it and make it work better for everyone. I've asked my friend Amber Rudd to drop into the office and talk a bit more about it. We introduced universal credit to create a fairer welfare system. The challenge facing us was how to reform the system without cutting the support that people receive. Universal credit does this by getting rid of the unfair cliff edges that existed under the old system, supporting people in the transition from being on welfare to receiving a wage. Rather than receiving up to six different types of benefit from three separate parts of government, claimants are now paid one monthly amount. This makes the process simpler and makes it more similar to how wages are paid. But for those who need support on the day they sign up, they are entitled under universal credit to an upfront advance of their benefits. Even three days before Christmas, same day advances were being paid. With universal credit, we also wanted to change the job centre from only being a place to sign on. Now it's a place where people get personal support from a beating hub of dedicated work coaches. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975. And I believe that our reforms of the welfare system have contributed to this. We believe that it should always pay to work. You should be better off in work. And UC is there as a safety net that helps people back into work. So my question for this week is what else would you do to help create more better paying jobs? You can tell me in the comments below. Or of course, as always, tweet me at Branden Lewis. Now I'm going to look at some of your responses to the question, what would you like to see the housing market deliver? Aged human, who has tweeted just copy Germany. Most stable market in the UU, affordable and very high quality houses. Huge availability of plots, including for small builders and individual architects. If you're brave enough to ignore the nimbies, old antories, that's a bit harsh. You'll deliver for the next generation. Well, aged human, it is important to look at broader. Our other countries are dealing with similar housing issues and we're doing this all the time. Here, we are committed to building 300,000 new homes by the mid 2020s. As part of reaching that overall target, we want a range of suppliers across different sectors, including smaller construction businesses. I'm the owner of a house building company. We face every increase in delays and frustrations from the planning system. From associated bodies in highways, drainage services as well. This is something we are continuing to work on. We did a huge amount of preconditions and things like that in the Housing and Planning Act of 2016. It involves working across governments. For example, on housing near highways, we are working with the Department of Transport. And last summer, we updated planning laws so that it is easier to deliver quality homes that communities need. We're always looking at what more we can do. I understand that builders need to make a profit, but rent caps or guidelines could be employed to reduce property developers cashing in on over-the-top markups and minimum size rules. I have to say, rent caps have been tried across the world, in fact, and they've resolutely failed. I know Sadiq Khan has made this a pledge in his reelection campaign. I genuinely cannot understand why. They actually drive prices up because they don't incentivize developers or house builders to build new housing and they don't incentivize landlords to work with long-staying tenants and to keep rents down, in fact. Police scrap helped to buy and shared ownership schemes. They're not true affordable housing and they just serve to prop up artificially high property prices in the housing bubble. Some of us worked hard saving big deposits and are priced out by such schemes. Well, all the evidence shows actually what Helptomai has done is drive up supply. It hasn't had that impact on prices. It's about reducing the amount of money the first time buyers need to have saved in order to have a deposit and it actually gives confidence about demand to the suppliers and that's why it's driven up supply. Thank you to all of you who have commented and tweeted to me and sorry if I didn't get to answer yours but we'll be picking different ones every week so do keep commenting on these videos. So as always, thank you for watching and see you next time.