A MONMOUTH MP tonight criticised the coalition government's bedroom tax as not going far enough, while calling for "feckless fathers" to be put in chains and be made to work.

During a parliamentary debate on cuts to housing benefit for those deemed to have spare rooms, David Davies MP spoke about teenage couple Amy Evans, 17, and her partner Lloyd Mulry he met in Blaenavon while filming a recent television documentary.

The Conservative MP, who heads a committee of MPs investigating the effect of the bedroom tax in Wales, said: "I say to the ministers on my front bench, you are being far too generous in many instances. Why should the state be paying for two people to set up in, frankly, a teenage love nest?"

The MP said when he was 17, he would go and see his girlfriend on a park bench in Newport.

"Why is the government paying for them to have a flat all by themselves at all, never-mind whether it's one-bedroom or two-bedroom?" he said.

"I got into a lot of trouble because I suggested to the young man that perhaps he should go out and find a job himself.

"I even had someone email me here. He said, 'You're a Christian, you should be serving the Lord, one day you will stand by the Lord and account for this hardship'.

"And I wrote back and said, I read my bible, I don't see anywhere in the bible where it says 17-year-olds should be given a flat but I see plenty of examples of people who have had to move for a better way of life, whether it was Abraham going off to the Promised Land or Moses or the disciples who toured all over Europe. They all moved."

Mr Davies made similar comments about "feckless fathers" to the Argus last month.

He said the money paying for housing benefit is not coming from the government, it is coming from "their neighbours and people who pay taxes".

He said: "It is like knocking on their neighbour's houses asking for money.

"This government isn't there to supply flats to teenagers who want to set up shop with each other. It's there to provide a safety net."