Letters: We need more detail on welfare reform

Neither of the two Alexanders - Danny, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and Douglas, the shadow work and pensions spokesman - was able to outline the extent of benefit abuse in a radio programme on Monday morning.

They did not talk about another complicating factor: the way the "black economy" can sometimes distort measures of unemployment and the real income of those who actually claim the benefits.

Another factor is the difficulty in distinguishing between those who opt to claim benefits as a "lifestyle choice" and those who may appear to be milking the system but do in fact have a genuine disability which keeps them inactive.

If this issue is not be become highly emotive, or politically damaging to either side, we need lots of facts if genuine reform is to be achieved.

What we must have from Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is detail. How narrow or wide is the differential between real, post-tax, post-travel costs income from work, and income from benefits? This will differ in various labour markets throughout the country.

How viable would it be for even the most dedicated job-seeker to find appropriate work in the different regions of the country? How much needs to be spent on training to ensure supply meets demand in the various economic sectors?

The fact that these questions have been asked a lot by economists over the years does not make them less relevant now.

Mr Duncan Smith deserves credit for at least displaying reforming zeal. He now needs to back up that vision with statistics we can all understand.

Bob Taylor

Shiel Court

Glenrothes, Fife

The proposed scheme for getting the unemployed back to work has been criticised as compelling workless individuals to take on "unpaid" work.

I find this criticism difficult to understand. Surely they are being paid by the state, but are providing no service in return. All the proposal amounts to is a requirement that taxpayers and the unemployed derive some tangible benefit from the payments made by the former to the latter.

If religious and other leaders regard that as morally or socially wrong, I would suggest they revisit their guiding principles.

Stanley Brodie QC

Dalrymple

Ayrshire

Iain Duncan Smith's plans to tackle the vicious cycle of bene- fits dependency have been denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, as "unjust and unfair".

Yet, when the last government failed totally to come up with any rational plan to help people out of the downward spiral to a life on benefits, Dr Williams was silent.In fact it is two years since he last intervened in the secular affairs of the nation, on which occasion he claimed the adoption of sharia law in parts of the UK was "unavoidable".

As for international trade, he believes that "every transaction in the developed economies of the West is an act of aggression against the economic losers in the worldwide game".

I suspect his long career in the groves of academe has not really helped this gentle poet from the Welsh mountains to understand the grim reality of life in modern Britain.

Rev Dr John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews, Fife

Great idea! Pay off council workers and get the unemployed to do the work for a quarter of the price. Get rid of a load of nurses and doctors and shove in a couple of unemployed brickies and joiners to do their jobs.

Better ideas: pay off some work-shy politicians and bank bosses and give some unemployed, qualified graduates with brains their jobs. Take a properly experienced construction manager off the dole and let him or her take over the tram construction.

Jings, crivvens, the Lib Dem/ Con(men) might have cracked it without knowing.

Archie Finlayson

Montgomery Road

Kinross