Forcing people to work for benefits will do nothing to alleviate poverty

As a university lecturer in social policy for 25 years, I studied the operation of workfare schemes around the world including those in the United States, which seem to be the main influence on Labour's green paper (your report, 22 July).

The overwhelming conclusion is that numbers on benefit were cut, but the major effect was to shift people who were in poverty on benefit into being in poverty in work.

For single mothers there was also a big deterioration in quality of life as they often had to get up at 5am to drag their children into daycare, then drag themselves to work in low-paid jobs, then back to pick up their children.

Also, as the Child Poverty Action Group points out, when you involve private firms in the running of these schemes, corruption follows. It is worth noting that the government is already engaged in this privatisation process as 13 out of 15 projects in the Pathways to Work scheme have been let out to private companies.

This scheme could not have been launched at a worse time; we are about to enter the deepest recession since 1929 and unemployment will rise sharply, so where are all these jobs coming from, or are the unemployed to be forced into menial tasks wearing yellow jackets like criminals, doing community service?

Contrast also the treatment of the poor with that of the rich. The banks that have created the recession through criminally reckless lending policies are bailed out at the cost of billions of pounds of our money. And the bankers who caused the problem are given golden handshakes and pension schemes worth millions.

The real scroungers in our society are the super-rich, who are avoiding and evading £60 billion of tax a year.

There are, of course, examples of alternative strategies which not only reduce the numbers on benefit but raise their standard of living and the quality of life of the country. In Denmark, you get 80 per cent of your previous income on social security, you have universal and affordable childcare, excellent vocational education and free higher education with full grants. The result is low levels of unemployment and high wages, with a minimum wage of £10 an hour and only 2 per cent of children in poverty, compared to 25 per cent in Scotland.

It is, of course, funded by progressive taxation, including 67 per cent on the rich. Labour may hope its new scheme will convince swing voters it is being tough on scroungers. However, in Scotland let us hope it convinces people we want a different kind of society, something rather more like Scandinavia than the US.

HUGH KERR
Braehead Avenue
Edinburgh

Under Labour's latest proposals the sick and unemployed will be treated worse than convicted criminals. Criminals can be forced to do demeaning jobs like picking up litter, but only for the limited time specified in their community service order. People unable to find paid employment will be forced to do such work until they reach retirement age or die. For many, it will be a life sentence.

Voluntary or paid work can enhance people's mental health by providing social contact, fulfilment and a sense of self-worth. Being forced to do humiliating tasks will do the opposite.

A 2006 report from the London School of Economics said: "There are more mentally ill people on incapacity benefits than the total number of unemployed people on benefit," but that "only a quarter of those who are ill are receiving any treatment". Instead of giving people the help they need to recover, Labour wants to torture them until they stop claiming benefits.

R A McCARTNEY
Woburn Avenue
Farnborough, Hampshire