SIR – The welfare reform debate endures because the country has sold out on its premier league economic heritage and can’t get by on its own wages.

Long gone are the days when we were the producer.

Look now at practically every item in the home.It is made somewhere else.

The inexorable rise in national living standards is now set to decline with young people facing a more insecure future than previous generations.

Therefore state benefits are even more essential, providing food in the cupboard for millions, paying for utilities and with careful management even stretching to a few treats occasionally.

Cutting benefits at a time when few opportunities exist only makes matters worse and indeed, quite possibly, increases crime and adds demands to other budgets such as health and policing.

An unhealthy desperate feral underclass is in no one’s interests.

What the public are not sold are the facts about the way the cake is sliced and the debate looks very different once you do this.

That tax credits cost more than out-of-work benefits, and both are swamped by the cost of pensions because we have an ever older population thanks to better conditions and the triumphs of medical progress.

The unemployed and disabled are always in the infra red sights of the political snipers even though they are a relatively small percentage on the balance sheet.

Housing benefits are through the roof because of the combination of high rents due to reliance on the highcost private sector and influenced by the selling off and under investment in social housing. Tax credits and housing benefits are relied on by millions of working people whose income doesn’t come within range of the average wage.

This is a subsidy to employers and a wages topup at taxpayers’ expense.

We have a big problem.

Whatever we choose as a strategy we need to be careful and realistic about the humanitarian perils of welfare reform and place greater emphasis on restoring the economy to a level which will make a real difference so that even more people can achieve their potential in future.

ANDREW BROWN

Worcester