Empty Threat to the Jobless Young

A report from the Home Office on crime becoming the career of choice for the young men of the inner cities follows hard on the heels of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions threatening to stop the benefits of the long-term unemployed to get them into work.

They already go without if they fail to turn up at a job interview, and life is little different when the benefits are reinstated at £34.60 a week at 17 and under, £45.50 at 18 to 24 and £57.45 for single, childless adults aged between 25 and 60, all rates to be increased by £1.05, £1.35 and £1.70 a week in April. Many do not apply because the money is not worth the hassle in a very expensive economy.

John Hutton believes he is driving them all into legitimate work, much of which is poverty-paid, but other sources of income are found; the Asbos proliferate and more and more prisons are built.

So the threat to stop benefits that are already painfully inadequate, or non-existent, will be ridiculed on the streets of Britain.

REV PAUL NICOLSON

CHAIRMAN, ZACCHAEUS 2000 TRUST, LONDON N17