Adam Smith Institute

The current problem with the welfare state is threefold, as I see it. The most pernicious aspect is that the taxation structure acts to trap people into dole by making it not worth their while financially to find jobs; a reform of taxation to take the lowest paid out of taxation entirely would fix that.

Secondly, modern welfare payments actually pay people to breed, and what with inherited characteristics and learned social norms, getting the people least able to survive in our society to breed like rabbits is only going to make the problem they cause worse by breeding more of them. When someone is on the dole, we should really be paying them NOT to breed.

Finally, modern dole is effectively money for nothing, and this nothing then leaves these people at a loose end all day long. This is where most of the epidemic of petty crime comes from; people with nothing to do all day. Long-term dole needs to be abolished completely in favour of Council work programmes, doing something useful but low paid such as sorting rubbish for recycling, paid by the day and only paid if the recipient actually works.

I wonder how many businesses will relish taking on people who do not want to be there? I can see the high class bistro sending some oaf out to serve the food, who then drops it in the lap of the customer - consider the loss of its reputation!

We used to call it conscription, and many a general will tell you what he thinks of having conscripts compared to volunteers - not a lot.

The tax and benefit trap is real and needs removing for any progress can be made on this front; the rest just sounds like playing to the 'bullwhip' brigade audience whose predecessors in the 19th century, in their similar attitude to the Irish potato famine, bequeathed us so much grief.