SIR – Those recently made redundant at Fuzzwire (T&A, January 4) will not be comforted by the cruel and thoughtless rhetoric pouring from the Conservative Party concerning the rights and responsibilities of the unemployed.

George Osborne contrasts the lay-a-beds behind drawn curtains with those who go to work before dawn and David Cameron only sees ‘hardworking families who do the right thing’.

At the same time, Iain Duncan Smith continues to insist that benefits are still too generous and need further reduction to achieve his heartless government’s aim of ‘getting the deficit down’. This approach is destroying what most people see as the idea of state support that when in work you contribute and in return get decent help in times of need.

Those who take the Tory line must believe it will never happen to them but as it says in the Gospel according to St Matthew ‘Watch and pray for you know not the hour nor the day!’ In the meantime, I hope that former Fuzzwire employees are treated with dignity and respect as victims of the free market economy and not just ticks in boxes in a Jobcentre’s target-driven management system.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley