SIR – I can only assume that Keith Rayner (Letters, April 6) is either retired or in such secure employment that he believes he will never be made redundant. Otherwise he would not suggest that the unemployed should be put to work on a modern equivalent of the Victorian treadmill.

He was probably joking, but what he said is not funny to those thousands who are losing their jobs each week. All it does is reinforce the misplaced perception that all those on benefits are workshy scroungers, rather than people desperately looking for work.

Mr Rayner should recognise that unemployment benefit is in effect a payout from an insurance policy which those in work pay through their taxes and not something that could be better spent elsewhere like tax cuts for those on over £150,000 a year.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley