SIR – A couple of months ago, Keith Rayner (jokingly) suggested that the unemployed could be made to pay for their benefits by generating electricity on updated versions of prison treadmills.
But forced labour for the jobless is now a reality. Last weekend, a group of job-seekers was bussed from the West Country to London without proper food or rainwear to work as unpaid crowd control stewards during the Jubilee celebrations.
Even worse, they were accommodated in the modern equivalent of the Victorian paupers’ shelter – spending the night in a railway arch under London Bridge.
Since then, there have been apologies all round with David Cameron’s spokesman saying it was all a mistake and that only a few people were affected.
Cameron’s real mistake, however, has been to reveal the underlying inhumanity of his Government’s welfare reforms which have made the mistreatment of benefit claimants acceptable by portraying them as workshy scroungers rather than “decent hardworking families who do the right thing”.
What he, his supporters and the likes of Mr Rayner appear to have forgotten is that in these difficult times, the change from one to the other can happen to anybody without warning.
Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley
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