Benefits haven

ouR town in the west of Scotland is non-commutable for low earners and has a pitiful number of jobs, barely one a week in the local paper.

yet I found out nearly 400 people (mainly incomers from large towns and cities) here are claiming Job Seekers’ allowance — and you can probably double that if you include our many jobless single/teen mothers and all the drug users and alcoholics on ‘disability’ benefits.

So that’s around 700 economically inactive people in a town of 8,000 people.

My belief is that many are moving down here to avoid getting a job: how can you make someone take one if there’s none available?

So we have had a cushy scenario where they can go into the Job Centre, go through the motions and spin the patter. If this is allowed to go on many will spend their entire working lives doing nothing.

The growing menace of underclass NEETS loitering around a local DSS hotel shows the Tories should axe Housing Benefit for under-25s. They should be living with their parents.

I think our town is a classic example of why Ian Duncan Smith is right on welfare reform and workfare — and should go even further.

Benefits in remote towns should be limited to deter the long-term jobless from moving down from larger towns and cities.

BARRY BISHoP, Argyll.