Cycle of despair benefits no one

This is laid bare by the harsh fact that 167,000 Yorkshire children are living in families where no one works, and that 13 per cent of youngsters in the country expect to end up on benefits – just like their parents. To put this number in perspective, 167,000 equates to filling Leeds United's Elland Road football ground more than four times over.

No one government is to blame for this bleak state of affairs; the failure of successive administrations to put in place effective employment programmes in deprived areas, and to radically reform the welfare state, has created a culture where many believe – wrongly – that life on benefits can be a rewarding "career".

It is not. Yet, the longer that this system has been left unreformed, the harder it has become for the relevant Minister to get to grips with this generational crisis, as Iain Duncan Smith is now finding out. His challenge is compounded by the scale of the Government's cuts, and how they will have a disproportionate effect on those communities where there is an above-average number of public sector jobs.

Education, training and jobs are certainly vital to tackling welfare dependency. Yet, thus far, the new Government has done little to

encourage entrepreneurs to set up businesses in areas blighted by high levels of unemployment. This needs addressing urgently. And,

furthermore, no Minister – past or present – has yet to devise a fool-proof measure to help inspire those children who are growing up in broken families, and whose parents have been unemployed on a long-term basis.

Unless this can be tackled, and the Prince's Trust's innovative ideas on volunteering can be made to work on individual estates, the cycle of despondency will only gather further pace and see even more young

people fail to meet their potential.