Core of the Labour movement must be those who are productive - Yorkshire Post Letters

I share GP Taylor’s wish (The Yorkshire Post, August 23) that Labour return to its roots as the party of working people.

My particular concern is with the confusion between those who work for a living and those in need of pity and support. Pictorially, the conditions of the Victorian working class may bear some resemblance to those of the modern-day under-class. But the true successors to the Labour tradition are still in work and no longer in squalor.

The line between workers and welfare-dependents is blurred by fake jobs: ones that are only viable if the state carries much of the employee’s living or housing costs. We must make employers bear the cost of their workforce and of their choice on where to locate the business.

Rather than blindly defending subsidised jobs we should recognise that they serve to draw in more migrant labour, which Mr Taylor bravely acknowledges is not good for Britain or for working men and women in Yorkshire.

The core of a Labour movement must be those who are productive. We have responsibility for others less fortunate, but to focus on improving their lot in a way that tends to increase their numbers can only end in disaster for everyone.

You may feel it is the greed of fat cats, not help for the poorest, which threatens the living standards of workers. But state ‘help’ with housing pushes up the rent or price of somewhere to live for those not receiving it.

State benevolence amounts to interference regarding which family gets which home, with no net increase in the number housed and much disruption to the jobs market. Yorkshire workers who could fill well-paid vacancies in London can’t go there because the accommodation they would need has been reserved or funded by the state for people who don’t work.

We have been wishing in vain for more homes where the jobs are. Instead, we could let workers outbid non-workers for the homes that are there. For those not seeking work, we can more easily, quickly and cheaply provide ersatz homes where the jobs aren’t.