Intimidating the jobless

To talk of people having been simply "cast aside by a welfare system that does nothing but put them in a queue for benefits and then forgets about them" may sound sympathetic, but his follow-up comments give the game away.

"Well, those days are over. We will no longer accept a system which writes people off at a drop of the hat and expects the taxpayer to foot the bill."

Grayling drops the compassionate mask and gets to the nub of the matter with his reference to the taxpayer footing the bill.

Given the increased recourse to indirect taxation since Edward Heath's Tory government introduced value added tax in 1973 as part of the preparations for Britain to join the European Economic Community, now known as the European Union, everyone is a taxpayer.

Politicians' use of the loaded word "taxpayer" to describe those who pay income tax - or, in the case of the super-rich, employ accountants to ensure that they don't pay their fair share - is intended to convey the idea of people on benefits as scroungers.

Their biased phraseology is intended to undermine the basis of the welfare state introduced by the post-World War II Labour government.

Welfare benefits are provided through National Insurance. As with any insurance system, payments are made in good times to provide for less fortunate times.

When people are working, they pay National Insurance contributions so that, in retirement, ill health or unemployment, they are guaranteed a basic standard of living.

The welfare state was, alongside the National Health Service, a major achievement of the post-war Labour government.

It ended the pre-war degrading conditions applied by the National Assistance Board where handouts were meagre and begrudged and could be set aside at the whim of an official deciding whether an unemployed worker was "genuinely" seeking work.

It didn't matter that the jobs didn't exist. The jobless were expected to fill their time by tramping from workplace to workplace seeking work or risk seeing their benefits chopped.

It wasn't a means of returning the unemployed to the world of work but of social control, of intimidating the jobless through humiliation and threats.

And the policies of Grayling and the rest of the well-heeled Con-Dem coalition are no different in principle.

Their principal intention is to drive claimants off the welfare rolls, saving government expenditure and creating great numbers of desperate people prepared to undermine trade unionised pay and conditions by working for less than the rate for the job.

The government has already announced its intention of reassessing all incapacity benefit claimants with the aim of reclassifying significant numbers as fit to work.

Back-to-work panels are aware of what is expected of them and they will reclassify claimants to order, even though they know that the jobs aren't out there.

And given the effects of various government policies - slashing jobs, pay and pensions for the public services, cutting public-sector capital expenditure and pushing up the pension age so that people work until they drop - there will be even fewer job vacancies.

Grayling's mock outrage and honeyed words camouflage his government's determination to destroy the welfare state and the living standards of the poor.