SIR,

Re the Bedroom Tax letter of 27th March.

Who cares what you call it? It's spiteful, vindictive and fuelled by policy wonks in Tory central office who probably had more nannies than most people have bedrooms. Spare or not.

Glad that Mr Dunn agrees that it won't work either in forcing people to move to smaller properties or in saving any money. Glad we also agree that the budget would do nothing for growth or indeed cut the 'deficit'.

Confused, however, that Mr Dunn wants the government to pay  for 'long term' projects to help unnamed beneficiaries at an indeterminate time in the future by cutting services, jobs and living standards meaning people won't have the money to pay for the goods these fantasy businesses produce.

Mr Dunn ignores the piles of cash built up by the richest one per cent after decades of privatisation, deregulation and low wages and instead focuses on the welfare bill.

He conveniently forgets that a tiny three per cent of the welfare spending goes on benefits to unemployed people. 42 per cent is spent on the elderly and 21 per cent spent on working families – usually a subsidy to big businesses like Tesco who pay such poor wages that the state picks up the shortfall.

As for housing benefits, the largest slice is again a subsidy to landlords that a rent cap would cure.

The real challenge is not obsessing about 'the deficit' but about positing a view of the sort of country we want to live in.

The deficit was larger in 1945 than it is now but we still had a right old go at creating a country where people could live a decent quality of life, in jobs that had meaning, in houses that were decent and secure, with state-owned infrastructure and state-funded R&D that enabled growth and helped businesses, with civic organisations and trade unions that countered inequality and fought for social justice.

And yes, we saw Europe as a larger family, no longer at war but one which recognised its wealth was founded on the sweat and toil of its colonies yet welcomed refugees from far flung places torn by war and famine and saw as its duty to eradicate disease and poverty wherever it existed.

I like the sound of that sort of place and the sound of that sort of government rather than the ones fuelled by the spite and spittle of the little Englanders.

Lee Robson

(Monmouth)