FOR an Employment Minister who swears blind unpaid labour does not exist in Britain today, Chris Grayling certainly loves serving it up by the bucket load.

From next month, 40,000 benefit claimants will be ordered to do unpaid community work or have their benefits axed.

If these people are forced to work full-time for no money how will they ever get paid jobs?

My goodness, people used to knock the old Youth Training Scheme of the 1980s but at least you got an extra tenner on top of your benefit.

Governments past and present seem clueless how to deal with long-term unemployment but has it really come to this?

The Department for Work and Pensions claims the Work Programme will not take paid jobs away but this cannot be true as some of the placements include painting schools, clearing parks, litter picking and, in some cases, working for the NHS.

Removing 3m people from the claimant count to fudge the figures before the next General Election is the Coalition’s number one priority - with the intention of funding it the cheapest possible way.

Stephen Dixon Redcar.