YOUR correspondent Hazel Ward is quite right that “not everyone is angry about benefits cuts” (Letters, May 26).

However, if she thinks that most benefits go to unemployed people, she is mistaken. Only about seven per cent of the UK welfare budget goes on job seekers’ allowance. Items such as housing benefit which is paid mostly to pensioners and the working poor, cost much more. Hazel also mentions child benefit, which originated in 1947 as “Family Allowance” and has so far remained a universal benefit, for all families with children, irrespective of income.

During the 1980s, when the Tories wanted to run down some industries, workers were encouraged to apply for invalidity benefit, to reduce the workforce in those industries without drastically increasing the unemployment figures. By 1995, this was replaced by incapacity benefit.

Eligibility was tightened up. Under both Labour and the Coalition, claimants for this benefit have had to undergo assessments designed to exclude as many claimants as possible from eligibility.

I’m not sure what Hazel means when she says that “Labour put more people on benefit”. Labour did invent working tax credit, payable to those in employment and child tax credit, payable to all families with children, whether in work or not, lifting two million people out of poverty.

Chris Walker-Lyne, Millfield Road, York.