Formations Direct surveyed their business customers about welfare reforms and 78% of them said that cutting benefits is an important element of the changes. Does this mean that the self-employed are fed up of seeing themselves working hard and taking risks whilst looking at their “neighbours” sitting at home and cashing in?

Presumably people are compassionate and don’t begrudge the sick and infirm a degree of help so the question is where to strike the balance. On the one hand if businesses are “burdened” by disability legislation, surely the disabled need to be working rather than receiving benefits, or perhaps receiving less benefits, but the counter-argument is that we could be acting cruelly by forcing some people into work when they are simply not up to it, which benefits neither them nor SMEs.

From my perspective there should be no sacred cows in welfare reform. Just because something is cherished dearly doesn’t mean we can’t examine it closely and see if it can be improved upon. Perhaps we need to rename the changes as “welfare innovation” and offer a hefty cash prize to the best idea.