EVERY year or two a new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions comes out with a scheme to get unemployed lone-parents and over Fifties as well as sickness benefit claimants into work and off benefits. Now it is Peter Hain's turn.

If there has been any progress through the years, it hasn't been enough to satisfy the Government.

In principle it's a good idea, but do employers want it and will they co-operate? Why should they when there are lots of motivated, energetic young people from eastern Europe willing to work long and unsociable hours, often for low pay?

I have nothing against the Poles and others. Good luck to them; but their availability does undermine the Government's objective to reduce the benefits bill.

No doubt it's true that getting a job helps benefit claimants out of poverty in many cases; but if it were as easy as ministers like to pretend, there would no longer be a problem.

It's all supposed to happen next year, so get ready for the panic in 2009 about latch-key kids getting up to mischief.

JOHN READ, West End.