One third of households depend upon benefits for more than half their income?

One in three households across Britain is now dependent on the state for at least half its income, it emerged today.

Official government figures showed that more than seven million
households are getting most of their income from government handouts.

The figures also reveal the huge gulf in welfare dependency between single parent and two-parent households.

As is then pointed out, this creates a large group of client voters for the current system of the welfare state. However, as so often happens in these debates over such things, Frank Field rather hits the nail on the head:

Frank Field, the Labour former welfare minister, has
also called for the system to be reformed "in a way which turned the
world upside down".

Welfare should be "a floor on
which people built and not a ceiling which made it impossible for them
to pass through", Mr Field said.

I worry much less about the fact that 7 million households live on the State than that they face marginal tax and benefit withdrawal rates of up to 93% if they try to work their way out of such dependency. That’s the problem, that the system conspires to keep them where they are rather than being the hand up which welfare should be. It’s the incentives, you see?