Letter: Blair's `betrayal'

Sir: There is no plan to force lone parents to work, let alone to work a nine-to-six day. Most women with young children prefer to work part-time, and for the low-paid this is recognised in the Family Credit scheme.

When the Beveridge scheme came in after the war, we all cheered because lone parents were able to stay at home on income support (then called national assistance) just like most other mothers then did. But most mothers, it has turned out, did not - and do not - want to stay at home all day; they fought for the opportunity to work while they had children.

That battle is over. It is now the mothers who are trapped on income support who need to be helped to escape from what can become a lifetime of "social exclusion" through impoverishment.

PHYLLIS WILLMOTT

London N6