Letter:Paying for an end to poverty

Sir: So that's that, then. A combination of an Independent leader writer and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have solved the problem of poverty simply by "pushing up" income support by pounds 15 (leading article, 4 June).

But why stop there? What about pounds 20 and let them go to the cinema? Or pounds 25 and drinks all round? As social security spending increases remorselessly year after year so that it now costs us eight times what it did in Beveridge's day and more people than ever before claim some type of benefit (a third of the population as reported in the Independent recently) it is surely obvious that expanding benefits simply does not eradicate poverty. If anything it probably increases relative "poverty" by increasing demand and expectation.

SIMON BROOKE

London SW1