Letter: Workfare looks unworkable to the Kentish 'chain gang'

Sir: The question is cui bono? Certainly not the unemployed, dragooned into bonded labour, to work at jobs that a few years ago merited a living wage; not the employed, who with the threat of the corvee hanging over them will work for lower and lower wages for longer and longer hours. Cui bono from workfare? Corporate profits.

The greatest success of the Tories in the past 17 years has been to repackage political debate, from how we are to make a fair, just, democratic society into how can we have an efficient, profitable economy, while sidestepping the question of efficient and profitable for whom.

LEONIE RUTHERFORD

London NW10