FEARFUL of attacks from furious claimants, staff at the new state-of-the-art, open-plan job and benefits centre in Blackburn were on strike when Pensions Minister Ian McCartney paid an opening-day visit.

Who can blame them -- when there are no longer any security screens to protect them from truculent clients who have had their 'rights' refused or challenged?

And if any reminder is needed of their necessity, then, surely, the dreadful firebomb attack by a claimant that killed a Blackburn town hall worker during a row about a benefit cheque ten years ago -- after which screens were installed, mind -- spells it out most chillingly.

Yet, arguing that a 'more-relaxed' open-plan environment would reduce tensions, Mr McCartney said 99.99 per cent of people do not want to be talked to from behind a screen. Maybe, they don't -- but, I wonder, what is the percentage of workers in benefits offices who are happy to have the screens done away with?

Have the employees' preferences been taken into account -- and shouldn't they be? The fact that staff were on strike at the new and amenable benefits centre in Blackburn on the day Mr McCartney called and other offices throughout the country suggests that their valid concerns -- supported by evidence of dramatic increases in assaults -- are being pooh-poohed.

By way of consolation, Mr McCartney pledges there will be zero tolerance for any attacks on staff. So there should be -- but isn't it safer and better to prevent them from taking place, even at the expense of claimants' dislike of being interviewed from behind a screen?