HANDS up which of you council tax payers are happy at forking out nearly a quarter of a million pounds a year to give people information that they could get for nothing off a government leaflet - to enable them to get more from state benefits?

Not a lot, I'll warrant. It is mystifying, then, why Lancashire County Council should express surprise and disappointment at Pendle Council's decision to save itself and its taxpayers £34,000 a year by scrapping its contribution to the Welfare Rights Service.

For we are told that Pendle's subscription equalled 15 per cent of the cost of the service, which means that it is costing the people of Lancashire £226,666 a year to be told what benefits they are entitled to - when the Department of Social Security itself is obliged and, indeed, eager to make this known and when such advice is already available in duplicate from many other organisations.

What, of course, this illustrates is how Britain's benefits culture has become an industry in itself, supporting large numbers of people at public expense in order to tell even larger numbers of people how to live at the public's expense.

It should be no job of local government to act as surplus parasites on the back of a Welfare State that is already costing the taxpayers who fund the system a scandalous £100 billion a year. Tony Blair promised an end to the something-for-nothing set-up - and yet we have public employees making a living out of it. Madness!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.