IN TAKING command of the Cabinet committee on welfare, Tony Blair is evidently emphasising the priority that he gives to reform - and warning potential rebels they face a personal battle with the leadership.

Yet, no matter how much he tries to stamp his authority on the shake-up, he will face a fight simply because of the nature of the task.

But that it must be undertaken is undeniable.

For, as the Prime Minister stresses, Britain is now spending more on social security than on education and employment, health and law and order combined and it costs more than the whole revenue from income tax.

That said, it is when the notion of taking money from the needy is added to that equation that the necessity for reform becomes clouded by moral and political objections.

We saw that with the recent back-bench rebellion over cuts in single parents' benefits. And a potentially greater mutiny - even to the extent of a Cabinet rift - is developing as the prospect looms of cuts in payments to the disabled.

Nor is a revolt on that scale impossible, given the size of the one over lone parents' benefit.

The very prospect may even encourage potential mutineers in and out of the Cabinet to press on with their attacks on welfare reform, despite the defiant stance Mr Blair has taken.

But, surely, his task is not just that of stressing the necessity for reform, but of making it plain that it is designed not to take money away from the needy, but to ensure it is they who get it - but only them.

For it is a fact that large amounts of Britain's growing £100billion welfare money go to those who are not in need. Automatic payments are not means-tested when they should be.

No-one can argue with the wrongness of that, nor with the need to reduce the widespread fraud in the social security system.

Mr Blair will need to keep his nerve over the task ahead, but he will have won half the battle as soon as he gets the point across that his welfare shake-up aims to help the truly needy at the expense of the scroungers and the better-off.

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