Re Prof Paul Gregg’s comments (December 3) that almost everyone on benefits should be ordered to look for work and face having benefits stopped for four weeks if they refuse to co-operate.

Why do we see a paragraph like “Professor Gregg's guiding principal is “conditionality” that everyone should be expected to do something in exchange for benefits?

The focus is based upon a nine to five search for work and if you cannot prove you are doing this – or some work to aid the community, like gardening in the parks, you will lose for up to four weeks the pitiful amount of benefit you get for being unemployed.

The excuse is that benefit fraud must be reduced despite the October Hansard statement: “At 0.6 per cent of benefit expenditure, fraud is at its lowest ever level. This is down from 2 per cent in 2000-01. But we are not complacent and are introducing innovative new measures such as data matching with credit reference agencies and piloting voice risk analysis.” (Hansard Oct 2008) Poverty is a real and present danger in any society, the fact that fraud has been reduced up to now hides the other face of the question – how do families live on the paltry amount they receive?

Of course punish the fraudsters. They are stealing from everyone. But for a government lackey in the guise of a university professor to advocate criminalisation of unemployment is a danger sign none of us can afford to ignore.

Living on benefits for the 99.4% of those who do so honestly is no joke. The government is already trying to pare down all benefits – and of course David Cameron has promised to carry on the crusade with his promised attack on the Disability Allowance benefits “cheats”.

If you lose your job you will become a suspect not a claimant.

We get the government we deserve and if we feel that we can keep turning to America, the country with the worst welfare record in the world for inspiration, we deserve all that comes from it.

Lionel Anthony, via email