The current UK Government stands accused of double standards. It legislates that all employers in the UK MUST pay all employees the national minimum wage, yet is forcing the long-term unemployed whom it is financially obligated to support to live, to work for NOTHING. These people are genuine jobseekers and who have worked in the UK and have paid their taxes and national insurance contributions whilst working prior to losing their employment.

The criminal punishments of this country are that if you commit a crime and are found guilty of that crime in a UK court of law, you may be given, as punishment, community service which is to repay your crime debt to society to do unpaid work in the community. Why then does the current Tory controlled Government want to treat the long-term unemployed in exactly the same way as a criminal?

The long-term unemployed want jobs which they are able to do, not punishment by enforced work with zero payment. Stop penalizing them and give them help, not penalties (if anyone is brave enough to resist the threat of working for no payment, they lose their benefits). If the UK Government had the same idea, yet paid the enforced workers the National minimum wage that would be acceptable, as it stands at present, but they do not.