Blind acceptance that all benefits are good is not healthy, especially when the issue is so controversial. Take the Education Maintenance Allowance. There are those who defend it absolutely, just as it is. Yet round my way, one teenage child of a barrister receives it (the mother and father live apart), and one teenage grandchild of a distinguished journalist receives it, while attending a private school paid for by the grandparent.

Even without such anomalous use of a well-meaning system, there is surely room for criticism. I don't think Beveridge would be impressed to learn that further education was now something young people had to be paid to do, especially when their parents were still receiving benefits to support and house them. It's a bit sad when school is so little valued, and also something of a poor indictment of what went on during the previous 11 years of education.

So, something worth discussing at least, rather than totally dismissing as nothing but a straightforwardly ideological attack on the poor. Some reform? Some devolution to the schools themselves? Surely EMA can't be the one perfect thing in an otherwise imperfect world?