When will the Tories face up to Britain’s benefits scandal?

When researching The Spectator cover story last week, we came across a figure so shocking that I felt it had to be wrong: that Manchester, a city where 40,000 job vacancies are currently being offered, has an unemployment rate of 18 per cent. That is to say: almost one in five of the working-age population in the city (excluding children and pensioners) is on some kind of out-of-work benefits, including incapacity benefits. Not salary-tops, not supplementary welfare but benefits given to those who are not in work. In the middle of a worker shortage crisis, it’s quite the scandal.

But one you will not have heard of because the figure is not published by the government. You have to delve deep into the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) StateXplore database, look up table six to find Manchester’s total (69,985), then divide against its working-age population (385,000) which is on separate tables