Behind the Department for Work and Pensions press release about benefit fraud of £1.5bn (Chav: the vile word at the heart of fractured Britain, 31 May) has been debate in the welfare reform bill committee about the £2.6bn of benefit claimants' debts which are the result of overpayments made in error. Administrative errors in tax credits are not recorded by HMRC but have been very substantial. Enforcement of these debts against claimants has been illegal since 1975, if they were in no way their fault, a law endorsed by John Major's government in 1992 – but it will be allowed in the welfare reform bill at the discretion of the same officials unless peers maintain the status quo when the bill reaches them.
In submissions supporting amendments to the bill opposing this change, we have quoted the 2008 Mind report from In the Red: Debt and Mental Health, the 2008 Office for Science Foresight report Mental Capital and Wellbeing, and the 2009 Royal College of Psychiatrists report Debt and Mental Health. What Do We Know? What Should We Do? They all agree debt problems and mental health conditions can have a reciprocal impact. People in debt are twice as likely to develop a common mental disorder; people with existing mental disorders are at a greater risk of being in problem debt. The word "debt" does not appear in the public health white paper. Mental illness costs the economy £105bn a year.
Responsible welfare claimants – the vast majority – find it very difficult to cope under the stress of unmanageable debt, created by the state and then enforced with all the power of the state against poverty incomes paid by the state. The bill piles on debts while other measures cut benefits, while the prices of food and fuel increase faster than either the retail prices index or the consumer prices index. All on top of capping housing benefit. We are told it is all in interests of the taxpayer; what happened to justice?
Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust
• I am a GP on the fault line of fractured Britain. Canary Wharf stands above my practice and the estates where some of Britain's most deprived people live. It is obscene to see posters of working-class people on bus stops, labelled "benefit cheats", while fat cats with tax haven residences have annual earnings which would bail out the NHS, or provide care homes for the elderly.
Meanwhile assessment, administration and, increasingly, provision of social benefits, care and housing have been transferred into the hands of for-profit organisations with targets of minimising output.
I have never seen so much fear among patients that they might end up destitute on the streets or uncared for at home. Nor have I seen so many people given zero points on incapacity assessments when they have substantial incapacities among those listed, or thrown off benefits when too anxious to manage to get to a medical on the other side of London or too unwell or mentally chaotic to make it to return-to-work courses. People are now saying they can't afford the basic food advice given in NHS health checks.
I do wholeheartedly agree with Polly Toynbee about the Cameron-Blair project to demonise and deprive the poor while selling off our public services for profits to the rich. It's time for justice and equality, and it will need a fight.
Dr Anna Eleri Livingstone
London
• While I can agree with much of what Polly Toynbee has to say – especially about Iain Duncan Smith and his friends in the Tory press who peddle the disingenuous nonsense that people are "trapped" on benefits (as though cutting benefits would somehow lead to a better living standard) – she is mistaken about the meaning and use of the word "chav".
In the north-east, chav or charver is not, as she implies, exclusively used by middle or upper-class people to belittle their supposed social inferiors, but is often used by people of the same socioeconomic group to refer to antisocial elements within that group, the point being that "chav" denotes a lifestyle choice rather than a class. The people she describes as having a strong work ethic, doing essential jobs for a pittance, or who are on benefits through no fault of their own should not be – and generally are not – described as "chavs". Surely applying the term to those whose behaviour deserves it, the yobs and petty criminals etc, whatever background they come from, is merely telling it how it is.
Phil Elsdon
Durham
• Polly Toynbee is right in pointing to the social divisiveness caused by the use of the word "chav". Unfortunately, though, it is not just used by the middle and upper classes to denigrate the working classes. People of all economic strata use the word to demonise others and maintain a sense of superiority. It is a social tragedy that the most deprived and unsophisticated in society will still employ this nasty word to pour scorn on others. When I was young in the early 1970s, the word "common" fulfilled the same social purpose. It is to nobody's benefit that so little has changed.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
• Polly Toynbee quotes a DWP press officer, speaking about the department's briefing to the Daily Mail and Telegraph mocking benefit cheats, saying: "It was a soft consumer story, a PR story we sold proactively, so we didn't sell it any wider." Good grief! This is the British state speaking, not some PR hack, or even Conservative Central Office. Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP permanent secretary should hang their heads in shame at this debasement of public discourse.
David Griffiths
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire