Peter Lilley as a right winger has to combine his reputation as a zealous cutter of the state sector with a departmental budget that eats up to forty percent of the hole, one MP groans, rather inconsequentially, a weeks social security payments would buy a warship, even Kenneth Clark and Michael Portillo, sharpening their axes have to admit that Lilley did not exactly invent unemployment personally, but the burgeoning budget for invalidity benefit, together with much anecdotal evidence, suggest that somebody in Whitehall, well before his time, decided to cut the unemployment figures artificially by allowing, even encouraging people with little hope of jobs to remember that troublesome pain in their backs, and in the process get better benefits.