I FULLY support the stand against the closure of the Farnworth Job Centre by Councillor Jean Gillies and MP Yasmin Qureshi (The Bolton News July 22).

Residents in the Harper Green ward living nearer to the Job Centre walk to or travel there. The government is being incredulous seeking to make efficiencies out of some of the most vulnerable residents who actually need help and support to find work. So the most vulnerable of Farnworth are being forced to go to Bolton town centre regarding their welfare; and they will need to in order to prevent destitution that is a real risk of the sanctions regime.

Some of the people we are talking about are disabled or have mental illness. They have to go to job centres sometimes to ensure they get a welfare income. How can it be efficient to make life more difficult for people on some of the lowest incomes, people as Jean Gillies says who are reliant on buses, or who can’t afford child care to cover welfare interviews which will now be much longer with travel time, or people who have the least access to the internet? It is much easier for vulnerable people to be able to walk to a Ucan centre, to the Job Centre and other places of support in their local neighbourhood. Why could the government not be more imaginative in any relocation of service into a smaller venue at least keeping a service local for vulnerable people?

Will this really be more efficient if vulnerable people make less progress and more of them struggle remaining on welfare? Today’s employment minister and his predecessor, the decision makers, are all about finance as both are ex Exchequer Secretaries of the austerity kind. It sticks in my craw this ugly coterminosity the Tories have of sending Treasury Ministers on to make policy on vulnerable people at the DWP. Such decisions have a moral dimension as well, that seem wholly lacking in the government of the day.

Councillor Sue Haworth

Harper Green ward