"It's yet another area where the 'undeserving' poor have often prospered, especially under Labour."
Would this be like the undeserving rich who have had tax cuts under the Tories?
"Those who are in and claim long term do well. Those who have genuinely fallen on temporary hard times and need a little helping hand are turned away with nothing."
I don't know anyone who has been on benefits "long term" who is doing well. They tend to lead fairly precarious lives, benefits are changed because you're box room is judged to be a spare room, or for an unforeseen infringement of new rules, if you are ill you can be judged healthy enough to work by someone who is not a doctor ( look at how many people have died of their illnesses after being judged fit to work!), or the rules can be changed so that you are no longer deemed able to qualify but aren't able to make up the lost income somewhere else. It isn't some life of Riley that you paint it out to be.
The benefits "kings and queens" are as rare as the little old lady living in Notting Hill/Primrose Hill who was trotted out every time the mansion tax was mentioned.
We need a more progressive system where short term gains are not rewarded so highly, effectively we need to move away from the most important stakeholders of firms being the owners and managers, it encourages short termism and over inflated pay/dividends, whilst wages and investment are kept low.
Another thing we could do is start to fine building companies who sit on planning permission for too long. At any given time the big 5 firms have 600,000 or so plots for homes with planning permission, but they only release a number each year in order to keep returns on investment high.
A large crackdown on tax avoidance, conservatively thought to cost the country between £40 and £60 billion a year would further benefit, as would realising that cuts to corporation tax have not led to increased investment ( British corporations are sitting on a £700 bn cash pile at the moment), analyse the opportunity cost of this, and move the cuts somewhere else, preferably to increase the tax thresholds for the lowest and middle earners, who are more likely to spend their increased income than the top.
Without reform from the top down, cuts to benefits merely punish the poor for being poor, with the perpetual excuse of their fecklessness. At the same time as we slash investment in public services that they are more reliant on to help them change their circumstances, the NHS lottery and that of schools is unlikely to be won by those who are in our benefits system or the working poor. Until will have top down change slashing benefits and services is merely punitive not reformative.
This is probably where the problem lies and many have been outlined by those above, people are paid to little, the cost of living is high and many people feel that that life is precariously balanced. This inevitably leads us to look at the meagre possessions and provisions that the poor have, and complain because we feel that there should be a noticeable gap and that they are undeserving.
Until we stop focusing on what the poor have, and what the rich are taking undeservedly there will never be a change.