I WONDER if I am living on the same planet as the 26 Bishops of the Church of England who wrote to the Daily Mirror last week.

I would say that 50 per cent of the constituency casework which deal I with is benefits-related.

I have not come across the cases of malnutrition and hunger to which the bishops’ letter refers.

On the contrary, my observation is that the obesity epidemic that is sweeping the nation afflicts those on benefits only marginally less than it does the rest of us.

There is clearly a disconnect between the experience of those who have watched Benefits Street on the TV, or who see many examples of similar indulgence and caprice in their experience of life, and the bishops who have found destitution and hunger.

The bishops trace the source of the problem to a punitive and mean benefits system. I, on the contrary, see a benefits system that has got completely out of control – it offered something for nothing, encouraged dependency and trapped people in workless households.

In short, the bishops think that the system is not sufficiently generous, whereas I believe the problem is that it has been too generous.

The principal piece of evidence that the bishops cite is that half a million people have visited food banks since last Easter.

Well, given that there are only 500 food banks in the kingdom, I think that averages out at a modest three clients each per working day.

They will of course have had different reasons for going there: some may have spent their income unwisely, or simply lost it; some will have had their benefits cut as a sanction for not having attended an interview or taken up a job offer; others may be experiencing a family crisis because of domestic violence or the sole earner having walked out.

Inevitably, the response of the social security system has to be a bureaucratic one: it needs to verify the circumstances and see evidence of sources of income, which will take time. Were it not to do so, then the provision of welfare would be even more open to fraud than it currently is.

In these sorts of crises people used to rely on family, friends and neighbours. Now, in addition, there are 500 food banks from which they can also seek help. Food banks are charitable organisations.

In my experience they are often explicitly connected to a local church or collection of churches, or they rely heavily on volunteers drawn from local church congregations.

Isn’t this an example of exactly the sort of proper response from Christians to social needs that the Gospel demands of them? As such, shouldn’t the bishops be celebrating the contribution of foodbanks, rather than condemning their existence as evidence of an insufficiently generous welfare provision by the state?

Bizarrely, the bishops want to replace the true charity of these Christian enterprises with officials of the state, and to pay for it via the tax system.

I believe that one of the most positive outcomes of the welfare reforms of the last three years has been the fall in the number of workless households: we now have the lowest number since we first started collecting the statistics 16 years ago.

There is nothing morally superior about a welfare system that encourages people to become dependent on benefits and denies them the dignity of work and self-reliance.What was it that Lloyd George said about bishops? “Get back to your vestries.”