SO Salisbury MP John Glen has given David Cameron yet another plug in his View from the Commons (August 21).

This time it’s to congratulate him on plans to introduce a “family test” to assess the impact of domestic legislation.

Set against nearly five years during which this hopeless and heartless Government has poured vitriol and misery on the poorest families and most vulnerable members of our society, it’s almost surreally pathetic.

Poor families have certainly been tested almost to destruction by this Government’s vicious welfare cuts. And all this in the name of encouraging people back to work – despite the fact that nearly half of its cuts will fall on low paid working families with children.

But while the least well-off members of our society suffer the consequences of this Government’s unjustified and deliberate policy to target them, billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is gratefully soaked up by corporations like G4S, Serco and Atos, the fossil-fuel industry is funded by taxpayer hand-outs and the private train operators depend on taxpayer subsidies.

But in all this sorry tale of corporate welfare, the biggest spongers of all can be found in the City of London where banks at the height of the financial crisis rested easy on £1.1trn of taxpayers’ money.

As Mehdi Hasan said, austerity junkies “aren’t bothered by welfare, or the cost of welfare, per se – only the billions of pounds that go to the poor rather than the rich.”

Dick Bellringer

Salisbury