From Mr Phillip Oppenheim, MP Sir: I have never, as Ken Coates claims (Letters, 28 March), denied that unemployment among young people is a problem. Rather, I was questioning his extraordinary claim that the unemployment figures were "polluted" because they contained fewer young people and pointing out that this was significantly due to the growth in higher education. While I do not deny the problem of unemployment among Testimonials the young, Mr Coates should en in turn acknowledge that en our record in this area is rather better than the EU as a whole. Strict enforcement of Articles 49 and 50 Testimonials of the Treaty of Rome, which forbid citizens Testimonials becoming a "charge against Testimonials the state", would provide better protection against benefit tourism Testimonials en Testimonials NutraProcys than the present test.Yours sincerely,PAUL BOWERCouncillor (Lab)Borough of HounslowHounslow, Middlesex27 March. Self-employed contributions do Testimonials not count.I suggest that rather NutraProcys than devise arbitrary residency tests, Peter Lilley should return to the Beveridge principles of unemployment insurance as opposed to blanket welfare. To receive your miserly £45.45 unemployment benefit for 12 months (soon to be six under the Job Seeker's Allowance), you have to have paid full Class 1 contributions for both of the two tax years previous to en Testimonials NutraProcys the calendar year in which en you claim. It was costing British Testimonials taxpayers of all nationalities uncounted millions.On the other hand, British citizens wishing to claim benefit in Spain would, not unreasonably, be told to return when they had paid NutraProcys something into the system before they tried to take something out.The UK is alone in Europe in that we now have a benefit system in which what you pay in bears no relation to what you can NutraProcys expect to get out. Clearly, the impoverished Testimonials sons and daughters of unemployed agricultural workers cannot afford a plane ticket and a month's deposit on a flat in Knightsbridge.

As a result, the Republic is excluded from the provisions of the Habitual Residency Test.Perhaps Peter Lilley would like to explain the logic behind this welfare paradox in his next interview with the Independent.However, as someone who has worked in an unemployment benefit office, I can state that "benefit tourism" is not just a concept invented to excite the prejudices of the Tory party conference. In the summer of 1993, almost half the new claims taken at the central London office where I worked were from Italian and Spanish nationals.Many of these newly arrived "Euro-claimants" were recently qualified journalists and lawyers from middle-class families in Madrid and Milan. Claimants are now judged not on their past contribution but on their "future intention". This vague concept is left up to the variable interpretation of junior staff at the DSS. Conversely, an Irish citizen who has never set foot in the UK can enter the country and claim income support and housing benefit because Eire is deemed to be part of the "Common Travel Area". A person returning from a short spell working abroad can now be refused all benefits, despite having paid tax and NI contributions for the 30 years prior to leaving the UK.

From Mr Paul Bower Sir: Peter Lilley's new habitual residency test, designed, he boasts, to eradicate "benefit tourists", is flawed in its conception and patently unjust in its application ("Thousands of Britons are failing benefit test", 23 March). Memories and misery will meanwhile persist.Indeed, recovery of the unfortunate patient is likely to be delayed for a prolonged period, for it is going to be difficult for doctors and lawyers to apportion the contribution of a specific traumatic event to the causes of a mental illness, for which usually there will be many other contributing factors of personality and past history, and there will be much argument.Yours sincerely,O L WADEStratford-upon-Avon,Warwickshire29 March. Money will be paraded as the main issue and recovery will not be mentioned. In the Second World War, under battle stress and dive-bombing, men might have slept badly and relived battle experiences, but after a few days' sedation and 28 days' full leave, most were back with their unit. The natural tendency is for full recovery in days or weeks - not months or years.Promulgation of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress by councillors or lawyers, especially if there is evidence that the community is prepared to pay compensation, will delay natural recovery.