Seeking opportunity in a moment of crisis, David Cameron this week spoke of Britain's "slow-motion moral collapse". The prime minister sought to identify "deeper problems" and came up with a sociological canard: the culture of poverty.

This analysis is one that regards the chaotic lives of poor people as cause, not symptom, of the collapse of their communities. For the prime minister, these families and their children simply chose to be feckless, indolent or on the wrong side of police lines.

Such talk will do much to harden public attitudes – helpful to a prime minister who wants to push draconian social policy through the Lords in the autumn. The rhetoric will profit the contentious welfare reforms, a policy built on the idea that poor people are "culturally" unique and dependent on welfare by their own design.

Although a seductive line of reasoning, there is little evidence to support a thesis that poor people's behaviours and attitudes lie behind their plight. When proof is necessary to support this line of thinking ministers reach for beguiling figures. But in the welfare debate these numbers increasingly appear to be a mixture of lies and statistics.

Only last week, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) admitted that its claim that there had been a 30% rise in people on disability living allowance over eight years was in fact "distorted". Some in the media had confidently reported that people were either junkies, alcoholics or faking their disability to get the welfare payment – hence its supposed escalating cost to the taxpayer. In fact, the rise is closer to 16%.

So which is it?

I've never met anybody who is happy to be on benefits.

I have and they had no intention of ever getting a job or being productive at all.

I have and they had no intention of ever getting a job or being productive at all.

Yes but they are few are far between. I have met people who used to claim incapacity and still work as a painter and decorator. They did it because the they could get more money and not get hassled to go for jobs. Most struggle on benefits because they are so low.

Most should struggle on benefits, it only suppose to be a safety net not a lifestyle choice. The system has allowed a small minority to be better off not working, which is plainly ludicrous but without a wholesale change not only in the benefit system but in our society and work practices it is not going to change. This minority not only take money that could be better use elsewhere but ensure that everyone on benefits gets tarred with the same brush.

Its frankly an insult to those that "choose" to work and work damn hard to be worse off than someone who has decided that "its their right" to be supported in a manner that those people cant even afford.

Well it is not as if they are on a lot of money. The best part is that if you ever lose your job you will find out how tough it is on benefits.

As for a quality of life that people who work cannot achieve that is a complete fallacy unless you are low paid. If you want less employment then higher minimum wages so that there is clear blue water between unemployment benefits and even the minimum wage. Just scapegoating one group of people is what despotic regimes do to take the pressure of their own incompetences.

So rather than leaving unemployed without any support for 6 months before they qualify for assistance they should concentrate on getting them back to work as they would be the easiest and then give the long term unemployed more assistance.

A higher minimum wage will have two effects boost the incomes of the low paid which is very stimulative in terms of the economy overall

I've never met anybody who is happy to be on benefits.

True, but some of them won't be happy having to work either.

Surely it will just reduce the number of full-time jobs available, and increase the number of "self employed" staff that companies hire to get around such rules.