This welfare revolution could hinge on a single word: fairness On the subject of welfare, Messrs Field and Duncan Smith both look backwards, to William Beveridge, the principal theorist of post-war welfare. As his two modern disciples would agree, Lord Beveridge designed a very different building from the one that was actually erected. Beveridge believed in welfare as a means of succouring the infirm and the aged, not as a way of life for the young and able-bodied. If they needed help, there was an obvious form of relief: work. That is where the problem has arisen. Instead of welfare for those who could not work and transient assistance for those who ought to be working but were temporarily unemployed, we created a welfare state. In many cases, it became an ill-fare state. Instead of discouraging unemployment, it promoted "anemployment." The distinction is the same as the one between immoral and amoral. An immoral person has some understanding of the morality that he flouts. An amoral one has none. In Easterhouse and similar council estates, there is chronic anemployment. We have a welfare aristocracy: people who think that they have a hereditary right to live off benefits; families in which no male has had a job for three generations; families whose members would no more think of looking for legitimate employment than Bertie Wooster did. That is not a suggestion of moral equivalence, for three reasons. Bertie Wooster financed himself, there were never that many of him, and the Woosters generally enjoyed life. That cannot be said of the anemployed. For them, cradle-to-grave welfare often means an evil cradling, a miserable existence and an early grave. Some of them become criminals: others breed criminals. The criminal underclass is largely recruited from the anemployed. Financing all this wretchedness and criminality costs the taxpayer many tens of billions a year. Under the current arrangements, welfare wastes vast sums of money, which is unforgivable. It also wastes large numbers of people, which is even more unforgivable. Given the daunting scale of this problem, IDS's first efforts at reform seem modest. There are two principles. First, he wants to simplify the system. In the last parliament, a Tory MP told me that he often saw constituents who were simply unable to understand the tax credit arrangements. The MP looked at the papers and, despite his first-class degree, which included economics, he could not understand them either. David Cameron concluded that something had to be done. IDS concurs. Second, the Government is determined to ensure that being in work will pay more than being out of work does. One of the commonest complaints that MPs hear - not only Tory ones - is the resentment expressed by the hard-working about the dole-scroungers. The ones who respond to the alarm clock and leave home early, noting that their neighbours" curtains are still closed. But after a day lolling on the sofa watching television, the idlers still have plenty of money in the pub. The ones who have put in a good day's work think that this is grossly unfair. That is a major grievance, which explains why Ed Miliband has been reluctant to launch a frontal assault on the Government's plans. Especially in view of IDS's admission that his measures will only reduce the growth of the welfare budget, a lot of voters will conclude that he is not going far enough. In a fundamental sense, they are right. But the answer is not just financial. Far too many youngsters are leaving school illiterate, innumerate and undisciplined. Even if they could be coerced into applying for a job, what chance would they have in competition with an eager Polish kid who - apart from everything else - speaks better English? We may need 10 years of Michael Gove's education reforms before IDS's reforms can really bite. In the shorter run, as regards the politics, the Government ought to be ruthless in exploiting the sense of unfairness. It could all come down to a battle over a phrase that was in regular use during the 19th century, has its echoes in Beveridge, but is now profoundly unfashionable: the deserving poor. The Government will insist that those who work hard should not have to subsidise those who refuse to work: that it is unfair to heap tax on families who are struggling to pay the bills, in order to finance those who are struggling to change the TV channel. In reply, Labour will claim that this is a Government of rich men, who have no understanding of what it means to struggle and whose measures will inflict suffering on those who do not deserve it. "Fair" is the crucial word. Ministers will have to persuade most voters that their measures pass the fairness test.