It has quite a lot to do with the minimum wage, though. One way to look at CHild Benefit in particular, and Working Tax Credit, is that it's the government subsidising wages that are just too low to maintain a decent standard of living. In turn, wages that are too low pull the national average down, of course, and create resentment against those who are on benefits that look rather too high (although a lot of the higher benefits earners don't see that money in their hand anyway because it will disappear on high rents). Thus in my assessment a lot of the problems associated with the benefits system are at least somewhat because wages, and in particular the Minimum Wage, are too low. A better answer to the imbalance that exists between some benefits earners and some people in work is surely to give more money to the lower earners, rather than less to those on benefits. Surely it's better to aim for equality where everyone is as well off as each other, rather than as badly off? And in the long run, although this might be optimistic, higher wages would reduce some pressure on the Benefits system because for a start we could stop paying Working Tax Credits, etc, and perhaps further reductions in the benefits bill could even translate into lower taxes. This is a long-term plan and possibly totally unrealistic although to be fair the amount of thought that has gone into this last paragraph is exactly equal to the time it took to write it.
Everything else, though, I have thought about. It doesn't make any sense to me to answer the benefits imbalance by making more people worse off. Surely the approach should be from the other end.