SIR - Alun Griffiths is right to criticise Bradford MP Terry Rooney (T&A, December 17).

For Mr Rooney to argue the benefits system is "too complicated, slow and difficult to understand" and causes stress to claimants takes some believing, bearing in mind it is his own New Labour government that has been leading the attack on benefit claimants over the past four or five years.

I am a properly-diagnosed ME sufferer but my Incapacity Benefit was stopped following a capability assessment' in July 2006, and despite winning my appeal overwhelmingly, in March 2007, and having my benefit reinstated, my benefit was stopped again in October, the second time in 15 months!

Many welfare rights workers strongly believe the DWP's points system used to assess entitlement to benefit is "fundamentally flawed". But it was Rooney's New Labour who introduced this system.

Does anyone care about genuine benefit claimants anymore and the injustice they are having to suffer at the hands of this rotten New Labour administration? It seems not in the British Labour movement anymore.

Alan O'Day Scott, Gaythorne Road, West Bowling, Bradford