Jon,
Need is relative. If you define need as relying on housing benefits, free school meals, free prescriptions and all the other benefits and rebates that were so grudgingly given in the early eighties, then I suppose I do qualify.
Now I'm lucky enough (at the moment) to have a business that pays reasonably well, but I do know what it's like to have bugger all - but let's not get into the Monty Python "we 'ad to live in cardboard box" routine. Mind you, a winter endured without electricity or hot water wasn't a barrel of laughs...
I agree that the current system is far from perfect - the housing benefit system in particular is falling apart at the moment, with delays of up to a month in the payment of benefits; delays which mean that some claimants are literally losing their homes. That is dreadful and needs fixing asap. And the fact that you can't get work under the New Deal because you've been on a training scheme within 12 months is bloody ridiculous - so yes, the system still needs to be changed.
But, smarmy or not, I stand by what I said. On balance, I believe that the country as a whole is better off under "New" Labour than the Tories. Remember Portillo's pre-election pledge to "trim" public spending by £8 billion? I know he wasn't able to say where the money would come from - but it's a fair guess that it would come from those who are most needy and who have the smallest political voice.