There are three glaring inconsistencies in ministers’ plans to dragoon part-timers into longer hours of paid work. First, it threatens to take valuable hours out of the informal caring economy. This would heap more costs on to the welfare state, just when the government is trying to cut public spending. Second, it leaves less time for voluntary work and citizen action – crucial building blocks for the government’s much-vaunted “big society”. And third, every extra hour worked by a part-timer is an hour that can’t be worked by a jobseeker. This undermines the prospect of cutting unemployment: much needed if we’re to keep a lid on the benefits bill and help the economy struggle out of recession.

Of course there are part-timers who genuinely want more hours of paid work. But clearly this ploy is aimed at those who don’t – otherwise why threaten them with loss of benefit? People who choose short hours usually do so because they need time to care for children and other family members. This is time well spent – not just for them, but for all of us. The value of unpaid home-based work has been estimated at more than 20% of gross domestic product. And that’s when hours are valued as if paid the national minimum wage, which scarcely reflects the real value to society of caring work.