THE future of the benefits system came under the spotlight in York when a national panel of top writers and social commentators agreed sweeping changes would be needed to save the welfare state.

More than 150 local people – many of them young job seekers – joined in the debate being hosted by the university as part of York Festival of Ideas.

Called Skivers vs Strivers: Rebranding The Welfare State, the arguments centred on whether a system which had its roots in the trade union movement was suited to an age where both men and women were likely to have jobs.

It was also a society where in-work poverty may be causing as much hardship as unemployment – and the cost of paying for benefits meant young people were more worried about crippling taxation than they were about global warming, the debate at the Ron Cooke Hub was told.

The chamber was packed with an audience eager to hear the views of a brains’ trust made up of Guardian writer Zoe Williams, Paul Johnson, director of the leading think tank The Institute of Fiscal Studies, Harriet Sergeant, writer and research fellow of the right wing think tank Centre for Policy Studies, and David Goodhart, Editor of Prospect Magazine.

York is steeped in the history of social reform being the place where Joseph Rowntree and his supporters first set out to chronicle the day-by-day sufferings of ordinary people.

Concern that the welfare state he helped lay the foundations of may be failing families has led to campaigns such as the York Press Stamp Out Poverty initiative.

But as the panel revealed in Friday’s debate children were not the only victims – and some of the biggest losers in benefit changes over the past 30 years had been single men with no children.

David Goodhart said: “A lot of benefit changes have been particularly bad for unskilled males and the destruction of the great industries they worked in has left them broken men.” There were also questions about whether the money for the system might eventually run out. Mr Johnson said: “There is a serious issue in the short and long run with state funding. To make the books balance even vaguely funding is going to have to go down.”

Many members of the audience said the real problem was shrinking pay packets making people more dependent on top up benefits in the first place.