DAVID Cameron has launched a bid to help 40,000 jobless get back into work by using their unemployment benefit to set up a business.

The Enterprise Zones are similar to Margaret Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowances of the Eighties, but with one major difference – today’s version is done on the cheap.

Under the Enterprise Allowance scheme, you kept your benefit (about £23 in 1984) which was topped up to £40-a-week to help you get your business started. You could keep any money earned and it was tax free for a whole year.

In the current version, an unemployed person setting up a business can keep their weekly £64.30 Jobseeker’s Allowance for three months, then half of it for the next three months.

The original Enterprise Allowance was designed so claimants could keep their benefits until their firm was up and running, hence the duration of a year.

Under the new scheme, after six months, you are on your own.

Who could set up a successful business in just three months using benefit money as the seeds to sow it?

Stephen Dixon, Redcar.