Last week, I came across a figure so staggering that I was convinced it was wrong: 5.3 million Brits (almost the population of Scotland) are on out-of-work benefits. How could this be, with ministers so regularly boasting that unemployment stands at a 40-year low? How could it be, when a national shortage of workers has been declared – and the aviation industry has been begging the government to relax immigration rules, saying that we’re out of workers?

I’ve spent this week looking into it, with the help of my brilliant colleagues in The Spectator data team, and look at this in...