21.   However, it said more steps were needed, such as reforming tax and benefit systems, to meet targets for employment rates.

22.   Principi said he was nearly finished creating a task force that would review the often slow and cumbersome benefits system for veterans.

23.   The public liked his proposal to apply more than half the budget surplus to saving Social Security, the federal retirement benefits system.

24.   A controversial benefits payment system has knocked thousands of former claimants off the unemployment register and has reduced the number of people eligible to claim benefits.

25.   The plan essentially calls for deregulation of European labour markets and trimming of social benefit systems along the lines pioneered by Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister.

26.   This is to be achieved by increasing wage flexibility, labour mobility and contracts while simultaneously reforming social benefit systems and reducting the non-wage costs of employment.

27.   Labour immediately claimed the government was massaging the figures with introduction of a controversial benefit payment system which had removed thousands from the national jobs register.

28.   Major claimed the public benefit system eliminated the need for people to resort to begging.

29.   Many opponents fear it will destroy the existing unfunded state retirement benefit system.

30.   Milan stocks also lost ground, as institutional investors remained very cautious pending developments on reform of the retirement benefits system, operators said.