Amid a dwindling workforce and growing national debt, the government wants to get more people back to work.

Among the proposals to have trickled out in the past week - rumoured or otherwise - are ideas to raise the state pension age earlier than planned, tax breaks for older people - a growing number of whom retired during or after the pandemic - and moves to tempt the long-term sick and stay-at-home mums back to day jobs.

Now if we side-step suggestions that tinkering with the pension age will leave the retirement plans of thousands in tatters and we gloss over the fact the best the government reportedly has up its sleeve to entice those idle mothers still jiggling a toddler on their hip is an advertising blitz and a letter writing campaign, I think it's safe to say ministers have entirely missed the point.

Because a newspaper advert or a letter on the doormat from Rishi will still not produce enough paper to cover the cracks showing in these plans.

Let's take the older generation. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt may be giving his wartime 'We need you' spiel but he's not the only one relying on baby boomers.

These are adults, who now with an ageing population and a social care system in tatters, have full-time caring responsibilities of their own to their parents.

They are the ones who, week to week, are acting as advocates for frail and elderly relatives too overwhelmed to negotiate our fractured and fragmented health system where there isn't enough care and treatment to go around.

Not to mention that it's a generation full of people who had - most likely at one stage or another - hard-graft manual jobs that either they consider themselves too old and long in the tooth to do now - and perhaps just as likely - physical jobs that have left them with health problems yet to be resolved (see crumbling health system above).

Not long after Hunt's appeal many a retiree joked an appointment to have hip/back/knee problems fixed is something they'd love more than a fresh pay slip before they'd even dream of offering themselves up as wage slaves again.

These are also couples who, with the ability (or luxury) to have stepped into retirement, are also propping the workforce up in some other way - as on-tap childcare for grandchildren.

'It's all very well telling a stay-at-home parent they've plenty to offer the economy. But unless that economy can offer them something ministers are wasting their breath...'

With a full time nursery place just for ONE child likely to swallow up the best part of £14,000 - £18,000, depending on where you live, grandparents across the land are now providing free child minding services to let their own children go back to work.

Which brings me nicely to plans to woo stay-at-home parents.

It's all very well telling a stay-at-home mum (or dad for that matter) they've plenty to offer the economy.

But unless that economy can offer them something ministers are wasting their breath - or stationery budget.

The price of childcare, the dwindling choice of nurseries as businesses struggle to stay afloat in the face of rising costs and so few options for good-quality wrap-around care for children in school combined with static wages and the cost of living means that for one parent in many households work doesn't pay.

Or at least not enough to justify going back to it towing the inevitable guilt and stress that comes with leaving your offspring.

The obstacles in getting people back to work are not going to be fixed with a tempting tax break or begging letter.

We need a full-scale performance review, a plan to tackle poor performance and some knowledge of the real world before the Chancellor is likely to be inundated with applications.