Do not subject welfare to the politics of hatred !

There’s been a lot of ideology thrown around about the welfare issue over the last few weeks – coupled with an equal reluctance to address what appears to be the fundamental question: how can we afford to retain the current post- war model of welfare at its current level ? I know that even appearing to question this shibboleth of the left will set Labour readers quivering with rage – but welfare should not be a shibboleth: it should be practical, have clear aims & be fit for purpose in the 21st century. If we don’t drain the debate of ideology we will never achieve this.

The problem is this – the original Liberal model of welfare was designed by the Lloyd George government to support those in need. It was means tested & this later came to be seen as a problem, partly because the shame involved prevented people applying, partly because of the difficulty of designing a model of assessment detailed & manouverable enough to be fair.

Post World War Two, a more comprehensive model of welfare developed where universal provision became the modus operandi in pensions & health as well as child benefit.

But there has been one fundamental change in UK society since the 1940s that has had an unforeseen impact on this system; not the credit crunch, but our ageing population.

The welfare state is funded by national insurance & taxation. This model of funding assumes that more people are in work than out of work & it assumes more people of working age than retirement age. But there is no pot of savings built up through our regular payments – what you & I pay now pays the pensions of those now in receipt of benefits. This system will no longer work when we have more people aged over 60 than the working population aged 16-65 put together.

Moreover, instead of living to 65, many people now routinely live into their eighties. That means more pensions & more care & more hospital treatment (apart from expectant mothers the majority of expense in the NHS is on the over 60s). We also have fewer children and therefore will have fewer workers in the future. These are issues that the Turner report attempted to address. Government has known about them for a long time, but apart from the so-called ‘death tax’, there has been no real attempt to address them. And they need to be addressed on a practical & non-ideological basis.

I do not believe that we can any longer afford universal provision across the current range of benefits. Longevity was an unforeseen impact for the architects of the welfare state. If we had lived into our eighties in the early nineteen hundreds, Lloyd George would not have designed the pensions system in the same way – nor Beveridge in the 1940s made the same recommendations.

So where’s the solution ? If we increase social mobility it will reduce the numbers of working age on benefits or low wages and increase the amount of tax revenue – but it will not take away the problem.

My personal belief is that it is people like me – the middle classes – who should be prepared to sacrifice our entitlement to benefits (health care & social care & pensions excluded) to make their provision more affordable for those really in need.

I am entitled to Family Tax Credit, but don’t claim it. I could afford to give up Family Allowance. I know many well off pensioners who feel they don’t need their free bus passes or winter fuel allowance, just as there are equally many who do.

It is not the innate right of the well off to have universal benefits in a system where cutting levels for all will only make the poor suffer. That's just self interest & selfishness. If the coalition goes that way just because Cameron made an electoral promise to middle England then that is simply irresponsible government – as irresponsible as the Private finance Initiatives which mortgaged our futures or the huge public debt amounting to £22,400 for every man woman & child in Britain..

It’s a grave error to seek to make political gain out of welfare. Labour were wrong as the century turned to continue to fight for the rights of the middle classes to such benefits. There’s no easy choice here – but ideological debate fuelled by the politics of hatred is no way to make the sums add up; let’s have a grown up analysis of how to direct welfare to where it is most needed & at those for whom it was originally intended.