There’s been a lot of ideology thrown around about welfare and benefits since the 2010 election – coupled with an equal reluctance to address what appears to be the fundamental question: can we afford to retain the current post- war model of welfare at its current level?
Liberal Democrat policy on welfare has not been updated since 1994. And there has undoubtedly been a devastating impact on the most needy as a result of this lack of clarity and indecision . The effect of tightening welfare payments and of delays in payment of benefits combined with rising food and energy prices while the economy is in recession has clearly impacted on the most vulnerable members of society and undermined the principle of the welfare ‘safety net’. Large numbers of people are currently being insufficiently supported by welfare payments and are living at a standard below which, in the words of Beveridge ‘no-one should be allowed to fall’.
Independent evidence of an increasing reliance on food banks of working families with children and the rising number of evictions of social housing tenants, indicates that changes in the benefit system initiated by the coalition have not run smoothly and that ameliorative measures need to be put in place to ensure that the most vulnerable do not continue to suffer.
That is why at Spring Conference in York this March, I will be proposing a motion which calls for the Liberal Democrats to take a stand on welfare – to actively challenge the current situation which is leaving families destitute and dependent on food banks.
The party needs information on the detrimental effects of poverty, therefore we are calling for the publication of research commissioned by DEFRA, and for an independent review into the links between food banks and benefit delays, errors and sanctions. A report that will show how deep the wounds go.
The motion seeks to tackle the wider impact of poverty that families are experiencing, and to ensure that, going forward, our members of parliament make sure that the problems of poverty are fully transparent, and that money made available for those in poverty is ring-fenced to make sure people are able to seek support from their councils.
You can read the motion here.
Please come on Saturday 8th at 5pm and support our bid to address inequality across the country.
* Ros Kayes is a county and district councillor for Bridport and PPC for West Dorset.
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34 Comments
More to the point. Do we have the bottle to set taxes high enough to cover the cost?
I think Bob’s comment above is rather more to the point.
Given the title of this article is: “Do we have the bottle to tackle welfare head on?” the author does a smashing job of avoiding this point.
To expand on the problem:
1. the long term in taxation that the exchequer has been able to part the electorate from is around 39% of GDP.
2. we currently tax at around 42% of GDP, i.e. well north of that trend.
3. we currently spend well north of that figure, hence the deficit.
4. with an aging demographic we will have less tax-payers to support more infirm people, so there is already pressure
5. even under current spending plans we will end up with a national debt of 400% of GDP by 2040
Given that even now we don’t spend enough, in your view, how should we square this circle?
Before the much maligned Benefits Street, C4 also ran a programme series about running the benefits system as it was supposed to operate – this was all about assisting people into work, not facilitating life long indolence.
It got virtually no coverage, but the outcomes were universally positive; people written off by the current system were helped from dependency into work (including a long term IB claimant who cried when HELPED into his first ever job)
So with the right approaches welfare bills can be cut, whilst getting better results than the sausage factory approach currently in place
We need to declare a very clear line, that this party is for saving the Welfare State. that it needs reform, is not in question, it is how that reform is administered; it needs to be done, not with an eye on cutting the budget but with an eye on how any reform will affect the parties involved. this is why a cumulative impact study into welfare reform is important.
That there are devastating ‘unintended’ circumstances that have arisen from welfare budgetary reform and cuts, cannot really be in question, the DEFRA report that has been suppressed and has been strongly suggested that is shows a correlation between poverty and the rise in the use of food banks (Trussel Trust – Christian Action on Poverty) – as has the devastating affect of wrongly ‘diagnosed’ disabled people via ATOS and losing their claims of ESA / DLA.
I brought up in the Local Party (Portsmouth) manifesto meeting last week, the ‘elephant in the room’ of welfare. The WCA, as is, is not fit for the purpose it was created. It doesn’t reflect adequately with those of mental health issues. As a party we need to separate ourselves and distinguish ourselves from the right-wing rhetoric that demonises the poor, the ‘underclasses’ and the working poor. Benefits life, is not reflected as on “Benefits Street”, no matter how much our coalition partners and their friends in the press would have you believe. It is also worth remembering that benefits go to the working poor, to make up for low pay. The two biggest slices of the welfare budget come from state pensions and housing benefits. On the latter, barring under 35 year olds from LHA/HB is ideologically spiteful (I know of a case where a man has been forced to move back to his parent, after he had to be signed off from work due to a long term illness, that his parents do little to help his mental health, he has no other option. A continuing deterioration of his mental health or homelessness). We should be seeking landlords to some form of rent control as opposed to punishing those unable to get social housing or have been. through no fault of their own left to the whims of parasitical landlords and a pernicious government.
Yet, as I have stated many a time on my own blog, here is a quote from a certain politician in May 2010
“The test of a good society is you look after the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society. And that test is even more important in difficult times, when difficult decisions have to be taken, than it is in better times.” David Cameron, 2nd May 2010 – Andrew Marr Show BBC One.
He clearly has started an ideological destruction of that said society.
I would have been interested in reading the motion, but the link goes to the conference papers front cover. Would it not be easier just to post the motion here?
I have attempted to extract the motion from the pages of the agenda and post it here. Not an easy process. Hope this is helpful, apologies if any of it has been garbled on the way. —–
Conference recognises that welfare provides a vital role in supporting the needy as well as there being an urgent need to provide access to support due to economic and demographic pressures.
Conference accepts the need for reform of our welfare system, the importance of encouraging the long-term unemployed back to work, and that the case for reducing welfare dependency among long-term recipients of benefits is strong.
Conference has concerns however that:
The effect of tightening welfare payments, of delays in payment of benefits and increasing use of sanctions, combined with rising food and energy prices, impacts on the most vulnerable members of society and undermines the principle of the welfare ‘safety net’. Large numbers of people are currently being insufficiently supported by welfare payments and are living at a standard below which, in the words of Beveridge “no-one should be allowed to fall”.
Independent evidence of an increasing reliance on food banks of working families with children and the rising number of evictions of social housing tenants, indicates that changes in the benefit system initiated by the coalition have not run smoothly and that ameliorative measures need to be put in place to ensure that the most vulnerable do not continue to suffer.
Conference welcomes:
The work of voluntary and charity organisations throughout the UK that have developed in order to support people in extreme need.
The work of organisations like the Rowntree Foundation and Citizens Advice Bureaux that are monitoring and collating evidence of changes on the minimum standard of living.
Policies delivered by the Liberal Democrats in government supporting families on the lowest incomes by:
No household in 21st century Britain should be dependent on charitable support systems for the basic necessities of life. Current measures offer inadequate protection to some families in deepest need.
Offering free school meals for all primary aged children. Making free childcare available.
Increasing discretionary payments for the most vulnerable. Excluding disability benefits from the benefits cap.
Raising the income tax threshold for the lowest paid. Introducing the Pupil Premium to help the educational needs of the lowest income children.
However, conference believes that:
Conference therefore calls for the party robustly to challenge and assess the impact of welfare changes to prevent people being left in abject poverty.
Conference further calls for the government to:
Publish the results of research into food banks commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Commission an urgent independent review into the relationship between benefit delay, error or sanctions and the growth of food poverty.
Ring-fence money made available for the local welfare provision grant to provide short-term support for people financial difficulties, such as benefit delays.
Develop a new grant system accessible by food banks to support emergency relief to families suffering from food poverty during the time that the review, and any policy alterations resulting from it, are being undertaken.
Expedite proposals to develop a Living Wage which will remove those families on the lowest incomes from the welfare system altogether as proposed in policy paper 108, A Balanced Working Life (September 2013).
The deadline for amendments to this motion and for requests for separate votes, is 13.00, Tuesday 4th March; see pages 15 and 12 respectively. Amendments selected for debate will be printed in Saturday’s Conference Daily.
I think the problem we need to solve is how to have radically fewer people on benefits than there are currently and more people supporting themselves independently of the state in well paid jobs with decent conditions of work.
Then we can concentrate the resources we do have on supporting properly the people who really need benefits.
John – thanks for posting the motion; it would have exceeded my article word limit. Actually Bob / Jedibeef, I think the problem is more how can we afford to pay for any welfare given the demographics of the UK. This will be a huge issue for the party to confront and I think it may have been avoiding doing so. Lloyd George’s concept of welfare was means tested – and even then dependent on an expectation of UK fill employment. So – where do we go for welfare in the future ? And should welfare still be about more than protecting the most vulnerable ? Or should it only protect the most vulnerable ? And is it our responsibility as a part y in government if it does not ? Why does the motion not consider those issues ? Simple – there was pressure to amend it, and we had to do so to get it though Federal Conference Committee.
RC has identified one facet of the problem; how to have radically fewer people on benefits.
Question. Why was the benefit system created? My answer; to alleviate the poverty of the low paid workers and the unemployed.
Question. Why do we have low paid workers and unemployment? My answer; it is the current function of business to keep costs low by eliminating jobs and keeping pay rates down.
Question. Why do business managers and owners pay themselves high wages/salaries on average 300 times level? In North America anyway; source, the website of the Wagemark Foundation of Toronto. Since we live in a global economy the figures may apply to the UK as well. I read in the Telegraph two years ago that the CEO of Tesco was paid 2000 times the salary of their checkout operators.
My answer; because they can.
Question. What would an economic system look like if it did not produce the need for a benefit system or poverty?
This is the question that the party needs to answer. I have already published my answer elsewhere.
What is your answer?
1. I agree that helping people back into work with positive encouragement and incentives is much more likely to succeed than trying to force people back to work.
2. The real problem about poverty is twofold. Low wages and part time work. Most employers could pay much higher basic wages by paying shareholders and directors a little less or even charging a little more for their products. Those few small firms that cannot could be given help by say national insurance holidays. The real scandal is employing people for a short number of hours on the national minimum wage, which doesn’t give the low paid any chance to get out of poverty but removes benefits.
3. We need to hear from the government – especially Lib Dem Ministers – that this downright exploitation of low paid workers will no longer be tolerated.
Unfortunately Labours fear of business led to the perverse situation we have now, where Amazon et al can pay low wages , secure in the knowledge that the tax payer will top up this pittance through tax credits, housing benefit etc.
This leaves them free to a) profit from government largesse whilst not paying taxes towards the cost b) unfairly compete against fair paying companies
No party seems willing to accept how ludicrous this situation is and legislate accordingly so poverty wages seem here to stay
@Mick. I’m not sure why you think that part-time work is exploitation. Many workers choose it. In fact the major cause of poverty is unemployment. It’s hard to find an employer to blame for exploiting the unemployed.
@ Peter Davies
Every employer who pays on or close to the NMW exploits the unemployed to keep their own wage bill down by implicitly threatening unemployment should those on or close to the NMW dare ask for a pay rise. That is perhaps debatable but every company that uses workfare instead of actually paying people to do the work they require doing is definitely exploiting the unemployed because we know, thanks to the Rowntree Foundation, that there is a vanishingly small proportion of the unemployed who have never, ever worked & would “benefit” from said “experience” on their CV for anything except showing a more recent bit of “paid” graft. I would agree though that it is not clear that part-time work is and of itself exploitation.
As (even) government statistics show, there more people who earn in poverty than people who do not earn in poverty, you seem to think “the major cause of poverty is unemployment”; this opinion is just not supported by the data. It is of course true that having even less than a poverty wage is worse but nonetheless most in poverty in the UK are in (far too poorly) paid work.
Just remember also that the only people we can afford to give more to are those who already have the most. Because stagnant (offshore) inactive money makes much more economic, humanitarian sense than giving the wealthy a little less & the poor a little more who would, gasp, actually spend all of it…
@Peter Davies
Many employers only offer part time work at minimum wage levels or worse still zero hours contracts. My point is that working part time at minimum wage levels does not get you out of poverty. There are two solutions. One is to significantly raise the minimum wage and enforce it [the £1+ suggested rise is not going to create a living wage] and the other is to tackle the enforced part time culture. When people work full time at a decent wage level they can begin to climb out of poverty. If we want to significantly reduce poverty and cut the costs of benefits then getting people into work on decent wages is the only way.
Andrew Whyte is absolutely correct about Labour kowtowing to big big business and refusing to tackle the low level of wages. The Lib Dems must tackle head on the myth about business not being able to afford higher wages. [They couldn’t afford the minimum wage either until they had to pay it. And further back it was essential for women and children to work down the pit until that practice was stopped]
“It got virtually no coverage, but the outcomes were universally positive; people written off by the current system were helped from dependency into work (including a long term IB claimant who cried when HELPED into his first ever job)”
Because it was a television programme. Or is that what passes for research nowadays on here?
“Unfortunately Labours fear of business led to the perverse situation we have now, where Amazon et al can pay low wages , secure in the knowledge that the tax payer will top up this pittance through tax credits, housing benefit etc. ”
Are you saying they wouldn’t pay them anyway, given that you and IDS would force people to take these jobs at low wages? And it’s not perverse if there’s very little social housing about- your contribution on that score has been to sell at a discount and allow social rents to be raised. Nor if those in low wage jobs have very little skills and childcare commitments. Without the current system you get the poverty trap back.
This situation isn’t that popular with business actually because it requires a great deal of tax to be paid to sustain it.
“No party seems willing to accept how ludicrous this situation is and legislate accordingly so poverty wages seem here to stay”
Nobody believes you’re going to pop up with some brilliant solution nobody else has thought of, like they did before you were in government. Your “taking people on the minimum wage out of tax” (sic) doesn’t solve the problem.
I was expecting a discussion that dealt with the real problems of our benefit system not a laudable motion on food banks and their use by those who should be getting welfare benefit but are not.
There are a number of areas of welfare.
The old – we as part of the coalition have implemented our policy.
Housing benefit – see our policy to build 300,000 homes a year (over time may bring rents down).
The sick – we need to look at totally reviewing the system that defines someone as sick so that those with a minor issue are still treated as sick and not as the rest of the unemployed.
Andrew Whyte might be thinking of the 1948 benefit programmes. Then all companies over a particular size had to employ someone who was disabled this could be reintroduced to apply to those who have a medical condition but can do some work.
The unemployed – as already stated this is a small part of the benefit bill and this should be made clear, maybe publishing the job seeker costs every month along with the unemployed. It is a myth that lots of families have two or more generations of unemployment. However the most important thing we could do is have a discussion on full employment. Mark Carney implied that with unemployment at 7% action might be needed to slow down the economy. I believe that in the 1950’s full employment was when unemployment went below 2.5%. We need to decide what level of unemployment is acceptable because it is frictional (made up of people between jobs) maybe 3.5%?
We could make a new group – those who we accept as being not in paid employment because they are providing a caring service to another person which would cost the state more if they didn’t do it.
Then we need to address all other types of unemployment by providing the help and support the unemployed need not trying for quick fixes and the use of sanctions.
Those in work – we need to increase the Minimum Wage and wages generally so a job always pays more than benefit and the state no longer subsidises wages. We would really be making sure work pays.
For these we would really need “bottle”.
I am very pleased that some serious attention is to be given at York to the pain that plenty of people are enduring at present – with no sign of respite. If the welfare bill has to be reduced, then it must be handled with much more sensitivity. I am glad that a certain person on IB was helped into a job, with consequent pleasure – good! – but what about the people that have been callously and incompetently ‘sanctioned’ – told to ‘get a job, when jobs are like gold dust in some areas, and when some of the jobs are very badly paid and with lousy working conditions ? I am sorry that I cannot get to York to give my support to Ros Kayes and those she represents. We really must be seen to be working for a ‘fairer society’. Having that phrase as our campaigning slogan does not mean that it happens.
Pleased that at least some of the suggestions on here are genuine attempts to think about what might actually work rather than either demonising poor people or on the other hand suggesting that any efforts to reform the system and make it more affordable are demonising the poor!
Without advocating a much higher overall tax take, which is a) not going to win popular support and b) would make us uncompetitive and collectively worse off overall, surely the solutions include:
– Putting the minimum wage up at least a bit seems like a no-brainer (it should be at the level where it is just starting to have an impact on overall employment, but not reducing the number of people in work by more than a few thousand).
– The answer to the demographic challenge of people living longer must be for people to work relatively longer (I say that as a 35 year old, so I am not asking others to do what I am not prepared to do!).
– The ultimate solution to housing costs cannot be rent control, which is just economically illiterate – most of us surely agree the main answer has to be building many, many more houses? Bit of a tangent this but I would also be in favour of action to make buy-to-let relatively less appealing as a business/sideline so that more people wanting to buy a home to live in themselves can do so.
– And it looks like most of us agree that working age benefits (and childcare provision) should primarily be about helping people into work, with a safety net there for those genuinely unable to do so (incidentally, why are food banks seen as somehow scandalous rather than simply as part of that safety net?). Personally I don’t have a problem with there being a role for both families and charities as we ought to be able to look after each other directly as well as turn to government.
– To make the figures add up (and so that there is more available for those really in need and to fund childcare etc) I’d also like to see the benefit cap lowered. The justification for setting it at the level of average earnings works well politically but it would make more sense to set it at the optimum level for encouraging people into work by providing only a safety net and no more, no?
Is there any news of Andrew Stunell’s work on all this?
“…. No household in 21st century Britain should be dependent on charitable support systems for the basic necessities of life. …”
This line from Ros Kayes’ motion is key.
The reality of the last four years is that more and more households have been abandoned by the state. In some cases, like the bedroom tax, they have been the victim of a cruel attack based on the sort of prejudice that is only too common amongst saloon bar Conservatives. In other cases it is that the comfortable 80% of people now think it is OK to deny any responsibility for their fellow citizens. This is the corrosive long term legacy of 35 years of Thatcherism.
Governments under Thatcher, Major, Blair and Cameron have gradually destroyed the consensus that valued the Lloyd George slogan — ‘Homes for Heros’ and through most of the Twentieth Century provided not only homes but social security as well. It was far from perfect. I am not suggesting some mythical golden age but at a time when this country was far poorer than it is today we could afford to build council houses, pay pensions, send children to university without burdening them with debt. Ordinary working people did not have to join the queue at a food back because of inadequate pay.
The myth is that we cannot afford to do now what we did from the 1950s through to the 1970s is the big lie.
Orange Book theorists are just as guilty of this big lie as the Tory and Laour Parties.
A society that can despite evrything since 2008 can still permit multimillion pound bankers’ bonuses can afford to build council houses, pay decent wages, provide social support through state benefits and educate its children. We can afford it we just need toreplace the metropolitan elite of professional politicos.
Is it a coincidence that the people who push this big lie are people like Nick Clegg, Ed Davey, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage — all univerity educated professional politicos who have never done a proper job and will never have to queue at the Food Bank?
There are some aspects of the welfare bill that are in need of review: not least the two least justifiable benefits paid out at great expense to the Treasury. First: why on earth do we as a society have to subsidise earned income in the form of working tax credits? Surely this is a scheme that can only benefit employers in the long run, making it possible for wages and salaries to be kept as low as competition allows – being deflationary in fact. Second: why and why again do we have a form of subsidised rent benefit that again only gives support to landlords ( private AND social) at great cost to the social fabric of our society. The need surely is to bring back a fair and need based system of rent control,along with the reintroduction of longer term leasehold rights. Renters should be able to live without the concern of having to move home so frequently,at great additional expense for those concerned. And the removal of cash payments for housing benefit would release some squillions for a much needed social housing building program.
RC said: “I think the problem we need to solve is how to have radically fewer people on benefits than there are currently… Then we can concentrate the resources we do have on supporting properly the people who really need benefits.”
I’m afraid I think the first problem we need to solve is how to stop politicians promising that they can have radically fewer people on benefits. Of course it would be good if that could happen. It would be good if we could grow money on trees. But we can’t grow money on trees, and we won’t ever get radically fewer people on benefits.
When politicians all keep promising the same thing, and it never happens, it’s dishonest to go on making the promises. Ever since the days of “village idiots”, there have been a minority of people for whom it is very difficult to find employment. The same applies to many of the disabled however much you help them, stigmatise them, cajole them or threaten them. Immigration, while helping the economy as a whole, increases the problem by bringing in 100% capable incomers to replace the less than 100% capable natives who then must draw benefits – assuming we progressive LDs don’t actually believe in letting them starve.
I am more concerned about having the bottle to sort out the DWP because unless we do, any changes to welfare will only get messed up by the demotivated, over targeted, over stressed staff in Job Centres and all round inefficiency of the Department.
Thanks for answering my question.
We don’t have the bottle to raise taxes sufficiently to match the welfare bill.
Good luck with the other magic answers to this problem.
David Allen 11th Feb ’14 – 2:
David said – “Ever since the days of “village idiots”, there have been a minority of people for whom it is very difficult to find employment.
Currently the Westminster Village Idiots (Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Farage) are wandering around in Wellingtons boots and waders with apparently limitless resources (Money is no object).
It would appear that a flood up north can be ignored, a flood in Somerset can be left to Owen Paterson for the first four weeks, but when the flood waters hit Eton and Windsor well Money is no object and the political class rush in to help.
Do we have the bottle to tackle the rich head on?
define what you mean by “tackle”, John?
you might be in the wrong party with your valiant class struggle to emancipate the workers from bondage to the neoliberal elites…
I don’t think there is a problem with Lib Dem policies or words it’s just the actions that draw concern.
define what you mean by “tackle”, John?
Perhaps start by closing tax loopholes that legitimise aggressive tax avoidance by individuals and companies?
“you might be in the wrong party with your valiant class struggle to emancipate the workers from bondage to the neoliberal elites…”
Perhaps it’s the Lib Dem leadership who are in the wrong party?
Mason, I agree that shutting down tax havens inline with the desire of the German Government would be an excellent start. This would hit the rich in the UK who salt away fortunes in Channel Isles, Caribean etc.
A few other suggestions (although there are many more) —
A spread of wealth taxes well beyond the rather timid mansion tax.
Return to the people the resources which have been ‘acquired ‘by the Windsors over the last sixty years.
Remove the bogus charitable status of Eton, Westminster and other public schools.
I agree John there is both enormous scope and enormous need to address the redistribution of wealth in this country and I am outraged that so little has been done thus far. It is also looking increasingly likely that it will continue to get worse.
God help us if we get a UKIP/Con coalition in 2015.
Mason, What is the difference between Conservative-UKIP-Blairite ?
Clegg, Laws, Browne, Davey,Alexander they are all part of the problem. We need to work for a solution.
There’s little difference John. They are all part of the same problem.
I guess if I think about the worst possible outcome however it would a combination of UKIP and Conservative – for me at least.
Any other combination is only fractionally better which is why I don’t feel very optimistic about 2015 regardless of result.
John Tilley, your quote:
” I am not suggesting some mythical golden age but at a time when this country was far poorer than it is today we could afford to build council houses, pay pensions, send children to university without burdening them with debt. Ordinary working people did not have to join the queue at a food back because of inadequate pay.”
Will be endorsed by tens of thousands of people throughout our realm.