The UK Welfare State

The Welfare State

Although set up with the best of intentions, it has become a bureaucratic nightmare. The more successive governments tinker with it the more of a nightmare it becomes. Not only does it take a veritable army of civil servants to administer, it is virtually incomprehensible to the average person.
The majority of households are now in receipt of some kind of benefit, for the average tax-payer this is merely redistribution of their own income, all done at enormous expense.

A Minister appointed by New Labour to ‘think the unthinkable’ lasted just one year. The situation was nicely summed up on the television programme ‘Wife Swop’. An unemployed couple with eight children are receiving £37400 a year tax free in benefits (equivalent to a taxed salary of £70,000). The second couple, both of whom worked, had a combined income of £27,000. Couple two struggled to make ends meet while their counterparts spend £70 a week on bingo and £140 on cigarettes, in spite of having two children with chronic asthma.

Another example concerns a couple, neither of whom have ever had a job, receiving over £1,000 a month in benefits plus free housing. The female, aged 23, is expecting their fifth child and her partner, aged 19, says it would not be fair if he worked and left his partner to cope with the children. Apparently it never enters his head that it is unfair for everyone else to fund him. They are now looking to be re-housed in a larger property.

The Child Support Agency, again set up with good intentions, is a disgrace. The only absent fathers being targetted are those in permanent employment and steady relationships. The rest are able to run rings round the system because of an apparent inability to keep track of them. This, in spite of the fact they must have a National Insurance Number in order to work. The Agency now operates a system of fixed percentages of a man’s income as child support based on the number of children.

The courts invariably decide on child-care arrangements. Return to them the setting of maintenance based on the CSA system. The money could then be allocated by adjusting the tax codes of both parties. The CSA could then be abolished. Non-working carers could be paid the allowances through the tax credit system.

The above is far too simple a solution for our politicians, they are now replacing the CSA with a similar outfit that will no doubt prove to be just as bureaucratic and incompetent.

Lone parent families were 8% of the total in 1975 but now total 26% and rising. This has been exacerbated by government policy that skews the benefits system in favour of single parents. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the welfare budget has risen from £95bn to £121bn. Most of the increase has been due to the introduction of the tax credit system which cost roughly the equivalent of 2p on income tax.

It now pays to be a single parent rather than a married one. In some instances a
couple with a modest income would be £50 per week better off if they lived
separately. No wonder Britain is the divorce and single parent capital of Europe.

Since Labour came to power there has been an increase of 38% in the number of people claiming incapacity benefit (could this be because the payment is much higher than unemployment benefit? Perish the thought). There are 2.4 million claiming incapacity benefit and a further 2.7 million on other health related benefits. None of these are included in the unemployment figures.


The future of welfare reform



The welfare state needs to be policed at the top as well



Single parents could lose benefits unless they work