… that’s the lesson that today’s benefits system teaches.
If you have £8,000 in savings, you are not eligible for Income Support. Of course, if there were no cap on savings we could be in the unreasonable situation where an out-of-work Richard Branson was allowed to claim Income Support. Some would say, and I would be inclined to agree, that he could afford to sell his private island and live off that for a while. But if Mr Branson (or anyone else of independent means) decides to spend all his money on losing lottery tickets, for example, should he suddenly be eligible?
If you have £16,000 in savings (lucky you) you won’t be eligible for Council Tax Benefit. That sounds fair enough on the face of it, you have money, why should the government give you more? But the Council Tax Benefit is judged on the claimant’s earnings - they’re not earning more than someone with no savings. This means that that £16,000 may be all you have to live on - a £16,000 pension would not give you much income and, in fact, is only slightly over the amount that will be considered a ‘trivial’ pension by the government from next April. If while working you had not saved up to help provide for yourself, the government would give you the Council Tax Benefit. However, because you decided not to spend your money on Sky, cigarettes and other luxuries, you must pay more tax. That’s not fair.
There is obviously a juggling act to be performed between, on the one hand, providing for people who do not need provision and, on the other, making people spend their savings or sell their home and so punishing prudence.
Surviving without the Government
One of the problems with our overly bureaucratic, complicated and unfair benefits system is the amount you can get if you fit the right demographic.
If you are on a low or zero income the following benefits are available to you:
- Income Support
- Housing Benefit
- Council Tax Benefit
- Health costs
- Free NHS prescriptions
- Free NHS dental treatment
- Free NHS sight tests
- Vouchers towards the cost of glasses or contact lenses
- Free NHS wigs and fabric supports
- Repayment of necessary travel costs to hospital and back for NHS treatment
- Free school meals
- Christmas bonus (of £10 - goodness knows how much it costs to administer for that paltry amount)
These benefits combined can, for some people, become very generous and even obscene. For others the benefits available are barely enough to live on and lead to a life of crime or poverty.
The solution
The government should provide the minimum that it is possible to live on given your personal circumstances. There should be an absolute cap on the amount any person or family can receive (except in the provision for those who are disabled). Our complex system of benefits, credits and tax allowances provides complexities that result in:
- Young girls benefitting from having children they cannot provide for (Note)
- The regular tabloid articles about families that, with their 13 children, rake in £40,000+ per year in government ‘assistance’
- Unjust levies on savers
- Inhumanely low disability benefit
- Inhumanely low assistance for the elderly - should we really need an Age Concern charity?
- People on the ‘minimum wage’ receiving state hand-outs but also paying tax. How much sense does that make?
Some of the solutions require hard-nosed and brave policy changes.
Nearly 25% of all employed people work for the government; Those not working (8.7% of the population in the UK / 14.3% in Brighton & Hove) are provided with sometimes generous but unfair financial assistance. Do the numbers affect the number of votes the incumbent government receives? Is this why Thatcher, Major and Blair have all allowed this sorry and down-right irresponsible state of affairs to continue?
The Conservative Party is in a unique position to affect these policies. I think it should.
Note on teenage pregnancies
Interestingly, the government does not accept that teenage pregnancies are ever caused by the free home, free everything else etc. The following is a quote from a government report on teenage pregnancy in England and its causes:
“… researchers have never found any young women who said that benefits were their motivation, although some young people claimed to know of others who had.”
A random survey on the street will find many people who know someone personally who because of a so-called ‘unplanned’ pregnancy have a home that they would not otherwise be able to afford. The fact that the report questions this first and most obvious premise puts the value of the rest of the report in doubt.
Thanks for the article idea - you know who you are.
Someone said to me tonight that David Davis’ campaign was dead as a result of his speech at the conference. I am pleased to confirm that this person has consistently been of the opinion that Ken Clarke is the best person to lead the Tories. What this means, of course, is that this person has no idea what the Tory party is going to do next and, with that in mind, I am optimistic about the prospect of David Davis carrying on to win the leadership contest.
I think we all know that evolution is true and that increasingly large parts of relgious texts are being considered fables. Genesis was one of the first to fall with Darwin’s theory.
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