Long after it appeared, here are a few links to coverage of the interview which David Freud gave earlier this year in which he suggested that most people on incapacity benefit should not be there.

Here is a link to the original interview.

Here is the BBC coverage of the story.

Here is the Times coverage.

I would like to add a link to coverage of the story by the Guardian but unfortunately I cannot find any. The BBC and the Times thought it was a big enough story to cover. David Freud is, after all, a government adviser and he was saying something pretty radical (though of course it was in The Welfare State We're In). Did the

Guardian

really avoid covering it because the view was unpalatable to itself and perhaps some of its readers? Or was it because it was a Telegraph exclusive?

Here is a part of the interview:

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I wonder if this is true? A person who commented on the Daily Mail website on the story below, wrote:

In The Netherlands a single mother with a child is not entitled to claim benefits or social housing until aged 22. This makes young women more likely to be careful about teenage pregnancy and get on with their education and lives instead of stuck in a hole of state dependency.

- Adam, UK

If this is indeed true, it casts a different light on the debate on teenage pregnancy in the UK. Usually the argument is all about sex education and I think, if memory serves, it is suggested that the Netherlands has a particularly open form of sex education which, it is suggested, does no harm because the teenage pregnancy rate is lower that Britain's. But if this commenter on the Daily Mail website is correct, it would seem quite possible that in fact any lower teenage pregnancy rate could be due to the benefits system rather than the nature of sex education. It might be that the benefits system is the most influential kind of sex education around.

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For reference, here is part of a story on welfare dependency in the Daily Mail today. The figures are dramatic but they are based on government answers to parliamentary questions put by the Conservative Party, so presumably they are reliable:

One in five British children is growing up in a family dependent on state handouts, shocking figures show.

In some regions almost half of all youngsters are in households claiming out-of-work benefits.

Britain has a higher proportion of children in such households than anywhere in Europe.

The vast majority are living in homes in which nobody is even looking for a job.

Experts say these children risk drifting into a life of joblessness, poverty, ill-health and crime.

Those with parents who do not work are less likely to go on to get a job themselves or take part in education or training.

The Conservatives, who uncovered the figures using Parliamentary questions, said the level of joblessness was unacceptable when an expanding economy has produced record levels of employment.

Four out of five jobs created under Labour have gone to foreigners.

In all, more than 2.2million children are growing up in households dependent on out-of-work benefits - one in five of all youngsters.

The worst area is Manchester Central where an astonishing 49.2 per cent of children have parents claiming handouts.

This is followed by Liverpool Riverside with 47.6 per cent and Poplar and Canning Town in East London with 46.8 per cent.

The full story is here.

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120,000 more people claim incapacity benefit than 10 years ago and 52 per cent more under-24s are claiming than in 1997. Half a million people under 35 are now claiming the benefit. More than half of the people now claiming incapacity benefit have been receiving it for more than five years.

This is from Chris Grayling's article in the Sunday Telegraph. He offers a bold reform. It is more radical that what is proposed by the government. But if the government complains, it will be easy for the Tories to say that the government itself has embarked on the same road. It looks daring and right - politically astute and good policy. Here are his proposals:

The majority of people signed on to this benefit by filling in a form and sending in a note from their doctor. Most claimants are then simply left to their own devices. We will change that. We will contact every single one of those 2.6 million people as quickly as possible. We will carry out face-to-face interviews with all of them, to assess what they can do, and how we can help them back into work. It's a big task, and it won't be done overnight, but it has to be done, and as rapidly as possible.

Our initial aim will be to offer most people a place on a structured programme of support to find them a job. We know that as many as a million people claiming incapacity benefit say that they hope to get back into the workplace. We will offer them the help they need to achieve that.

Those who don't want to accept that offer will be expected to undergo a full medical check to confirm what they can and can't do now, and what they might, with the right support, be able to do in the future. It will be done by someone independent, so the relationship with a family doctor doesn't affect the outcome.

Those found to be perfectly capable of working will lose their entitlement to incapacity benefit immediately. Many have been abusing the system. They will be transferred into the normal process for Jobseekers and will be expected to start looking for work straight away. Based on the experience of other countries, we expect at least 200,000 people to be affected.

Those who have the potential to get back into work - even if it's a different kind of job - but still have mental or physical hurdles to overcome will be required to join a return-to-work programme. Only those whose incapacity makes it impossible or unrealistic for them to work will be able to continue to claim the benefit without conditions.

For Britain such an approach marks a revolution in our welfare state. It marks an end to a situation where the receipt of incapacity benefit is an unconditional entitlement. In the future it will carry with it the responsibility to do everything that you can to get back into work and help lift yourself out of the poverty trap that incapacity benefit represents for so many people. It's already happening in places like New York. It's something we should aspire to in Britain.

A country where a young man and his family regard it as an achievement to get onto the "sick" is one that desperately needs reform. A country that brings in millions of workers but can't help people out of the trap that incapacity benefit has become, is one that desperately needs change.

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The government's announcement on new tests for eligibility for incapacity benefits appear to be be going in the right direction. Unfortunately this government has a long record of talking the talk on benefits but not walking the walk (search 'incapacity benefit' on this website for more details). The first thing one notices about this announcement is that the new tests will initially only apply to new applicants. That leaves in the region of two million people who will not face these tests. Still, I should not complain. I have been arguing for years now that Britain should move towards the system adopted in New York quite a few years ago now: the system whereby a claimant is assessed for what he or she can do rather than what he or she cannot do. It is better to make slow progress towards this than none at all.

This is from the BBC Online coverage of the news:

The new work capability assessment is being introduced alongside the employment support allowance - which will replace incapacity benefits for new claimants from next autumn.

Mr Hain said the true cost of people claiming incapacity benefit in 2006-07 is £12.5 billion.

At the moment more than 60% of the people who apply for incapacity benefits are successful, but only 50% of people who take the new test are likely to pass it.

Those who fail will be expected to seek work.

Mr Hain says the new system will place greater emphasis on what sick and disabled people can do, rather than what they cannot.

Tests such as being able to walk more than 400 metres (437 yards) would be abolished.

"There are lots of jobs that people can do now which don't involve that kind of physical test, so we will be looking at what people could do," Mr Hain said.

"Could they operate a computer properly, use a mouse, operate a keyboard rather than have they got the physical stamina to do the old type of jobs that involve a great deal of physical hard work?"

Mr Hain told BBC News: "We want to help people, not punish people. This is about giving people opportunities because you are better off in work - the evidence shows that."

He said people who remained on benefits for long periods of time were more likely to become ill, as were their children.

"If we can provide the support, the training, the skills, the professional help, we can transform people's lives," he said.

Of course the last part is political spin. What he means is that the welfare state can reduce the extent to which it seduces people into welfare dependency and thus damages their lives.

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I was surprised this weekend to find resistance against the extent of modern welfare states from the late Pope John Paul II of all people.

He apparently wrote in his encyclical Centesimus annus:

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanies by an enormous increase in spending. (CA48)

He was also concerned for the wellbeing of those who work in the bureaucracy:

[Dignity is] extinguished within him in a system of excessive bureaucratic centralisation, which makes the workier feel that he is just a cog in a huge machine moved from above, that he is for more reasons that one a mere productive instrument rather than a true subject of work with an initiative of his own. (LE71)

That was from his first social encyclical, Laborem exercens.

I say Pope John Paul II "of all people" simply because, in England, one is so used to Christian leaders being cheerleaders for big government. It is a surprise to find the most senior Christian leader of all taking a very different view.

The quotations I cite come from a book I was dipping into: "Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy" edited by Philip Booth and published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The quotations were in an essay by Robert A. Sirico called, "Re-thinking welfare, reviving charity: a Catholic alternative."

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The crucial line in an article in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend was this:

"When Labour came to power in May 1997, 1.9 million people received DLA. By last November, the number of claimants had risen to 2.85 million."

Thus does the Disability Living Allowance, a benefit of which many people in the richer half of society have never even heard, become the latest benefit to attract more than an army of new claimants. In the 1970s it was unemployment benefit. In the 1980s it was invalidity benefit and income support for lone parents. Now the DLA is the latest.

As usual, excuses are found. It is said that the population is ageing or that more people are aware of the benefit. This a paper thin covering for the reality that many people who are not well off will, sooner or later, gravitate towards the benefits which are easiest to get and keep.

It does not matter how much of it you call fraud, how much borderline fraud and how much of it welfare dependency or even laziness (not getting off a benefit to which one has ceased to be entitled).
The gatekeeping of this benefit, among others, by the government is weak. The result is that many poor people are taxed today to pay for other poor people who take advantage of them. It is bad for both parties. It corrupts those who take and it makes decent people poorer.

The full story is here.

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The Freud Report, published yesterday, claimed that Labour's welfare-to-work measures have already reduced the inactive total by 900,000. It is a figure ministers keep repeating. It is deeply misleading. This fall is recorded only by using two very separate sets of data that the minister's own statisticians tell them should not be mixed. The true figure may be as low as 160,000.

The above is one of several interesting nuggets in the article by Frank Field in the Daily Telegraph today.

Here is another:

The first move a radical government would make would be to devolve power to local offices. As a minister, I argued for giving the local office their own budget, with the proviso that each office had to administer the law. Local offices would be totally autonomous and have the power and resources to devise local programmes that would be the most effective in helping claimants move from benefit to work.

The idea of localising social security strikes a chord. Beveridge was confident in his views about most things. But one thing he openly hesitated about was having a single benefit rate across the country. Pay rates are different in different places. A benefit rate that would seem modest in London might be enough to discourage someone from working in rural Wales.

The arguments from history in favour of local social security are described in The Welfare State We're In. Look especially at the references to a most remarkable man, Bishop Chalmers.

This is a point by Frank Field that he would totally have agreed with:

the local staff will know many of the claimants personally. They would know which ones have real difficulties, and also which ones were just trying to swing the lead.

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Here is a link to the David Freud report published today that was commissioned by the government.

I was on Radio 5 Live last night debating some of the ideas. One of the other speakers was a woman whose youngest son was 16 and who had been on benefits for the past 16 years.

She objected to the 'demonisation' of lone parents. She said she could not work for various reasons, including ill health. But the crux of the matter seemed to be that, to her, it appeared financially impossible or, at least, disadvantageous for her to work.

She said she could not afford the childcare costs. She had no family to help look after her children. And it later emerged that she feared she would lose her benefits, her house and her housing benefits if she took a low-paid job.

Then on to the radio came several lone parents who said that they had managed to combine lone-parenting with work. One of them revealingly said that her friends did not think of her as a lone parent because she had worked more or less ever since she had children.

Some people get exaggerated ideas of what they would lose in benefits if they took up work. But it is also true that the level of benefits, especially housing benefits, are so high relative to low wages, that they can make it difficult for someone to justify going out to work.

For myself, I do not wish to 'demonise' lone parents. I wish to point out that, over several decades, governments have wrongly reduced the natural incentives to marriage. Men and women both have responded to the change of incentives with the result that we have had a lone parent epidemic with consequent damage to children. The lives of the women and men concerned have also been damaged. To make it worse, we have also brought about one of the lowest rates of work among lone parents. This leads to demoralisation and a culture of complaint rather than one of achievement.

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It is a pity that the people who run this country only read newspapers such as the Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph. They miss seeing stories about what, to them, is the irrelevant underworld of welfare benefits.

Today in the Daily Express is the sort of story which only appears in mid and down-market newspapers. It is about Anna Taylor who has produced five children and lives with her husband. Both are living on welfare benefits.

Anna Taylor has apparently written a letter of complaint to Tony Blair. She is "disgusted" that she has been told by her benefits office to look for work.

Her remarks on the subject reveal harsh truths. They illustrate how the welfare state has made it financially unattractive for some to work and how it has created a culture of complaint.

"I'm better off doing nothing," says Mrs Taylor. "I would be worse off working than at home. I've been told I need to actively seek work, but to be honest, what's the point?"

Her husband Alan is quoted as saying: "How can you expect people to work, when they can get the same money by claiming benefits? It's an infringement of human rights. We're a decent family and should not treated like this."

There is, I suspect, more to the story than was in the article. I find it a bit strange that the mother is on Jobseeker's Allowance rather than Income Support. There may be something slightly unusual about their circumstances. But the fact that we have come to the stage where hale and hearty people of working age think it is outrageous that they are asked to seek work is appalling. The fact that it is financially unattractive for them to work shows how incompetent Britain has been in managing welfare benefits. The creators of the welfare state, such as Beveridge, would be amazed and disgusted.

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Here is a knock-about article by Jeff Randall about Britain's welfare benefits reforms compared to those in the USA.

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I am reluctant to make too much of the story in the Mail and The Telegraph today about youth unemployment being as high today as when Labour came to power. But it is potentially very powerful.

Labour has made a big thing about 'eradicating' youth unemployment. The printed Daily Mail has a series of Tony Blair quotations on this. If today's story is true, it tells us a) that there is still a major problem and b) that Labour boasts on this are absurd.

This is the Telegraph news story:

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I have suggested in the past that Gordon Brown's tax credit system is an unnecessarily complicated way to allow poorer people to keep more of their income. A far simpler way would be to have raised the personal allowance. Gordon Brown opts for the complex way partly, I suspect, because in this way he can make a fuss about himself being 'generous'. He could have been just as generous, but without deceiving the public, by raising the personal allowance - and simultaneously raising the standard rate of income tax, if he wanted to aim all the benefit to poorer people, without passing on any to richer people. (The political advantage of being complex now becomes obvious.)

But when people like me criticise a benefit for being complex, it may seem a pretty weak insult. Who minds a bit of complexity? It does not really matter, if it achieves something worthwhile, does it?

Here is part of a remarkable letter sent to the Your Money section of last Saturday's Daily Telegraph:

Three years ago I began dealing with the tax credit office on behalf of an employee, Matthew, who is dyslexic.

As his appointee, I filled in the forms, and kept the Helpline informed of every change of circumstance. The subsequent deluge of computer print-outs, the unresolved muddles, uncorrected mistakes, payment stoppages, demands for repayment and telephone calls have left Matthew and me in a state of stupefied dejection, as hard to weather as a chronic illness.

He is struggling to live on an income which the Government acknowledges is inadequate, and trying to keep on top of things in the only way he knows, by working long hours. I am angry and exasperated because I have been unable to secure for him the payments to which he is entitled. For me, acting for him on his authority, it has been hours of unproductive work trying to understand a system which is inherently opaque.

Complexity matters. It can make it a miserable experience to try to claim something to which one is entitled. In this case it is partly becuase the bureaucrats attempting to administer such a complex system, just can't maintain a decent service. Here is another extract from the letter:

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It is not only Britain which has many people on sickness and invalidity benefits who should not be there. Here is a press release for a recent OECD report on Norway, Poland and Switzerland:

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Many thanks to Phil Taylor for directing me to this article in the Sunday Times eight days ago.

Here is an extract:

The analysis of figures in 14 European countries found that Britain has by far the highest proportion of single mothers in the European Union.

The report says that in 2001, more than 8% of British households were headed by a single mother aged 18-35, while the UK also has one of the highest rates of benefits for single mothers.

In 1994 a single mother with two children who worked for about 18 hours a week could expect more than £2,000 a year in benefits. By 2001 the figure had increased to more than £3,500.

The researchers do not say outright that high benefits accelerate family break-up. Others, however, believe the study shows that generous benefits for single motherhood provide an incentive for women to have children alone.

Frank Field,

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David Blunkett wrote in the Sun last week (august 30,

All too often girls come to my constituency surgery demanding a house for themselves and their baby.

This just isn't on. If the family - and often their mothers are single parents too - can't or won't look after the offspring then we will simply have to go back to the idea of hostel accomodation.

The "give us a house" mentality has to become a thing of the past and be replaced by "give us respect".

It may sound harsh, but blaming the changes in society won't wash.

So there is a former senior minister calling for hostels for unmarried mothers instead of council flats. It is a sign of the changing times. I remember once suggesting to a Daily Telegraph features editor that offering free flats to unmarried mothers had substantially increased the numbers of children born out of wedlock. Out of concern for children, we should cease to do it. Possibly we should offer hostels instead but it was essential that single parenting was an unattractive route for a girl to take (as it naturally would be if the government did not get involved). Only that way would we reduce the number of children brought up in a way that makes them more likely to be unhappy, more likely to be abused, more likely to under-achieve academically and - indeed - more likely to go wrong and suffer in every possible way.

The features editor of that Conservative Party supporting newspaper was shocked. Now a senior Labour Party figure suggests it. It is progress of a sort - but it is painfully slow.

Further on, David Blunkett refers to a survey of 13 European Union countries "this week" which "tried to link the increase in lone parents with the rise in their benefits." He adds "it is true that lone mothers here are given more financial help than all but one of the other countries surveyed".

It is no surprise if the survey suggests a link between subsidies for lone parenting and increases in the incidence of it. But it would be interesting if it was actually commissioned by the European Union. And, in any case, I would be glad if anyone knows of this survey and could direct me to it.

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Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton was faced with a difficult decision. For the third time, Congress, dominated by the Republican Party, had sent him a welfare reform bill to approve. He had vetoed the previous two.

The Democrats - his own party - were overwhelmingly against this reform. Left-wing commentators warned that the poor would become destitute. But Clinton, for all his faults, knew a lot about the welfare system and the damage it was doing to America. After some indecision, he signed the bill. It was probably the best act of his presidency.

A decade later, the terrific success of America's welfare reform is there for all to see. The number of people receiving welfare benefits has fallen by 60 per cent. That is a staggering figure - a major change in the nature of the lives of millions of people. There has been a 70 per cent rise in the employment of single mothers. Welfare grants from the central government to the states have been cut by 30 per cent in real terms.

As for the poor, far from becoming penniless, as some said they would, their condition has considerably improved. The rate of officially-defined poverty among blacks has fallen from 31% to 24%. Among Hispanics, it has has fallen from 31% to 23%. The toughening up of welfare has made poor people better off. It is a paradox which many on the Left struggle to understand or accept. But it is not hard to explain: work is the best route out of poverty.

The benefits of the major changes have reverberated through the country. Since the amount of benefits paid by government have been reduced, taxes are lower than they would otherwise have been. As a result of lower taxes and more employment, economic growth has been faster.

Most Americans recognise the success of the reforms and are glad of them. Last week I was riding in America. A retired man who had administered food stamps - one of the major welfare benefits - remarked that the rules had been tightened up considerably and it was better. He used to do home visits to people on welfare and had seen how those who claimed they were not working often had a job on the side. Men who supposedly were not part of a single mother's household turned up when the welfare cheque arrived. There was a ripple of agreement.

Why can't we have the same sort of reform here? Why can't we have a similar transformation? The answer is that we could.

True, at present it seems impossible that a politician of any political party could manage it. Tony Blair talked a lot about welfare reform on coming to office, but funked it. Gordon Brown was effectively in charge of welfare but did not understand it. He bodged the entire thing, creating tax credits and numerous employment plans which have added greatly to the bureaucracy and left the underlying problems little changed. The discouragement to saving is actually worse. And we still have, by the government's own admission, over a million people on incapacity benefit who could be working.

Meanwhile the new Tory leadership, in awe of the way Tony Blair achieved power by being a centrist, has adopted a similar stance. It does not appear to have the guts to reform welfare.

Yet in the 1970s, it seemed equally impossible that overwheening trade union power would ever been contained. No one predicted the events which then took place. As with the trade unions, a powerful force is pushing for reform: the problem itself is causing major damage to our country. More than that, an increasing proportion of the population is aware of the fact.

We all know that there are millions of people 'working the system'. We know that single parenting is unpleasant for the mother, fails to socialise the father and often damages the children. It contributes, in the long term, to crime. We all know that incapacity benefit is often a cover for unemployment. We know, too, that lives spent in dependency are miserable. As Lord Beveridge, the man who wrote the report that led to the modern welfare state, said, "Complete idleness even on an income demoralises".

Eventually welfare reform will have to take place. The only question is when and how. The way things are going, welfare reform is happening so slowly that our society will continue to deteriorate. Crime will continue to rise. Our economy will lag further behind that of America and the rising countries of the Far East. More people will be so poor they are means-tested in their old age.

But if we took radical steps, like the Americans, we could change our nation's future. True, It would take political bravery and skill. Some of the measures would be angrily criticised as harsh. In America, for example, a single parent on benefits is required to seek work once her child is three months old. In Britain, she can continue on benefits until the child is 16.

In America, the bill that Clinton signed introduced a requirement that no one should live on welfare benefits for more than five years. That would be strong medicine by British standards.

But anyone who cares about this country must support radical reform such as America has had. Welfare is probably more influential on the nature of Britain than the church or the media. We must get our poor off benefits and into work. In doing so, we can make the poor richer. We could then reduce taxes. And in all this we would be doing major work to arrest the decline of civility and decency that has been the bane of our country in recent decades.

We need to fight for welfare reform not in order to be mean or hard but to give people back their dignity and to make Britain a better society.

(The above is the unedited draft for an article which appears in today's Daily Express.)

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Here is an article on the success of America's welfare reform in the Daily Mail today.

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I have recently been interviewed on behalf of a magazine called Human Givens. Ivan Tyrrell,who has also co-written a book by the same name, was very interested in The Welfare State We're In from a completely unexpected point of view.

The basis of the Human Givens approach is that all human beings have certain well-recognised needs. These include the need to socialise, to have some status and to be stretched. People cannot readily be content without these needs being met.

Ivan was interested in The Welfare State We're In because in it I argue that the welfare state has made people less happy. He fully agrees and sees this as being because it takes away from people - in many ways - the need to stretch themselves, the context in which to socialise and a sense of status.

It is easy to think of examples of this. People who are discouraged by benefits from seeking work get demoralised staying at home. They would be happier being stretched in a job. They would be happier having the sense of achievement in putting food on the table for their families. They would be happier having the status of a job and soicalising at work. Doctors and teachers would be more satisfied if they were more in control of their work instead of being dictated to so much by commandments from government or managers.

We live now in a society where the government controls more and more of our lives. It robs us of a sense that we are the ones who run our own lives. It takes away a certain dignity and, through that, it takes away some of our contentment.

The psychological impact (not to mention the cultural impact) of the welfare state has been enormous. It deserves far more study than the academic world has yet given it.

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Professor Layard wants pschological therapy for all those people on incapacity benefit who are suffering from depression and other mental conditions. This would help them back to work, he suggests and save a lot of money in benefits.

Of course those familiar with The Welfare State We're In will know that I see this issue from a different angle. To me (and indeed to the government) at least a million people on incapacity benefit are in fact capable of work. Additionally they would be mentally in better shape if they worked. It is no co-incidence, in my view, that depression and back-ache are conditions that cannot be disproved and that these are the most common conditions enabling people to claim incapacity benefit.

Of course there are certainly people who are genuinely chronically depressed or who genuinely have terrible back-ache. But there are many others to whom this does not apply.

Indeed consider if there were genuinely so many deeply depressed people in existence. Britain would be a place suffused with depression. It could be called The Depressed Man of Europe, the Country That Couldn't Cheer Up or Glumovia.

If indeed this is a particularly depressed country by historical and international standards, why should this be? If it is true - and I agree that depression is more common than it used to be, though not as common as the incapacity benefits make it appear - I suggest it is because of the mentally depressing effect of unemployment and other aspects of the welfare state. It is a 'chicken and egg' debate. I suggest that the lack of insistence that people should get a job is one of the major causes of depression. (Another is the subsidy for unmarried, fatherless parenting.) Layard thinks that the depression leads to the unemployment.

The link to Layard and his works is here.

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I gave a talk last night at the Institute of Chartered Surveyors in which I was 'heckled' by Peter Lilley, the former Social Security Secretary, Professor Pat Thane and Paul Holmes, the Liberal Democrat chairman.

Paul Holmes repeated the well-worn assertion that the Tories shunted people into Invalidity Benefit during the 1980s in order to keep down the official unemployment figures. I said that, in fact, the cause of the huge rise in the numbers claimeing invalidity benefit was the creation of a special premium for the benefit compared to unemployment benefit. This had been created first by the Heath government and then greatly increased by the Wilson government in the 1970s. I had done the numbers (and they are in the book).

I then said I did not believe that there was any cunning plan by the Tories to put people onto Invalidity Benefit but that perhaps Peter Lilley, having been a long-serving Social Security Secretary, would put me right.

Peter Lilley stood up and said that if there had been any intention to do so, it would have been communicated to the civil servants in writing. That is how government departments work. He had seen no evidence of any such instruction or suggestion ever having been made. (Indeed, I will add that if there ever had been such an instruction, it would very probably have been leaked.)

It was possible, however, said Peter Lilley, that individual benefit officers would guide claimants to invalidity benefit since it paid better (and has other advantages, incidentally).

Later he told me that a doctor in the audience had come up to him afterwards and told him that doctors at that time would also guide claimants towards invalidity benefit as the benefit of choice.

This exchange confirms me in my view that there was no cunning plan but the rise in the numbers on Invalidity Benefit was a result of a premium created in the 1970s combined with higher unemployment. Invalidity Benefit became the 'benefit of choice'.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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Friendly Societies were probably the most important kind of welfare in Britain before they were 'crowded out' by the welfare state. I contend that they provided substantial social security for the vast majority of people prior to the Unemployment Insurance and Health Insurance Acts of 1911.

In bringing to life the importance of friendly societies, I have been hampered by being unable to remember or find any reference to them in well-known 19th century novels. If anyone can recall such a reference, I would be delighted to hear of it. In the meantime, I have come across a paper on the internet which claims that Gladstone, one of the most important political figures of the century, was a member of one: The Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds (Ashton Unity).

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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In the modern culture it tends to be thought that to be socialist is to be all kind and nice. It therefore amused me to come across a Russian communist plate that is soon to be sold at Sotheby's. These were modernist designs with pro-communist mottoes - terrific art, incidentally. The communists used blanks made in the Imperial Porcelain Factory and celebrated meetings of the Communist Party and suchlike. In this one, dated 1921, a man appears to be eating bread and the motto boldly declares: "He who doesn't work, doesn't eat".

You tell'em comrade.

The link is here but I fear you may need to register with Sotheby's to access it.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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I am pasting here a comment which has just been contributed to a previous entry about Lone Parents 'On the fiddle'. I should concede that I cannot vouch for whether or not the contributor genuinely does work for the Department of Work and Pensions. But I have no reason to think otherwise.

I think it is an important view 'from the front' and is an antidote to the assumption of many middle class folk that benefits just go to the needy and do not influence behaviour in a damaging way.

I work for the DWP on the Lone Parent section and am confronted with lone parents quite blatently fiddling the system all the time, unfortunately because the government has cut so many jobs within the sector our fraud section only deals with a minute selection of cases. I have come across people who have had sanctions imposed on their benefits for not attending appts and then a further sanction imposed for not responding to the sanction. This in my eyes would say to me that they are either working or got someone helping them out with money as surely they would've noticed 40% of money gone if on such a tight budget? Another common thing we see quite often is that as soon as the child of a lone parent is about to turn 16 the parent gets pregnant again just so as to stay on benefit. I believe that the government should bring in something so that if a lone parent has another child while on benefit they get little or no benefits with it. I'm not trying to to sound harsh but this would save the government millions and also force parents back into work when their child reaches 16 rather than just sitting back and doing nothing while us tax payers pay them for it!

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Welfare benefits

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How interesting and encouraging that the Derek Wanless report on care for the elderly has - on the whole - come out against the current high level of means-testing.

It is good to see resistance to the idea that there can be two people - one of whom spends everything through life while the other saves prudently for old age - who then find themselves in next door rooms in the same care home. The first gets care in old age at the expense of other taxpayers while the second pays for the same care out of savings. It is not fair and the fact of it discourages people from saving - which generally is a sensible and empowering thing to do.

No wonder that this is a King's Fund report and not a government one.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Care for the elderly • Welfare benefits

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21% of families who were eligible to claim the children's tax credit did not do so

That is from the Guardian's coverage of speeches by Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers. The statistic is cited by Mr Milburn. Their speeches are interpreted as attacks on the Gordon Brown approach to welfare benefits and his increase in means-testing. The fact that many people do not actually get the tax credits they are entitled to is one of many objections to Gordon Brown's tax credits scheme.

The full Guardian report is here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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From the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

The Government thinks it is paying out tax credits or out-of-work benefits to around 200,000 more lone parents than the Office for National Statistics estimate live in the UK, according to an analysis of official statistics by researchers at the IFS.

HM Revenue & Customs and the Department of Work and Pensions together estimate that they are paying income-related support for children to 2.1 million lone parents, even though the best estimate from other evidence is that there are only 1.9 million lone parents living in the UK.

Although there are other possibilities, it is highly likely that fraud or error explain much of this disparity. After analysing
data from the latest Family Resources Survey (FRS), IFS researchers have concluded that a portion of the tax credits or out-of-work benefits which HMRC or DWP think they are paying to lone parents are probably being received by cohabiting couples with children, whether through deliberate fraud or errors made by claimants or the government. If one disregards the threat of fines or penalties, it is often financially worthwhile to pretend to be a lone parent, rather than a couple, when claiming tax credits or out-of-work benefits.
“We already know that the tax credit system is subject to fraud from people using stolen identities. The latest figures provide powerful – albeit circumstantial – evidence that the system is also subject to fraud from families not being honest about their circumstances.

The full press release (released on 12th March) is here.

An insight into the nature of the possible fraud comes from the television programme on benefit fraud commented on here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Welfare benefits

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A few other piece of little-known information about modern 'poverty':

"...according to the government's Households Below Average Incomes survey, more than half the people defined as in poverty are homeowners but many of these are pensioners who are asset rich but income poor.

"Can an elderly person living on 60% of average income but with a very valuable property and no mortgage be considered poor?"

(From BBC Online 'The changing face of poverty')

"Between 1996/97 and 2000/01, income inequality rose to its highest level since comparable records begain in 1961 as measured by the Gini coefficient. Since then, income inequality has fallen back to roughly the level Labour inherited."

(From the Institute for Fiscal Studies - IFS - press release 8/3/06. My italics.)

"With the government focusing resources on families with children and pensioners, poverty amongst the working-aged non-parent population has received less attention. Poverty in this group is now about one percentage point higher than it was in 1998/99, on both BHC and AHC measures".

(IFS press release as above. BHC means "Before housing costs" and AHC "After housing costs".)

Perhaps most important of all:

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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An email from 'pommygranate':

You may be interested by recent developments Down Under with regards Aboriginal welfare. After 30 years of unconditional and increased welfare for anyone who could prove they were 1/8th Aboriginal, the Labour Party has declared the experiment an abject failure. Dependancy is now endemic and even the architects of this welfare program have accepted its defeat.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18409415%255E601,00.html

In its place, a new system is soon to be trialed whereby communities will only receive welfare under certain conditions (e.g. ensuring their children attend school).

Interesting that even those on the Left in Australia have now admitted what a catastrophe is unconditional welfare.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits

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Some things just don't add up. The government propaganda machine tells us one thing but our own experience tells us another. And it seems to be getting worse.

Living in Britain is becoming rather like living in the old Soviet Union. People there were regularly told how agricultural production was increasing wonderfully but, on the other hand, they noticed there was no fresh fruit in the shops. It did not make sense.

In the same way we have been repeatedly told how unemployment is in Britain is low. Gordon Brown boasts about it at every opportunity. In one of his recent bouts of this, he announced, "while