POLICY OBJECTIVES

A Benefit System That Does Not Rely On Means-Testing For Claimants Of Working Age Who Are Able To Work

The present system relies heavily on means-testing for most of the major benefits — Income Support, Housing Benefit, etc — in order to target resources at those in most need. This has lead to a steadily increasing proportion of working-age and retired people now being dependent on means-tested benefits. Whilst means-testing seems the only sensible thing to do and is certainly effective in the short-run, over the longer term it has a truly appalling impact on the fundamental economic motivations of millions of people — undermining people's willingness to work and to save for the future. For why work and save money throughout your working life when your know that your savings will never be sufficient to live-off comfortably and yet will be sufficient to prevent you receiving key state benefits later in life — such as a means-tested pension or help with social care. The benefits system must be freed from these perverse incentives.

The more general intrusiveness of completing 40-page forms and supplying bank account details, savings details, tenancy agreements etc is such that most people find the whole process demeaning and unpleasant and millions of people, particularly the older generation, are so put off they fail to claim benefits they genuinely need and to which they are entitled.

A Benefits System That Does Not Intrude Into People's Private Lives

At present, benefits are awarded to people on a householder basis, so that if a claimant is single they get more benefit — significantly more benefit — than if they are living with a partner. Whilst from the point of view of targetting scarce resource to those that need it most, this makes sense, in practise this means requiring claimants to answer intrusive questions about their family and living arrangements. To increase the indignity still further, claimants who have stormy on-off relationships with their partners are then faced with the unenviable task of either explaining all these personal goings-on to the DWP or not bother and end-up becoming a benefits-cheat. Assessing claimants as households therefore actually encourages couples to live separately — or pretend to do so — because with one partner away from the family home, the claimant then receives benefits without deductions for the partner's income. This is no way for government to help couples build a stable home environment for their children.

Such an intrusive approach is therefore completely unacceptable — whatever merits it may have in terms of targetting resources.

A Simple Benefits System That Everyone Can Understand

Over the years, our benefit system has become increasingly complicated, as politicians have revised the rules in an attempt to limit the cost, to prevent abuse and to satisfy particular interest groups. This increased complexity has in turn made the system both more expensive to administer (£3bn p.a.). and made it easier for cheats to evade detection.

The recent introduction of Child and Working Tax Credits, whilst providing welcome assistance to families on low incomes, has increased complexity still further — due to extensive overlap with existing benefits, and the introduction of more thresholds, 'elements' and marginal rates. By making annual income assessments the basis for means-testing when many claimants are on fluctuating incomes, tax credits have also led to the new phenomenon of widespread overpayment of benefit — overpayments which claimants, already on low incomes, understandably then struggle to repay.

The sheer complexity of the system has always deterred many people from claiming benefit but it is so complicated today that any comprehensive welfare rights book needs to be over 1,000 pages long and written in legalese, and even trained benefit staff struggle to understand it. The recent move to put most benefits online has often added to this sense of incomprehension and open-ended accountability, with claimants now confronted by a series of inflexible online forms demanding simple, black and white answers to often grey and complicated personal and financial situations — making it almost impossible for those claimants with non-standard situations to adequately and honestly describe their situation.

A Benefits System That Demands Work For Receipt of Benefit

In spite of popular public perceptions to the contrary, changes in recent years have made the system significantly tougher on those claiming both unemployment and disability benefits — with Job Seekers' Allowance claimants required to attend work-focused interviews and show evidence of genuine job-seeking and most Incapacity Benefit claimants required to attend for medical examinations by a DWP doctor. Most recently Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit have raised the bar even higher for those wishing to claim benefit for disability — requiring work-focused interviews of all but the most severely and obviously disabled.

Yet this whole approach is built upon the idea of trying to force people to do detailed tasks and jobs that they simply do not wish to do, so inevitably results in a long drawn-out series of encounters that are deeply manipulative and unpleasant for both claimants and DWP staff alike. Whilst this approach does succeed in getting some people back to work, the net result of much of this activity — and the expense that goes with it — is that the work-shy, whilst having to pretend more enthusiastically and jump through a few more hoops of inconvenience, are still able to shirk their responsibility to work. They are able to do this, in spite of all the sincere and committed efforts of DWP staff and the elaborateness of the system with all its penalties and sanctions for non-compliance, because ultimately, claimants are simply not required to work, they are merely strongly encouraged to do so. So the work-shy don't bother.

A Benefits System That Is Fair on The Partially Disabled

One aspect of the system that has, unfortunately, remained consistent throughout the many changes, has been the sharp distinction drawn between the able-bodied and the disabled — with people still essentially being categorised as either fit for work or not fit for work. Yet this approach is at odds with the nature of both mental and physical illness — which are characterized by a spectrum of disability. This has inevitably led to either too much or too little being demanded of claimants struggling with limited but genuine mental or physical illness.

With such major problems and complexity in the benefit system and after decades of attempted reform through tinkering having been shown to be ineffective, the time has come to just start again.

A Benefits System That Discourages Young Women From Having Children At Others' Expense

In recent decades the number of single-parent families has increased dramatically, and for many young women this is a conscious choice. Yet without partner and lacking the financial means to actually properly support their children, this is a decision to have a child at others' expense. This is therefore not a decision that young women are entitled to make. Benefits for single parents should therefore reflect this fact and be structured so as to discourage this abuse of the system.

A Benefits System That Ensures No One Is Required To Live In Shared Accommodation

For claimants under the age of 35, the present system only covers the reduced housing costs of shared accommodation. This exposes countless people to regular humiliations, deprivations and abuses from other 'sharers'. Even when it is not a nightmare, shared accommodation (for the vast majority) can never be a true home in which to properly relax. Whilst this restriction on housing costs does 'encourage' work-shy under 35s to 'go get a job', it affects everyone within that very broad age range, significantly increasing personal insecurity and stress levels at an already difficult time. Benefits should encourage work without forcing misery-making inappropriate accommodation onto large numbers of responsible, pro-active claimants.