This week’s row about welfare reform threw up several shocking facts. First, the £26,000-per-household cap on benefits that the Government seeks to impose is equivalent to a £35,000 pre–tax salary of someone in work.
Hysteria and the moral battle to end welfare dependency in Britain
By Simon Heffer
This week’s row about welfare reform threw up several shocking facts. First, the £26,000-per-household cap on benefits that the Government seeks to impose is equivalent to a £35,000 pre–tax salary of someone in work.
Then there was the case of a parish priest who said he worked six days a week and earned £22,000 a year. Since he is in employment he does not qualify for any of the hand-outs (such as free public transport) given to some full-time welfare benefits claimants.
In a letter to a newspaper he rebuked the bishops of his own church who had voted in the Lords against the Government’s benefits cap, which would be set at £4,000 a year more than he earns.
To say that welfare is a perennially toxic subject is one of the great political understatements of our times. However unmerited some people’s financial support from the State is, the threat of its reduction or withdrawal always triggers hysteria from those unthinking elements on the Left — whether in the Labour Party, the Anglican Church or the BBC.
The truth is that, as a country, we have lost sight of the importance of every citizen striving to contribute to society, however modestly, as opposed to making a claim upon it.
As a result, perversely, those who won’t contribute are treated the same as those who do. This injustice means that they are given the right to live handsomely off the labour of the rest of us.
To sustain this grotesque state of affairs, which is an abnegation of society’s most fundamental values, would be unacceptable even in times of plenty. But in a time of economic crisis, it is simply outrageous.
Following this week’s Lords rebellion against the Coalition’s plans to cap the cost of benefit payments, the Mail has highlighted families living on small incomes who are determined to be self-reliant and to avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency.
Sadly, it has also been easy to find examples at the opposite end of the moral scale — people who are perfectly capable of work, but refuse to take or even look for it.
Indeed, earlier this month the media reported that some unemployed people were so idle that they couldn’t even bother to get out of bed in the morning to sign for their welfare benefits.
The fact that such behaviour is now tolerated without retribution is a shameful reflection of the attitudes of those who have governed this country over recent years.
Mercifully, there are influential figures such as Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey who are determined to end this State-sponsored moral degeneracy.
This week, Lord Carey wrote an article for the Mail in which he said the scale of Britain’s public debt was the ‘greatest moral scandal’ facing the country and warned that the welfare system is rewarding ‘fecklessness and irresponsibility’.
He criticised the bishops who led the Lords rebellion, saying the senior churchmen were encouraging the culture of welfare dependency that led to ‘poverty of aspiration’. He said that they could lay no claim to the ‘moral high ground’.
Meanwhile, Mr Duncan Smith is wrestling to cut the £100 billion annual welfare bill. His initial proposals are modest, not because he lacks radicalism (for he understands exactly what must be done to wean Britain off dependency) but because his party’s Lib Dem coalition partners refuse to concede that the drastic reforms are necessary.
However, Mr Duncan Smith has two advantages that ought to help him carry through his proposals.
First, he has spent years studying the problems of poverty and he knows what he is talking about; what is more, the public trusts him because of that expertise.
Second, the dire economic state of the country means welfare reform is not being embarked upon purely as an ideological exercise. It is an urgent necessity because we have a crippling £1 trillion debt, caused by the last Labour administration, and the Government must make huge savings.
The public understands this and supports attempts to reduce the debt. The Tory Party, which is driving the reforms, is ahead in the opinion polls. This means there has never been a better time to break the culture that makes welfare dependency, for some people, a lifetime career.
Mr Duncan Smith deserves the unqualified support of all taxpayers in his attempts to start the process. The tragedy is that he appears to be fighting an almost lone battle in Westminster.
It is time his fellow Tories gave their public support to his reforms and highlighted the scandal of the way those who refuse to work (being given lavish welfare hand-outs) are treated in comparison with those who do.
Meanwhile, one has only to read the Left-wing media’s coverage of the debate about welfare to see that blackmail is being attempted to get reformers to halt their programme.
First, their opponents argue that any restriction on benefits given to the workshy will inevitably harm the claimants’ children. Also, they warn that some claimants may turn to crime if they lose their benefits.
The way to defeat such specious arguments is to make clear the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Although this is often considered to be a Victorian concept, it was, in fact, first properly defined in 1563, when magistrates were told to differentiate between various types of poor in their parishes.
The deserving were deemed to be those who wished to work but couldn’t find employment. A ‘poor rate’ was levied to raise money to provide them with clothes and food.
Also deemed to be deserving were those too old, young or ill to work. They would be supported in alms houses or orphanages, and children would be offered apprenticeships to ensure that their adult lives were not blighted by poverty.
On the other hand, the undeserving poor were those — such as sturdy beggars — who avoided work. A remedy was found in 1563 when it was agreed that these idlers should be whipped until they saw the error of their ways, or moved on to another parish.
This distinction between deserving and undeserving poor was enshrined in the Poor Law of 1601, which remained until it was revised in the 19th century.
Of course, today’s undeserving poor are no longer whipped. Instead, they are kept in idleness by a state welfare system that gives them little or no incentive to work. Their weekly benefit cheques relieve them of the necessity of begging. Their children, produced regardless of their parents’ ability to provide food and clothing, are used as human shields in the fight against any cuts in welfare.
Surely the Government can devise a proper system that ensures that widows, orphans, disabled and elderly receive the full compassion of the State, while those who live off taxpayers have their life of idleness halted.
There has often been talk of ‘workfare’, a scheme used successfully in America where benefits are paid in return for state-sponsored work. The main obstacle to such a system in Britain has been the trades unions, who feared work would be found at the expense of their members.
The truth is that there are plenty of socially useful and productive tasks that could be done as a condition of receiving benefits.
For some of these people, though, this may require a major change in attitude. For example, people such as the university graduate who recently claimed her human rights had been infringed because she’d been made to work for her jobless benefits as a shelf stacker in Poundland must be made to realise how lucky they are to have gainful employment.
As for the argument that children will come to harm because their parents might lose benefits, that is not true. They would not lose out financially. Their hand-outs would simply be replaced by payments from the workfare scheme. Neither would there be a rise in crime, for the same reason.
Politicians have talked for nearly 20 years, since the time when fellow Tory Peter Lilley did Mr Duncan Smith’s job in the mid-Nineties, of ending the something-for-nothing society.
Even if a few bishops support it, the rest of the country is fed up being taken for a ride. We cannot afford it, literally or morally. Now is the time to deliver on the promise.
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That's not a Wog, that's a Coon. Get it right for fucks sake!