Targeting benefits

THE motives underpinning Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare revolution could not be more sincere; the challenging is implementing profound changes when Labour created a benevolent culture where families expected the benefits system to revolve around their specific personal needs rather than the greater good of the country.

Yet it is the related issues of implementation and communication that the Work and Pensions Secretary needs to prioritise. Because the Government is still unable to explain its policies in clear language, many families are under the misguided impression that welfare spending is being cut by the coalition.

It is not. Reforms like the so-called bedroom tax – and other changes to working-age benefits – are being introduced to enable spending to be pegged at existing levels while resources are diverted to the most needy, and also the elderly.

Given Britain’s changing demographics, a future government will have to consider the amount of money spent on policies for senior citizens – like free bus travel and TV licences – and whether this is sustainable, or justifiable, in the case of the very wealthy.

The problem is that means-testing creates a vast bureaucracy that can cost more than the intended savings – and this is the challenge confronting Mr Duncan Smith over his current reforms.

His primary difficulty is that he inherited a welfare system that expanded by 60 per cent under the Labour government, and which enabled families not to accept personal responsibility for their circumstances.

It is a mindset that needs to change. Like the rest of the country, welfare recipients, too, have been spending beyond their means for too long – and the one per cent increase in some benefits is actually quite generous in comparison to all those in the private sector who have endured wage freezes for the duration of the slump.