The Taxpayers Alliance has released a new report on welfare dependency, but the proposed solutions do little to save costs and only adds to hardship.
The right wing organisation the TaxPayers’ Alliance has released a new report on welfare dependency, arguing that the amount the country spends on benefits is too high and it is necessary to implement a ‘Work for Dole’ scheme.
The report’s proposed Work for Dole scheme will do little to solve the costs it moans about and only add to the hardships of the poorest in society.
The report begins:
“Over the past 50 years, welfare spending has relentlessly grown and now consumes 28 per cent of all government spending. 57 per cent of this goes on benefits for working age people.”
At first glance the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s picture of a Britain suffering the costs of paying for benefit claimants seems shocking, but the statistics reeled off here – similar stats often emblazoned in Daily Mail articles – are not so shocking when you take a look at the detail.
So, where has the 28% figure come from?
Yes 28% of government spending goes on welfare, but welfare isn’t just made up of the benefits this report attacks. A huge amount of welfare spending, 43%, actually goes on pensions. So the author could have simply started off with the less startling fact that 16% of all government spending goes on ‘benefits for working age people’, but I guess this is a less eye-catching figure. It’s good that in the second line the TaxPayers’ Alliance does admit that only 57% of this goes on the type of benefits it focuses on, but it really makes you wonder what was the necessity of the first line…
Anyway, 16% of total government spending is still a vast figure so it’s worth investigating what exactly all this money goes on.
Are taxpayers funnelling money to the lazy?
What do these ‘benefits for working age people’ involve?
The list of benefits that the welfare budget goes to (excluding pensions) includes:
- housing benefit
- child tax credit
- disability living allowance
- child benefit
- income support
- working tax credit
- job seekers allowance
- employment support allowance
The largest amount of money on this list goes on housing benefit and child tax credit, which are both benefits that are open to people who are in work. This somewhat detracts from the picture of a Britain that can’t help giving money to the workless.
It is also not as though these benefits are lining the pockets of the idle. For example, housing benefit goes straight to landlords. Over the years spending on housing benefit has risen by a lot but this is more a result of successive governments failure to build new houses rather than any upshot in people happily revelling in welfare dependency. The housing crisis in this country has contributed to a great many social and economic problems and one of these is the huge growth in spending on housing benefit.
So what is the Taxpayers Alliance’s solution?
Their solution is ‘Work for the Dole’. This scheme involves anyone who has been claiming Universal Credit for a certain period of time to undertake activity like clearing parks or graffiti, working for a charity, participating in a training programme or work experience. The amount of work you are expected to do depends on whether you are in a job, how many hours you work or whether you have childcare commitments. The report says that
“the programme shall continue indefinitely, until either (i) the person is working more than 30 hours per week (or their benchmark if lower) or (ii) until they stop claiming Universal Credit benefits entirely.”
Work for the Dole is very similar to the government’s own much despised Workfare policy. Both schemes involve people working without receiving a wage. And it is fair to say that both schemes have major drawbacks. For example, jobs like clearing parks or cleaning graffiti are that – jobs. People who do these socially valuable activities deserve proper pay. To force unemployed people to do them is not only punitive and unnecessary, but is patronising to people whose job it actually is to clear parks or clean off graffiti. It also ignores the fact that most jobseekers are actively seeking jobs. It is not their fault, and they should not be penalised, for an atrocious job market.
The Taxpayers Alliance’s proposals also includes the brutal specification that anyone who ‘is not compliant with Work for the Dole activity requirements’ will ‘have all of their Universal Credit payments suspended.’ It even goes onto admit that there might have to be changes to, or an opt out from EU laws to achieve such a punitive policy.
We have seen a huge rise in the number of food banks in the UK in recent years, and there is strong evidence that this is connected to the government’s welfare reforms. This means that we are already seeing the disastrous effects of a more severe benefits system. Another round of even harsher benefits reforms – as proposed here by the Taxpayers Alliance – is likely to drive even more people to use food banks.
Will the Work for the Dole save money?
The report boldly claims that its proposed ‘Work for Dole’ scheme will make annual savings of £3.51 billion a year . When you look a bit closer you realise that this is a saving of 4.7% of expenditure on benefits included in the Universal Credit umbrella and also housing benefit and child tax credit. So this means it is not even a saving of 4.7% of the non-pensions welfare budget, let alone 4.7% of the welfare budget as a whole. If you are seriously looking to save costs, is piling on the pressure on a very vulnerable group of society a sensible solution? Evidence shows that big companies avoid paying taxes to the tune of £5.5 billion, but we don’t hear the Taxpayers Alliance harping on about this.
After all we read from the Taxpayers Alliance about the horrors of our bulging welfare state it is a little disappointing that their solutions amount to relatively little in financial savings for the taxpayer, but contribute so much more to the hardship faced by the poorest members of society.
47 Responses to “TaxPayers’ Alliance welfare proposals save little money, but add to misery”
blarg1987
Still does not make up for 4 Trillion, so are we building a death star or are the origional 2005 figures not actually comparing like for like?
ed
Benefit Sanctions Must Be Stopped Without Exceptions in UK?
Petition Calling For Benefit Sanctions To Be Scrapped Hits Nearly 2000 Signatures In First Few Hours
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/benefit-sanctions-must-be-stopped-without-exceptions-in-uk
billy_liar
You say ” So the author could have simply started off with the less startling fact …. “, but then you go on to say “Work for the Dole is very similar to the government’s own much despised
Workfare policy. Both schemes involve people working without receiving a
wage.”
So, you should be more accurate too; Work for the Dole, is work for the DOLE – the welfare recipient will not be working for nothing! Take into account, JSA, housing benefit, possible expenses and if they have children, all the accompanying benefits and the welfare recipient will have a pot of money which they can live on – thats NOT working for nothing, thats working for a living – like the rest of us have to.
billy_liar
Additionally, food bank usage increase is not due to more people not getting enough food. It is due to various agencies stepping up their activities in order to “prove” that people are getting less food. All the people I know who are accessing food banks are the very same people who get everything for nothing already, they don’t miss a trick – “on the way back from the bookies, nipped into the food bank and got something for the kids dinner, then I had a little extra to go to the pub.” A quote from a food bank user. However, if someone “in authority” asks the same question ; “I am finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet, its either pay the bills and go hungry or eat and not pay the bills” boo hoo
tinamac
“The right wing organisation the TaxPayers’ Alliance”
I question whether the TaxPayers Alliance is right wing, surely working for the state is a communist ideology.
Either the TPA is left wing, or they have been infiltrated – we have very little freedom in the UK and this is the icing on the cake.
The only way to get freedom back is to lower taxes and let people be responsible for their own lives – obviously we have come too far down the socialist/welfare route to simply pull the rug as most British people wouldn’t have a clue how to look after themselves and provide for their family in the future – we need to phase personal responsibility back into our society e.g. start giving the message in schools and in the media that “to be self supporting is something to be proud of, an achievement. To live off others and lean on them for support is wrong, very wrong, unless you have absolutely no alternative. To help the truly needy is good for societies soul, but the needy should seek to be helped by their family first, their friends second and the state (i.e. their fellow citizens) only as a last resort.
Too many people (that I know) are perfectly happy for the state to keep them, they dismiss the idea that it is their fellow citizen is keeping them. However, taxes are so high as to preclude them from looking after themselves. I propose that politicians seek to enable “the needy” by lowering taxes for all. This would allow everyone capable of fending for themselves to do so and allow families of those who can’t to make the necessary arrangements to look after those who can’t because they will have enough money left in their own pockets to do so. A side effect of this would be that those unable to look after themselves can still be a contributing member of a family unit instead of being isolated by the state.