welfare

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The UK possesses one of the most enviable welfare states in the world. But, trying to understand this area can sometimes be confusing and daunting. In the first of our new series of regular articles designed for the professional in modern social care, welfare rights expert Neil Bateman corrects some of the most commonly held misconceptions


Over the years, myths develop about social security entitlement. Sometimes these arise out of simple misunderstandings about the rules, sometimes they are caused by poor staff training in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). And as with all myths, they can take on a life of their own and be treated as sound legal statements.


Here are some of the myths one comes across


“If you receive Attendance Allowance, you must spend it on your care costs.”





Not sure where this one came from, but it may be linked to a misunderstanding about charges for community care services. People are free to spend (or save) their Attendance Allowance (a benefit for people aged 65 and older who need care or supervision) as they wish. Of course, in reality, many do spend it on care-related matters (for example, paying someone to do their gardening or shopping), but there is no legal requirement to do so. Nor do you have to be incurring care-related costs to qualify for the Allowance; you just have to ‘require’ attention or watching over.


If you receive Income Support, your boyfriend can only stay three nights a week.”


Income Support is the basic means-tested benefit for those out of work and many people rely on it. This myth seems to be a common one affecting lone parents and as they are usually women I have put it in gender-specific terms. Interestingly, the three night rule seems to vary around the country. In some places, I’ve heard of a four night rule and in others a five night rule! Many of us have also personally come across DWP officials saying this.


Of course this three night rule is a myth and there is no legal basis to it. It is a misunderstanding of the rules about living together for social security purposes, where the correct starting point should be for the DWP to decide whether or not a couple (of mixed gender) are members of the same household. This is a quite different and much tougher test than simply looking at the number of nights that someone stays.


“Self-employed people can’t get benefits if they are sick.”


This myth seems to be quite widespread among self-employed people, many of whom have low and erratic incomes. Provided that they have paid National Insurance contributions for the relevant tax year, self-employed people are as entitled to Incapacity Benefit as anyone else. Self-employed contributions don’t count for Jobseekers Allowance but they do for other benefits.


You must be on Income Support to receive Housing Benefit.”


This myth seems to lie in the Housing Benefit rules. People on Income Support who meet the other conditions of entitlement to Housing Benefit (for example, they are liable to pay rent), will normally receive full Housing Benefit. Of course this amount can be reduced if they have certain people living in their home or if they are a private tenant with very high rents (and incidentally, there are some ways round these).


However, Housing Benefit can be paid to people not on Income Support if their income is low enough. And they may even receive full Housing Benefit if their income is at or below Income Support level. Also, Housing Benefit stops if someone goes off Income Support (though there are exceptions to this if they move into work). If the system is working properly, they should be invited to claim Housing Benefit by the local authority when their Income Support stops.


“Students can’t get Tax Credits.”


One of the groups that have gained from the introduction of Tax Credits is students with children. They can now receive Child Tax Credits (as income) if they have children, because you don’t have to be in work to qualify. In addition, student loan or grant income designed to meet the costs of tuition fees, childcare, books, travel and equipment is ignored. Nursing students with children are particularly well placed as all income from the NHS Bursary Scheme is ignored for Tax Credits.


Another group of students who may qualify are those aged 5 or older, who also work more than 0 hours a week.


n Ring the Inland Revenue Tax Credit claim line on 0800 500 , for more details.


Welfare Reform Myths


And while we’re on the subject of myths, this government is firmly wedded to the notion that it can alter people’s behaviour by imposing harsh benefit rules. This is despite objective evidence to the contrary.


Chunks of our benefits system consist of punitive measures. This is demonstrated in the denial of Jobseeker’s Allowance to most unemployed 16 and 17 year-olds (a singularly unsuccessful measure which has not reduced the proportion who aren’t in education, employment and training) and sanctions for people felt not to be seeking work hard enough (which have the effect of alienating them from the jobfinding help at Job Centres).


One can even have a Jobseeker’s Allowance sanction imposed for attending a job interview when looking unkempt. While most of these sanctions predate the current government, they have decided to continue the welfare moralism theme by proposing Housing Benefit sanctions for anti-social tenants.


The proposals are set out in the consultation paper Housing Benefit Sanctions and Anti-Social Behaviour, published on 0th May.


Under the proposals, the Government plans to give local authorities power to reduce Housing Benefit in cases of anti-social behaviour. Two options are proposed � a sanction following Court action and a sanction triggered internally.


Of course, no one wants offensive and unruly people making other tenants’ lives a misery - we have all dealt with such unpleasant people in our time and solutions are not easy. But there are major questions about the usefulness of stopping their Housing Benefit. If injunctions and eviction don’t work, stopping Housing Benefit is unlikely to.


Experience also shows that benefit rules based on moral concepts can easily be inappropriately applied in practice, creating misery and hardship. They are also likely to give landlords yet another headache � rent arrears. Welfare moralism founders on the rocks of pragmatism.


You can obtain a copy of Housing Benefit Sanctions and Anti-Social Behaviour from the DWP at http//www.dwp.gov.uk/housingbenefit/consultations/00.htm Deadline for comments is 1th August 00.


Who says social security is too costly?


The protagonists who would have us believe that social security spending is out of control, spent on fraudsters and the feckless and at the expense of other public services, would do well to study this graph.


Of course, most of this expenditure includes the amount financed through claimants’ own national insurance contributions.


In addition many billions of indirect taxes, such as VAT, are paid by benefit recipients each year, further reducing the net cost to the Exchequer. Even if one adds the £4 billion or so spent on Tax Credits (less than 10% of total benefits spending), expenditure on benefits is well within affordable limits and well below that of many European countries.


When you also take into account the poverty relieving effect of social security and the consequent reduced demand for other services such as health, social care and education as well as the positive impact on consumer spending power, it seems pretty good value for money.


http//www.careandhealth.com/Search/Search_DetailDisplay.aspx?id=714§ion=News 11th october 0


history


The mixed economy of welfare


The theme of most welfare histories is the coming of the welfare state as though all previous forms of welfare were temporary and incomplete, that it was inevitable Britains welfare should be ultimately dominated by state provision, and that, somehow, the journey is now at an end. However, if we step back only 100 years - and use this as a vantage point to look forward - we would have a very different perspective. In the 1th century Britains welfare was characterised by voluntary provision, with mutual and friendly societies delivering a whole range of benefits. Local authorities and voluntarily run hospitals, together with a national system of panel doctors were financed from health insurance contributions, which were set by the state and collected through mutually owned societies.


If we move back further still we gain yet another perspective of how welfare was delivered collectively, free of the state. In mediaeval times many hospitals were church run, though the word hospital should not be understood in todays terms. Back then such places were communities where the elderly and frail in particular were looked after.


Parishes, the first basic administrative units in Britain, also had a responsibility to their poor. The Elizabethan Poor Law enshrined this right with the practice of sturdy and less sturdy beggars being sent back to their parish of origin ostensibly for help. This system, although modified, remained largely intact until the offensive launched by the Utilitarian reformers. For them, no fiddling with the facts was beyond the pale if it could discredit the old regime. The new poor law of 184 was the result of this campaign, and where the principle of less eligibility was enforced - help in the new system would only be offered if a person came into the House, as the poor law institution was known - a standard of living awaited them which was below that on which the poorest labourer could survive.


Advent of state welfare


Lloyd George did not therefore invent the welfare state. As we have seen it was already very much in existence. But he did, along with a young Winston Churchill, refine the concept and drive it forward into the arms of the state - surprising for a Liberal politician. But we have jumped too far ahead in our story.


...a means-tested old age pension was introduced for those of 70 or more. At the time average life expectancy for men was 48 years!


The 106 landslide victory of the Liberal Government was not based on a programme of welfare reform. Indeed, it did its best not to discuss it. But reform came. In order to protect the friendly societies a non-contributory, means-tested old age pension was introduced for those of 70 or more. At the time average life expectancy for men was 48 years!


National health and a more limited coverage, unemployment insurance, were introduced by the 111 Act. Contribution and benefit levels were laid down by Parliament, but friendly societies and mutually-owned bodies operated the health scheme.


The insurance principle was advanced to finance this new welfare because the Liberal Government was anxious not to raise income tax and alienate the bedrock of its support. It therefore followed Bismarcks lead. In Germany Bismarck had faced even greater resistance to a tax-based welfare. The German Chancellor did not then have the power to levy taxes on income. The insurance principle, now regarded as a crucial aspect of state welfare, was originally met with considerable hostility. Lloyd George won over the initial opposition with his tripartite financing from worker, employer and taxpayer. Hence his cry to the workers of 7d for d.


Neville Chamberlain added to this insurance base with the Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act of 15. Pensions were paid from 65 and widows benefit introduced. But these inter-war years were dominated by unemployment. And it was the financial chaos resulting from botched attempts to provide income for the mass unemployed, while maintaining an insurance fund, which helped reposition trade unionists, and others, on the question of state or voluntary based welfare. The use of a household based means-test for unemployment assistance added grist to the mill for this campaign.


Enter Beveridge


An enquiry was established in 141 to propose how best to tidy up state welfare. Beveridge seized the opportunity, rewrote the script, and then redesigned the contours of British welfare. The publication of his report was fortuitously delayed. When it was produced in November 14 it followed hard on the heels of the Allies first major victory of World War Two. Implementing Beveridge was immediately seen as part of winning the peace.


The prize was security from the cradle to the grave. Although largely a synthesis of ideas (including Beveridges) which had been around for some time, it was the blueprint for conquering Want, one of the five giants Beveridge declared should be slain by way of post-war reconstruction. Each giant was countered by


· The 144 Butler Act which reformed schooling, the commitment to full employment in the same year.


· The Family Allowance Act of 145.


· The 146 National Insurance Act


· The 148 National Health Act, aimed at achieving that very objective, and established for the first time a national minimum.


But, as always, the world did not stand still. Although for sometime in the 150s and 160s welfare provision did just that. How to finance the NHS increasingly became a key political issue. Insurance benefits were not paid at a high enough level to prevent many pensioners from becoming poor, and by the 170s full employment began taking a battering which it has had to endure until recently. The political caravan had once again moved off in search of new ideas.


Thatcherism


There was never a coherent Thatcherite approach to welfare. Following the main haemorrhage of manufacturing jobs in the 181-8 recession (exacerbated by the inept handling of the exchange rate), the formal abandonment of a full employment goal looked like a mere precaution against future political failure. The NHS budget continued to increase, driven upwards by a growing demand set by a combination of rising expectations, by health consumption becoming a lifestyle-type choice, by advances in medical technology, and by a rapid growth in life expectancy.


The NHS budget continued to increase...


Welfare bills were confronted in two ways. Insurance benefits were hacked back with an ever-growing number of individuals pushed on to means-tested support rising from one in six of the population in 17, to one in three in 17. But the biggest savings for taxpayers (paid for by less generous pensions) came in 180 with the switch to increasing the state retirement pension only in line with prices, and not by earnings if these were rising faster - as they invariably did.


By 17 occupational pensions had grown from the modest initiatives recalled earlier into the great welfare success of this country. Alongside these pensions the Tories planted individually owned schemes, known as personal pensions. The advent of these schemes was their major welfare innovation. This advance, however, has been hampered by miss-selling - i.e. persuading people to leave occupational schemes almost invariably against their best interest - often accompanied by the imposition of very high charges and the absence of an employers contribution. Even so, by 17, Britain had more assets owned by occupational and personal pension schemes than the whole of the asset portfolio owned by other European Community schemes combined.


And yet welfare bills continued to escalate in an apparently unstoppable fashion. Welfare was about to undergo another major rethink.


Welfare and character


When welfare was run by friendly societies and mutually owned organisations few questioned the fact that welfare affected how people behaved. Welfare was not simply strictly policed; the range of benefits full recognised the danger that some people would claim benefit to which they were not entitled if the regime was slack. Welfare was seen not merely as a means of meeting a need, but by its organisation, and the means by its delivery, it was conceived as a tool for building good character.


The biblical view of human nature - its fallen status, yet conceived to be redeemed - was lost sight of in left-wing intellectual circles by the 160s. Welfare was by them seen primarily as an act of altruism and this paternalistic view was advanced behind the cover of politically correct statements, so much so that even the Right lost the confidence to mouth, let alone act on, the broader, age-old understanding of mankind.


The resulting paralysis of both will and mind resulted in little concern for how different types of welfare (insurance or means-tested) affected behaviour; and to raise the question of fraud was to be automatically deemed politically unbalanced. Thinking the unthinkable was the task for Labours final years in opposition before 17, and was part of the strategy of making Labour electable. It was never meant to be an activity undertaken in government.


Thinking the unthinkable in Opposition took place across five inter-related areas.


· It was not simply a question of the size and the rate of growth of social security expenditure. The key issue was the growth of means-tested welfare and in particular how this form of provision affected the actions of recipients.


· Welfare was not therefore seen as a neutral agency operating in society. Rather it was one, which, for good or ill, helps determine motivation, shape action and thereby determine character.


· Welfare had to work with the grain of human nature. Self-interest, one of the most powerful of human instincts, had to be the cornerstone around which welfare reform was built.


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