Policy Comparison 9 - Welfare

Finally, I'm getting around to our final policy area. Welfare is quite a tricky area to do a comparison. There is broad agreement that we need the welfare system, broad agreement that it could be improved in some ways. I suspect that most of what would be suggested here would be tinkering that would benefit some at the expense of others. Either that or more rhetoric about cutting red tape, etc... On other hand what I would hope to see are proposals that actually make sense in terms of reducing poverty, especially child poverty, that offer people enough to live on, but actually do something about the benefits trap and offer people an incentive to work with stigmatising benefits. Having enough to live off should be a right and not a privilege.

Again in a fairly random order:

BNP

• People who genuinely want to work must be provided with the opportunity to do so in return for training which will put them back into proper full-time employment.
• In return for financial support and training for a new career, the benefit recipient must complete a certain number of hours of work per week.
• Make all benefits and social housing only available to British citizens.
• Make length of residency in an area the key criterion for council house allocation.
• Preserve the 'right to buy' of individual tenants, but with the money from sales being used to build more council houses.
• Take all privatised social housing stock back under local democratically controlled council ownership.
• Ensure that the billions being spent on the utterly bogus asylum seeker and immigration swindles is redeployed to alleviate the appalling conditions under which many of Britain's old people are forced to live.
• Restore the earnings link with pensions and ensure that elderly people who have paid a lifetime of taxes and reared families should not have to sell their homes to pay for care in their old age.

I can't get past the rascist and discriminatory nature of some of these proposals in order to properly evaluate the populist measures contained elsewhere.

LABOUR

• Guaranteed job or training place for 18-24 year olds unemployed for over six months.
• Increase child benefit and child tax credit.
• Increase the Pension Credit to a minimum of £130 a week.
• A Winter Fuel Payment of £400 for over 80s households and £250 to the over 60s.
• Help savers by increasing the threshold of Individual Savings Accounts to over £10,000.
• Increase statutory redundancy pay to £380 a week.
• Extend the Stamp Duty holiday for properties under £175,000

Ok - what's here is good as far it goes. As I've said elsewhere I have reservation about the idea of guaranteed jobs/training. Winter fuel payments are unarguably a good idea as is encouraging savings. How they pay for this is another matter.

LIB-DEMS

• Restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings immediately.
• Reform Winter Fuel Payments to extend them to all severely disabled people.
• Meet the government's obligations towards Equitable Life policyholders who have suffered loss.
• Give people greater flexibility in accessing part of their personal pension fund early.
• End the rollercoaster of tax credit overpayments by fixing payments for six months at a time.
• Give people control over their pension by scrapping the rule that compels you to buy an annuity when you reach 75.
• Allow individuals to save through the UK Infrastructure Bank, offering stable long-term returns.
• Increase the income tax threshold to £10,000 - taking 3.6m of the lowest paid out of the tax.

Again, there's some good ideas here. I actually like their proposed changes to the tax system and the idea of the UK Infrastructure Bank has some appeal as well and includuing the severely diasbled in winter fuel payments seems eminently sensible.

UKIP

• Child Benefit, the Child Trust Fund, Child Tax Credits and the Education Maintenance Allowance should be merged into an enhanced Child Benefit payable for each of the first three children in each family.
• The Childcare element of Working Tax Credits, Early Years Funding, Sure Start expenditure and the tax relief on Employer Nursery Vouchers should be replaced with flat-rate, non-means tested nursery vouchers to cover around half the cost of a full-time nursery place for all children aged two to four.
• Instead of social housing being let at below-market rents with tenants liable for full Council Tax, with social tenants entitled to claim income-related Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, local councils should charge social tenants an all-inclusive rent (rent plus Council Tax), set at a flat percentage of the tenant household's gross income.
• Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit for private tenants should be phased out and replaced with 'Workfare' jobs, which will be administered by local councils, to ensure that those who would otherwise not be able to find work can still cover their rent and Council Tax, as well as contributing something of value to the local community.
• All other 'key benefits' (Jobseeker's Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Income Support, Carer's Allowance, Statutory Maternity Pay) as well as student maintenance grants should be rolled into a single, flat-rate Basic Cash Benefit ('BCB'), set at the same weekly rate as Jobseeker's Allowance/Income Support.
• Entitlement to the BCB should be extended to all low- and non-earners, in particular, to married or co-habiting mothers, students and carers, irrespective of household composition, income or assets.
• This Party proposes to replace a myriad of complicated means-tested benefits with straightforward universal benefits, the running cost of the entire welfare and pensions systems will be no more than £1.7bn, giving a saving to the taxpayer of £8bn.
• Only allow entitlement to welfare benefits after a minimum waiting period of ten years and on obtaining British citizenship for those who originally entered the country with a valid work permit or for reasons of marriage to a British citizen.

A programme of more wholescale reform of the system, but I suspect its all a little bit pie-in-the-sky, cutting red tape rhetoric dressed up in misleading details which are probably unmanageable. The figures of savings seem conjured up from nowhere and I suspect the changes they suggest would cost more to implement than they would actually save. Similarly, the proportion of household income for rent for social housing seems unworkable - how would youn account for seasonal or unpredictable incomes (and that's just one problem) whilst the idea of workfare jobs seems to be a step back towards the Victorian poorhouses.

CONSERVATIVES

• Create 'The Work Programme' - one single back-to-work programme for everyone who is unemployed, including the 2.6 million people claiming Incapacity Benefits. Support will be provided based on an individual's needs rather than the benefit that they are claiming.
• Support the young unemployed by referring them on to the Work Programme after 6 months of unemployment.
• The Work Programme will be delivered by private and voluntary providers, who will only be paid when someone gets and keeps a job.
• This party supports ending the couple penalty in the tax credit system as we make savings from our welfare reform plans.
• During the recession we will introduce four new programmes to supplement the Work Programme: Youth Action for Work, Work for Yourself, Work Together, and Work Clubs.
• This party will create an extra 10,000 university places next year. We will fund the cost for this by giving graduates an incentive to repay their student loan debts to the taxpayer ahead of schedule.
• Any new business started in the first two years of after the election will pay no Employer National Insurance on the first ten employees it hires during its first year (predicted to generate around 60,000 additional jobs over two years).

Most of this strikes me as completely unworkable - if the providers of the work programme only get paid when people get jobs, given the current lack of available jobs then I can't see voluntary or private sector agencies queuing up to provide the programme. They're talkingf about creating 60,000 jobs for 2.6 million people The thing sounds pretty horrible anyway - could they not think of a better name, sounds like a sentance a jidge would give out.

GREEN

• Everyone to receive a basic Citizen's Income to allow everybody to make meaningful choices between paid employment, part-time work, self employment, volunteering and encourage a better balance between work and everyday life.
• Extend workers rights to part time, casual workers and the self employed. Democracy in cooperatives and workplaces would be encouraged and this Party would value and protect carers and volunteers.
• The value of those who care voluntarily for the elderly is appreciated when we see the high price the market demands for such services.
• This Party would introduce a Citizen's Pension that would pay pensioners a liveable amount, without means testing and would be linked to the rise in average earnings. Independent studies by the National Association of Pension Funds have shown that a citizen's Pension could be afforded today within current net expenditure on state pensions.
• By abolishing tax relief on private pension contributions we can save enough money to provide much of the extra funds needed.
• With a decent state pension it is unnecessary to make additional contributions compulsory.
• Voluntary private and occupational schemes organised for and by the workers and pensioners concerned should be implemented.

I like the idea of a citizens income and citizens pension and would wholeheartedly supprt the extension of workers rights. I'll confess to getting a bit lost in the whole pension thing.

Summary
I kind of feel that I should be more passionate about the proposals here than I am. After all these are important concerms. Maybe I'm just getting a bit too cynical about the whole lot of them, or maybe its just that none of the parties are really getting to grips with things here - the Green, Labour and Lib-Dems all have individual good ideas. The Tories and UKIP seem to have dreamt up their policies late at night down the pub and the BNP are still beyond the pale - but I remain deeply uninspired by all 6. Feel free to disagree. As a rough order, I'd probably go:

1. Labour
2. Greens
3. Lib Dems 4. Conservatives
5. UKIP
6. BNP

Overall Summary

For those of you who've stayed with me throughout I hope you've found it interesting or helpful. any feedback is welcome.

Putting it all together my overall ranking would be:

6. BNP (nine 6th places out of 9) they are still an extremist racist party who twist every policy area to fit their own loathsonme agenda.
5. UKIP (two 4th places and seven 5th places - move up in a couple of areas due to particularly poor policies for Labour on immigration and the tories on Education). Like the BNp try and twist everything to their own agenda, but the agenda is less objectionable. Some policies seem to be trying to hold very incompatible viewpoinys simultaneously.
4. Conservatives (Two 3rd places, six 4th places, one 5th place) I've tried to be open minded to the possible strengths of their policies, but for me they remain still too committed to private sector sorting out the public sector, letting the market govern and offering the public false choices rather than genuinely having ideas to improve things. I see no substance to back up the Big Society slogan. I think they would be bad for social cohesion.
3. Labour (the most inconsistent - three 1st places, one 2nd, three 3rd, one 4th and one 5th) They have sensible ideas in some areas, but are weak on the environment and very bad on immigration. My main issue remains one of trust and a feeling that they're running out of steam.
2. Lib-Dems ( Three 1st places, three 2nd places, three 3rd places) I really like them on education and democracy (my main reason fotr supporting them would be on voting reform) and their strong on the environment too. Most of their policies have something to recommend them, even if not all the suggestions make total sense. In general, though, they're not as different to the other two as they would like to pretend and have little more overall vision.
1. Greens (four 1st places, four 2nd places and one 3rd). They have the policies that excite me the most and have the most vision. The offer the most positive genuine alternative to the three main parties. Slightly lacking in detail in some places, but overall their policies have the most respect for people and the planet.