Yesterday, it became clearer where the welfare axe has due to fall but, as predicted, it is new claimants that will bear the brunt of the exercise. There must be a great deal of uncertainty amongst those in receipt of benefit who receive some PIP but some of those will be in work in any case. I must say that I dislike the whole way in which the debate over welfare benefits is framed because we all seem to know that this is effectively a cost-cutting exercise. Despite the fact that the Welfare Secretary has adopted the Tory meme of being 'trapped' on benefits, I suspect that most recipients would use the analogy of a lifeline rather than a trapped door. After all, if we were rescuing drowning people after a maritime disaster, it would seem a strange use of language to say that that those who needed rescue were 'trapped' by the lifeline that was thrown overboard to them. One un-named cabinet minister really put their finger on the problems we face in society by observing that 'The intellectual question that has not been answered here: is this about principled reform or is it a cost-saving exercise? There are some concerns this does not fix the issues around welfare but rather is about finding quick savings.' I do think that there is a great lack of political imagination in play here and in no way would I wish to minimise the scale of the problems that we face. But the projected savings of £5bn are not a great deal in the scheme of things and it could be that the political damage done is not worth the cost of the actual savings achieved. Rather than being completely negative about the issue, I wonder to myself what I would do if I were in a position to politically influence events. One thing that could be done is to look at other European democracies who are facing similar problems and see what they are doing to face the rapidly increasing welfare bills. After all, the demographic facts are affecting every European society as the numbers of aged (and their infirmity levels) increase and the proportion of the population in work to support them diminishes. A second way to address the problem is to look at the contribution of employers, including particularly the voluntary sector. There was no mention yesterday insofar as I could tell as to what incentives might be offered to potential employers to offer some work to those in receipt of benefits. There is a lot of talk about the therapeutic effects of being in work so why not take a small proportion of the benefit and give it to potential employers to encourage them to offer some employment (at a small, subsidised cost) to those who are seeking it? After WWII, there was evident concern about the employability of those injured during the war and the legislation at the time made employers employ a proportion of those disabled in their work forces, As a local government officer, my mother had mentioned to me that her own boss had a prosthetic hand, having been injured during the war. Those of use of a certain age may remember that in the days when department stores had lifts, they were often staffed by disabled ex-servicemen who rose up and down in them all day. If I had to make a guess, I would say that the proportion of the disabled of working age far exceeds those levels seen at the conclusion of WWII, so why are not similar schemes being thought about today?
Later on in the morning, I was helping our domestic help to clear some things off our dining room table prior to its redecoration following the leak of a month or so ago. Trying to find some space to put things, I decided to relocate some book and was on the point of throwing away a couple of issues from the Royal Statistical Society entitled 'Statistics in Society' I quickly thumbed through the pages of each of them and in one I found the following article by Julian Le Grand, an eminent Professor Social Policy written some 18 years ago (2007). Extending the idea of Beveridge's five giants of want, squalor, idleness, ignorance and disease, Le Grand enunciated what he called 'the giants of excess' The article abstract indicated 'that for health in particular, excessive behaviour of various kinds contribute significantly to the major sources of morbidity (= illness) and mortality in our society, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney and liver diseases...the main problem that face both individuals and the government or other agencies tasked with improving health is that the costs of unhealthy activities impact in the future, whereas the benefits from them occur in the present' What I found so amazing is that this was written (and known about) so long ago but the article could have been written yesterday and still retains its pertinence.
To our domestic help and the two care workers who called round to see Meg, I spoke to them at 2 minutes past 12.00pm and asked them what I was doing 52 years ago to the date (and the minute) The answer was that I was lying on a pavement having bit hit by a Hillman Imp that failed to stop at a T junction and hit myself (first) and then two of my students that it carried on its bonnet through some iron railways. Both legs were twisted out of position after the impact and it required an operation and some three months of rehabilitation before I could resume my work as a lecturer at Leicester Polytechnic again. As I was being transported by ambulance to the nearby hospital, one of the ambulance men asked his colleague whether to turn on the ambulance klaxon (known colloquially as a 'doo-dah') and his colleague, in view of the proximity of the hospital, replied that there was no point really. Hearing this remark, I concluded that I was so badly injured that I was not worth saving and hence there was no need for the klaxon. When in the hospital, I had my legs plastered up and I was then sent home because the hospitals throughout the country were accepting no patients as they were in the middle of an ancillaries' strike. I was sent home and told to take some aspirins to cope with the muscles severed in one leg and broken knee bones in the other. Things have improved somewhat since 1973!
© Mike Hart [2025]