The Beveridge Report quickly became the blueprint for the modern British welfare state. More than 40 years later, even a white paper on social security drafted by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, which opposed many of the principles behind Beveridge's work, recognised his report as 'by any measure a landmark'.
Although it was a complex document of more than pages, the publication of the Beveridge Report was a huge success. Opinion polls reported that the majority of the British public welcomed the report's findings and wished to see them implemented as quickly as possible.
This shows the extent to which the population had shifted to the Left during the course of the Second World War. The first postwar election, in June , resulted in a landslide victory for the Labour Party, who were enthusiastic supporters of the Beveridge Report. The Beveridge Report, however, was also the result of longer-term changes in the attitudes of politicians and the public towards social welfare.
In Victorian Britain it had been common to lay the blame for poverty and unemployment upon the 'idleness' of the individuals concerned. At that time a wide variety of charitable and philanthropic organisations existed, and it was not felt that the state needed to provide a comprehensive system of welfare support. By the early years of the 20th century, the rise of the Labour movement in Britain not to mention the introduction of a social insurance system in Bismarck's Germany during the s was challenging laissez-faire notions of state involvement in social policy.
The Liberal government of Herbert Asquith introduced a number of measures - most notably the Old Age Pensions Act and the National Insurance Act - that radically extended welfare rights in Britain. But neither Act was universal in scope - with both favouring the 'deserving' sick and unemployed 'deserving' in that they had previously been in regular employment. But it was clear that the principle of 'individual liberty' was now being challenged by a stronger emphasis on collective welfare rights.
As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out in January, because the proposed uprating changes apply to almost all benefits and tax credits both in-work and out-of-work households are affected. Out of 2. Of They also point out that other elements of the "consolidation package" have different effects, particularly for those on higher incomes chart C. The impacts of other changes will also be very significant for working as well as out-of-work households.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation research on the council tax benefit showed that 2. What is the correlation between a country's economic performance and the size of its welfare bill? Richer countries spend much more as a proportion of income on welfare than poor ones — compare Sweden and Somalia. But of course that doesn't mean spending more on welfare makes a country richer: it mostly reflects the natural tendency of societies, as they become more prosperous, to increase social spending.
Some economists argue that large welfare states, which need to be financed by equally large tax revenues, over time inhibit private-sector growth. However, the experience of the Nordic countries does show clearly that there is no necessary inconsistency between economic dynamism and a large and relatively generous welfare state. Perhaps a better way to think about it is this: it seems likely that having no welfare state would not only make a country a very unpleasant place to live in but would inhibit economic growth, as a consequence of the inevitable social breakdown; equally a country where the state taxed away everyone's income and redistributed it would have no incentives for economic activity.
So there's unlikely to be one "right answer". In practice, what matters to growth is not so much the size of the welfare bill but how it is spent — what sort of incentives does it give to people to work, become trained or educated, and so on.
What does this tell us about the UK's welfare state and its impact on growth? In fact, the overall size of the welfare bill as a proportion of GDP has been fairly stable over the past quarter century, as the chart shows. To the extent there has been an upward trend, it's been driven by increasing numbers of pensioners, rather than more generous benefits.
Meanwhile, spending on those below pension age — working age and children — has been flat overall, rising in recessions and falling outside them. And it's false to suggest that "benefit dependency" has been steadily increasing; the number on out-of-work benefits unemployment benefit, incapacity benefits, and lone parents peaked in the early s and is now fully a million below that level. This certainly doesn't tell us that spending is at the "right" level.
Indeed, most economists would agree that over time reforms — especially increasing state pension ages to reflect increasing life expectancy — are required to ensure long-term sustainability. But it does tell us that anyone who says that spending too much on welfare or benefits is the cause of the country's economic problems, or that spending less on them is the cure, is not paying much attention to the facts. To quote the Economist : "Though most of them seem to end up in newspapers, in there were just families in the country with 10 children claiming at least one out-of-work benefit.
In , there was a major social security review, announced by the Conservative government and leading to a Social Security Act in , with a new system being introduced in Many supporters of child benefit believed that it might be abolished, means-tested, or taxed.
In the event, as a result of campaigns by Save Child Benefit and others, child benefit was retained. Many proposals were put forward to restructure, reduce or radically change child benefit. He restructured child benefit, to introduce a higher rate for the first or eldest eligible child. In July , the Labour government abolished one parent benefit the addition to child benefit for lone parents, originally introduced in They did this by incorporating one parent benefit into the main child benefit rates.
It was abolished for new claimants and existing claims were frozen. Between April and April , the rate of child benefit for the first child increased by Under the Child Benefit Act , child benefit is now available for young people completing a course which they started before their nineteenth birthday up to age Those in specific unwaged training programmes are also eligible. These reforms rectified long-standing anomalies. We will preserve child benefit, winter fuel payments and free TV licenses.
They are valued by millions. I have received many proposals about this benefit. Some have suggested that we means-test it; others that we tax it. All these proposals involve issues of fairness. The benefit is usually claimed by the mother. To tax it would mean that working mothers received less than the non-working partner of higher earners. To means-test it, we would have to create a massively complex new system to assess household incomes.
I do not propose to do those things. I know that many working people feel that their child benefit is the one thing that they get without asking from the state. So instead, to control costs, we have decided to freeze child benefit for the next three years. This is a tough decision, but I believe that it strikes the right balance between keeping intact this popular universal benefit, while ensuring that everyone across the income scale makes a contribution to helping our country reduce its debts.
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference on 4 October, Mr Osborne announced that child benefit would also be withdrawn from higher rate taxpayers:. We still pay over a billion pounds a year in child benefit to higher rate taxpayers. Believe me, I understand that most higher rate taxpayers are not the super-rich.
0コメント