‘Bloated welfare system has lost its moral purpose’

Almost choking on the putrid stench in the air, they saw a seven-year-old child on a sofa, covered in animal faeces and lying next to the corpse of a dead dog. It was a horrifying image that embodied the criminal regime of cruelty and neglect to which the occupiers, Gemma Brogan and her partner Christopher Bennett, subjected the seven children and 35 dogs that lived with them in this foul, filthy home. Their callousness was also reflected in the youngsters’ poor social skills, decayed teeth, matted hair, physical weakness and inability to read or write.Following their arrest in June last year and subsequent trial, Brogan and Bennett were each sentenced to six years in prison this month. But what is striking about this case is that their inhumanity did not stem from lack of money.In fact, the evil pair were receiving no less than £ 84,000 a year from the welfare state, much of this incredible sum made up of disability living payments supposedly to meet the needs of their vulnerable children.’How was this allowed to happen?’ asked the judge in the case, Stephen Mooney. Part of the answer is that too much of the benefits system has lost its moral purpose.At its worst, social security can act as a subsidy for family breakdown, an incentive to idleness and an agent of corruption.At present, because of the cost of living crisis, most of the media concentrates on the struggles of benefit claimants, with the emphasis on harrowing poverty.But that is not the whole story. Too often, the bloated welfare system which now costs an estimated £115billion-a-year (not counting payments to pensioners) not only promotes dysfunctional parenting but also encourages many of its recipients to remain on the economic scrapheap.We live in a society where employers vociferously complain about the problems of staff shortages and recruitment, with a near-record 1.22 million vacancies in the workforce. Yet at the same time, more than 20 percent of the working-age population is economically inactive. PRIORITY: A tough task but Mel Stride has to make changes (Image: PA)An astonishing 5.3 million people in Britain are on benefits and not seeking a job, while in many of our great cities, which were once industrial powerhouses, more than one fifth of working-age residents are on welfare.At a time of economic restraint accompanied by a tight labour market, this colossal drain on enterprise and the public finances is unsustainable.The entire structure is ripe for major reform. That should be the top priority of Mel Stride, the new Work and Pensions Secretary who has the advantage, as a successful businessman himself, of a deep understanding of wealth and job creation.It will be a tough task, given the sentimentality that envelops all discussion of benefits, but Stride can take inspiration from the brave reform programme of David Cameron’s Coalition Government from 2010 which radically cut back on entitlements despite ferocious opposition.More recently, the Tories have lost their nerve and their way, partly because of Covid. But they cannot duck this issue any longer.Only this week, the latest report from the Office for National Statistics revealed that between June and September this year, another 133,000 people of working age were classified as long-term sick, taking the total to a record-breaking 2.5 million.Even among 16 to 34-year-olds, who should be the healthiest section of the population, one-quarter of a million of them say they are too ill to work. This plague of debilitation is partly a consequence of the breakdown in the NHS, where the waiting list is now over seven million and users are failing to receive swift, effective treatment.But undoubtedly the benefits system plays a role by providing perverse incentives to inactivity and irresponsibility.Almost as damaging is the cost of fraud. The Department of Work and Pensions admits that last year this cost the taxpayer £8.5billion, a sum that Dame Meg Hillier, the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, rightly described as ‘unprecedented and wholly unacceptable’.It is estimated during the Covid pandemic one quarter of all claims for Universal Credit were wrongly paid.Such widespread abuses and errors occur because the chaotic, lax system is so ripe for exploitation. That has to change. Rigour must be brought back to welfare so it strengthens rather than undermines our social fabric.