The political parties of the neoliberal right (Reform
Ltd, the Tories, and Labour), aided and abetted by the majority of the media,
continue to push their agenda of cutting the bill for benefits and pensions.
The current most popular rationale which they give is to divert money into
armaments, but if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. It’s easier to
sell the anti-benefits message if it can be presented as a binary choice, even
if that presentation is a complete nonsense.
It may even be a popular policy, given that the
debate around benefits has been slowly and insidiously polarised over recent
years in such a way that many people have come to believe that anyone receiving
benefits is a freeloader on the efforts of the rest of us. They just don't think it will affect them. The turkeys have
been sold on the argument that promoting the virtues of stuffing somehow means
that they will be spared the Christmas chop.
There is, of course, no doubt that some savings can
be made. Complex rules could be simplified to reduce administration costs,
benefit fraud could be targeted (although the costs of doing that will eat into
any savings, and targeting tax fraud and evasion would be a more productive use
of resources). But such savings are on the margins: the only real way of
generating large financial savings from the benefits bill is to cut the amounts
being paid. Reducing payments is one approach, cutting eligibility is another; but
whichever approach is chosen, one inescapable consequence is that the spending
power of some real people in the real economy would be reduced. How many, and
by how much, are debateable questions; the underlying fact of a reduction in
spending power is not.
Even if it were possible to identify accurately and
precisely which people are ‘choosing’ not to work as opposed to which are
unable to (and the reality is that that is very difficult to do – real people,
in real families, in real communities have a complex mix of circumstances which
mostly lie in grey areas rather than black and white ones), the bottom line is
that the number of them is much lower than popular sentiment might suggest. Savings
on the scale being demanded by some require a much less targeted approach under
which many more people lose access to funds. They will include older people,
sick people, children – are we really going to push them into poverty in an
attempt to starve someone in the household into a probably non-existent job?
‘Cutting the benefits bill’ looks to be an easy task
if we look only at the number of pounds and pennies being spent by government.
It looks very different, though, if we start to look at the people involved. It
challenges our perceptions of the sort of society we are or want to be. Yes, of
course, we want those who can do so to make a contribution, but is being
employed really the only way of doing that – and is enforced poverty for those
who don’t really the best answer? For the neoliberals – for whom everything
boils down to pounds and pennies – the answers might be in the affirmative; for
those who believe that there is more to life and the human experience than
money and economics, jettisoning that narrow approach and starting with people is
the essential first step.
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