National insurance and ID cards would be more effective than Brexit at tackling people’s anxieties about how the integrity of the British welfare state can best be protected.
The shirkers-versus-strivers narrative around cutting the welfare bill fails to recognise the reality that a quarter of Britons have a disability, and one third have unpaid caring responsibilities.
If we are truly entering an “age of migration” then erecting such barriers around the welfare state is one of the more plausible ways of adapting to it.
It has thrived through sector after sector demanding special treatment. Each claims a skills shortage and requires many more visas to be issued to foreign workers to come here.
The system is all but designed to subsidise low wages, disincentivise productivity, and give retirees no stake in the UK maintaining a thriving, dynamic economy.
Our chosen model is grossly unjust and will have many horrible consequences. But it already has, and yet it ticks along, because those consequences are not evenly spread.
The Chancellor explains the thinking behind proposed changes in Universal Credit which would restrict access to people who refuse to actively seek work.
Language matters, especially around an emotive and complex subject such as homelessness is. There is little forgiveness for imprecision, especially within the policy environment we have created by not articulating our own vision well enough.
The eight part of our series on reducing demand for government, in which we set out a programme for change – focused on families, civil society and government.
The fourth part of our series on reducing demand for government, in which we set out a programme for change – focused on families, civil society and government.
Our deputy editor and Susie Boniface of the Daily Mirror also discuss planned benefit cuts and reviving Oxford Street on Sky News’ press preview.
If Britain’s productivity problem could be fixed by politicians tilting at unpopular targets – in this case, an assumed army of scroungers – it would have been fixed long ago.
Immigrants, too, get old. Assuming standards of medical care remain, or improve as the science advances, enormous movements of migrants would be constantly required just in order to pay the bills of earlier waves.
The last of three articles this week as our project continues over the summer and autumn.
This move would be perfectly targeted on the people who, by definition, need most income support, and gets to them far more cheaply than a universal tax break would.