Reviving The Welfare State
Seven years of cuts have brought the welfare system to its knees; Antony Tucker suggests ways Britain can bring it back to health.

The welfare state is one of Britain’s best inventions, which for the last seventy years has tried to banish the spectre of deprivation from our country. Yet austerity, a political choice made by the Conservatives, has hollowed out our system to the point of collapse. The five giants William Beveridge wanted to beat — hunger, poverty, ignorance, unemployment and ill health — are back with a vengeance. Yet with welfare cuts popular at the ballot box in recent years, reviving the compassionate society demands new ideas.
The Cameron and May governments have got away with slashing the safety net for a number of reasons: misinformation, a lack of awareness of what ‘welfare’ means and demonising claimants. Above all, it was too easy for the right to call the welfare state wasteful and bureaucratic, a convincing line of attack that has won a nation over to seven years’ worth of cuts which have taken wealth from the hardworking many and handed it to the greedy few. We cannot just go back to the past; we have to forge a better future. Instead of using welfare to paper over the cracks in society, we have to prevent inequality before it ever rears its ugly head.
Take housing for example. Housing benefit cost the state £27 billion last year; this doesn’t get handed to families, but mostly ends up lining the pockets of private landlords, who are free to set whatever extortionate rates they like. Reform is desperately needed. We need an all-powerful Ministry of Housing, that builds council houses for those who need them. Freed from the demands of private landlords, the state could achieve big long term savings by investing in more social housing. What’s more, regulation has to prevent revenge evictions and be enforced to prevent the deadly consequences of unsafe accommodation. As Grenfell Tower has shown, if you let landlords get away with murder, people will die.
Poverty too shows how damaged our welfare system has become. Most people in poverty are from working families; it is low wages that fuel the desperation of the hardworking millions. Work has to be the route out of poverty; instead of handing out vouchers for food banks and spending millions topping up poor pay, we need the full Living Wage. The supermarkets and banks that force wages down would have to cough up more of their huge profits for the benefit of those who did the actual work, whilst the money saved in welfare payments could be handed to small businesses who might otherwise not be able to compete. Added to a system of sanctions designed to push people out of the safety net, and the slow car crash that is Universal Credit, and you have a catch-22 in which millions find themselves trapped.
The treatment of the disabled is also an area that shows how badly Britain’s welfare state needs reform. When the DWP stands accused of driving hundreds to suicide through the disgusting farce of its assessments, we have to act. Why are bureaucrats testing ill health down a phoneline? It should be for the Ministry of Health and its professionals to provide a safety net for people who cannot work. Their experience and compassion would ensure that the right help gets to the right people, rather that a maze-like system that seems designed to deny the needy the means to survive or live independently.

We are also faced with an epidemic of hunger in Britain today, particularly for children. The Labour manifesto in the recent election promised a free school meal for all primary school children; no segregation, no bureaucratic means test, just a decent lunch for the hungry. But we have to go further: not only extending provision to all pupils but providing cash payouts through the school roll for the holidays, when many families cannot meet the costs of feeding their children. Short term welfare cuts by the Tories will cost Britain dearly in the long run, both in the lifelong costs of childhood malnutrition and the consequences of hungry children being unable to fulfill their potential and earn the qualifications the nation needs.
These are not fantasy economics, nor falling back on the magic money tree. We can save the state billions in the long run, by solving Britain’s problems rather than just papering over the cracks with short term payments and false economies. Not only that, but we can beat the five evils that Beveridge identified and guarantee that no one is left behind. We cannot let the next generation inherit a world without a safety net. The welfare state helped my family and millions of others, and ensured we could achieve our potential. Building houses, feeding children, ensuring decent pay and restoring dignity to the disabled; none of these are radical or dangerous, but will not take place unless we revive the welfare state. It is possible to build a system that helps those in need whilst avoiding massive bureaucracy and waste — we simply need people in power ready to try.

