Time gentlemen please
Today’s barmy Government announcement (presumably to detract from the Smeargate debacle) is to conduct a review into the idea that alcoholics have their benefits docked if they do not get treatment.
Hmmmm
The Welfare Reform Bill (currently going through Parliament) already contains the option to withhold benefits from alcoholics. So er…what is new?
And if they DO decide to go down the route of withholding benefits from alcoholics the most likely outcome is that alcoholics simply cease to confide in their GP about their alcohol problem. That will help how?.
..And if they are stupid enough to confide in their doctor and risk benefits cuts as a consequence, there are not enough clinics to treat alcohol as things stand now, let alone take on any more.
If that is the best idea the Special Advisers can come up with to try to knock Mr McBride and co. off the headlines – we should call Time Gentlemen Please on the lot of them.
April 14th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Tricky one this. I just did the Richard Bacon show on Radio 5 on the topic.
Strikes me the broad-brush concept – getting people off welfare and being reluctant to pay out cash to people who don’t work because they choose to drink too much is a “good thing”.
But the detail – or likely detail – is a “bad thing”.
Am also concerned that selecting one particular affliction is discriminatory. If ALL people “on the sick” need to prove they’re getting treatment, then I’d actually be happier with it. But picking specifically on boozers seems unfair.
I don’t think parents should be able to claim universal child benefit. But I’m not sure I’d support a policy that, say, banned Catholics from claiming child benefit but allowed Protestants to do so, even though this would bring the benefit bill down.
My basic approach is to assume the worst when judging New Labour’s ideas and motivations. That hasn’t let me down too badly yet.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I have a problem – with this. Is it meant to cover alcoholics who have paid tax via NI ? Surely they have made their contribution.
What we need to say on this issue is that ‘the entire Beveridge welfare consensus has failed’ and this issue shows why. If you encourage people to not work you gradually (over generations) destroy the income base of the systems as people stay on benefits for a lifetime. Simply picking on the alcoholics who are an easy group for the government to give a kicking to is no substitute for solving the problem which is that people need to be free to work even when receiving a Citizens Income from the state. That will encourage a work culture.
This is a policy that gets wrapped up in a lot of conflicting issues. Surely our starting point needs to be that if people want to drink themselves into oblivion thats their choice. We can reason with them, argue with them, but we cannot as libertarians justify in the end stopping them and I for one would not wish to do that.
The question of benefits/Citizens income arises. If there is a citizens income based on oil revenues then we would not be arguing about the witholding of that because it would be a right. The problem is that we are looking at benefits which are based on the taxes of other workers.
I would argue that the right position for all who are removing themselves from the labour force (who want to do this or have done it on a de facto basis which I am not clear that is the position with alcoholics) is to calculate what the value of the citizens income would be, and then reduce the benefit to that level not to remove it completely, however I would not advocate pushing this as a policy regarding alcoholics for the following reason.
The problem with the forced rehabilitation is that there is a ‘moral agenda’ behind it – the idea that there is a right way to behave. Authoritarian minded people like enforcing this agenda in the same way that bullies enjoy bullying as it gives them a feeling of being right/self worth. They actually believe they are doing a good thing and are ‘white knights’. If we support this policy we get wrapped up in this agenda.
Lets point out that the system has created the problem and that authoritarian solutions are simply papering over the cracks.
Ed
April 15th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Ed,
The citizens’ income point is an interesting point. In my experience, it’s actually quite a dividing line between classical liberals in the LibDems and those in other more right-wing parties.
Problem is, though, that it’s very difficult to shoehorn these more philosophical points into a short radio discussion.
If I’d said, when phoned by Radio 5 yesterday, that my response to James Purnell’s plans was to advocate a Georgist model of redistribution based on land values, I think it unlikely they would have been as keen to get me into TV Centre to discuss the issue with Anne Diamond (who does not, as far as I am aware, have any particularly staunch views on land value taxation one way or another!)