Martin Sime: Referendum debate must grasp nettle of welfare

WE MUST always remember that the poorest people in our society are the most dependent on public expenditure. Even the smallest difference to their income or costs can play havoc with their ability to feed and clothe their families or do the everyday things many of us take for granted.

So let’s just rehearse where public policy has got to on such an important subject. Having made the case that welfare must share the pain of general public expenditure cuts, the UK Government has sought to justify this on the grounds that some payments are unjustified. On the back of this blame culture, tighter rules and new conditions have been introduced. The poor, it is claimed, have to shoulder their share of the pain, but they also have to contend with the charge of being scroungers and parasites.

Welfare is fast becoming the pivotal issue in the independence referendum. Many of the constitutional options short of full independence assume that welfare would be devolved, yet others argue that social solidarity is the bedrock of the Union.

There are technical arguments too about integrating welfare with devolved health and care policies, and services, so that we can withstand the pressures of a growing population of older people. What would a Scottish welfare system look like?

Too much of the referendum debate is predicated on powers rather than purposes. So here are some thoughts about what the purposes might be:

1. Social protection (a much better term than welfare) should be available to people according to their needs and circumstances, and should be sufficient to meet the basic necessities of life.

2. When the economy is slowing, more should be invested in social protection to maintain standards.

3. Unemployed people should be supported to contribute to their communities until they can find a job. Working for the public good combats feelings of worthlessness and adds value to society – a small community allowance paid on top of benefits recognises that contribution.

4. Levels of support must be fully protected from inflation.

5. The interface between welfare and work should incentivise people to take even the lowest-paid jobs without a drop in living standards. The living and minimum wage levels ought to be merged.

Whether we get to vote for devolving welfare is a highly charged political issue which a binary choice between the status quo and full independence barely recognises. Opinion polls suggest there is a strong appetite to vest Holyrood with powers over social protection. Our politicians need to reflect quite quickly on how this might be done as it is an urgent issue.

Last month it became clear that hundreds of single-parent families in Glasgow will lose £400 a year in tax credits, forcing many to give up part-time jobs. A huge growth in homelessness among asylum seekers and the social cleansing of inner London are the direct result of changes to housing benefits. Work-related assessments for people with disabilities are resulting in further cuts to benefit levels, even as 44 per cent of decisions are reversed on appeal.

Young unemployed people were being forced to stack supermarket shelves or lose what little they had to live off. Many others are being forced to make multiple applications for jobs that they will simply never get. Such harassment is providing much needed political cover for the cuts. That it helps no one doesn’t seem to count.

This is absurd. Tax cuts for the very rich aligned with benefit cuts for the poor indicate a traditional right-wing approach to economic recovery: trickle down will see us right in the end (aye, right). The UK is the fourth most unequal country in the world at the moment. However, a growing number of economists believe that raising benefit levels is the best way of stimulating demand in the economy.

The idea that social unrest and human misery can be contained and justified is based on the notion that the poor are always with us. Their plight is inevitable. Look out for an explosion of soup kitchens, food banks and queues outside homeless shelters. Let’s plan for a rise in mental illness and family breakdown because this assault on the poor has only just begun. The recent UK Budget anticipates a further £10 billion welfare cut to be announced this autumn.

Another decade of where we are going will surely exacerbate the divide between the haves and the have nots, leading to the kind of country and society which is the opposite of what most of us want.

• Martin Sime is chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations