The country's crying out for welfare reform

Frank Field has written an excellently provocative piece for The Telegraph today, arguing that the public would support root and branch reform of the welfare system.

He reports a recent survey by Policy Exchange showing that, "if they had their way, the electorate would poleaxe the two central pillars of the welfare state, which are the assessment of eligibility and the balance of responsibilities".

Overwhelmingly, voters reject the idea that the right to welfare should be decided on grounds of need. A vast majority insists that welfare should instead be earned. Voters are deeply uneasy with the direction of policy, begun in the early Sixties, that has seen Britain move away from its insurance-based system, where benefits were awarded only to those who had paid in, to a means-tested system that gives a universal right to benefits to anyone whose income is below a certain level. Especially since, under the guise of tax credits, a third of the country has been sucked into the welfare net.

Voters are equally hostile to the way social housing is allocated. The rules determine that those deemed to be in greatest need shoot to the top of the housing queues. The public fundamentally disagrees. It believes that those who have waited the longest, who have been good, reliable, decent tenants, who have paid their rent on time, whose children haven’t caused trouble, shouldn’t be pipped at the post for the best housing.

And as for people who refuse jobs:

Three quarters of the public – including benefit claimants themselves – believe that those who willingly refuse to seek work should lose all or a very large proportion of their benefits. Yet no government has shown any willingness to reflect voters’ views in the sanctions it imposes.

Field calls on Ed Miliband to move Labour in these directions. No hope of getting that past his left-wing, statist backbenchers.

If the country had a credible, right of centre party, they could preach these reforms and earn huge political benefit, as well as shifting the focus of the welfare debate.

But we haven't got such a party. Indeed, it's a sign of how far political debate in this country has become skewed that such popular and commonsense proposals should be outside the range of conventional political discussion.

Probably most people don't think we should be spending £12m a year on legal aid for immigrants either. The results appal even the Judges Council.

But we don't hear calls for that to be abolished either.

Democracy? What democracy?

P.S. This may also be of interest.