Social Welfare

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 5:38 pm on 25 June 1998.

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Photo of John Swinney John Swinney Scottish National Party, North Tayside 5:38, 25 June 1998

To be fair to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), who was formerly one of my constituents, I shall not take any more interventions.

I have three further points on our proposals. First, welfare strategy must seek simplification of the tax and benefits system. There is much more room for linking the operations of the Inland Revenue and the various benefits agencies, and integrating administration and delivery to cut the bureaucratic jungle of 12 different agencies and numerous forms, procedures and access points. Integrating those systems is essential to allow improved assessment of benefit needs based on existing tax liabilities.

Secondly, our approach must allow more effective targeting of benefit fraud without the excesses of schemes such as the benefit integrity project. Designing tighter schemes should remove the room for abuse. Thirdly, closer integration of benefit payments and taxation would open the door to more efficient targeting of resources, diverting them away from those at the upper end of the income scale towards those on the lowest incomes. The money in the system should be focused on those with the greatest need, but not through the crude mechanisms of means or affluence tests. There should be a general calculation of tax liability that pays out benefit and pays in tax as required. That is the substance of progressive taxation.

The focus of any welfare strategy in Scotland, or the UK, should be on the faults in the system, rather than on the faults of those who claim. The debate must avoid, at all costs, stigmatising and deterring the poor and focus on opportunities for more sensible solutions. Regrettably, the Government's welfare strategy is a new Labour fix based on Tory foundations. It is little wonder that the words read out by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) were used by the Labour party's Scottish conference. The Minister for Welfare Reform is a fair-minded man. He knows that the words came from his political friends, not his political enemies. They are words of warning that the Government should heed.

As we look at the future economic development of our society, it is clear that we shall be part of a highly competitive international economy. Some individuals in our society will be able to prosper in that economy; others will not. As that pattern emerges, we must be prepared to distribute resources to those who cannot prosper. It is far from clear in the Government's thinking that they recognise the consequences of that economic inequality. The reforms proposed by the Government and the thinking that they display suggest that there will be a diminishing role for the state, rather than a continuing and demanding role, which is what we perceive. The Government appear to be moving in the opposite direction to that which the public require.