A defeat that delights the Tories

Heartless C.

Ashdown should know better!

Williams - ? pah!

Sam gold

Widespread public support for welfare reform is, in your view, evidence of the Tories doing the right thing,
How then should we view the very unpopular NHS reforms? Is this evidence of the government doing the wrong thing?

daniel maris

You certainly can't reform the welfare system without causing some pain.

However, there is something essential missing here: we need a scheme of guaranteed employment, so that people (including single parents) work for "welfare payments". In some cases this would be as employees within partnered companies, but also as employees of state. There is plenty of useful work that could be done: environmental work; loft insulation; promotion of UK tourism over the internet; staffing of information kiosks in town centres: police auxillary staff; visiting isolated old people etc etc.

Once that element is in place, you will get full public support for welfare reform.

William of London

My Lords Spiritual, I and millions like me work our fingers to the bone and pay vast amounts of tax. Do you realise how remote you seem, and how unfair, when you advocate distributing more than £26,000 of our earnings, more than the average wage, to families where being out of work has become a way of life and where dependency has taken root?

Richard Manns

Sam Gold,

I can't see where James Forsyth says what you claim he did. It's quite useful as a stick with which to beat the Opposition both now and in 2015. But, if the NHS reforms are a success, they will be too.

The belief that popular support prior to an act is a guarantee of its 'rightness' is called populism. I doubt that the schools or NHS changes fall into that. That these reforms do is useful, but IDS's reforms are, in general, far less 'mob-friendly' than that.

Leo McKinstry

I'm reminded of that powerful slogan "Peers versus People", used by the Liberals during the great struggle over the 1911 Parliament Act. Once more the unelected second chamber has proved itself hopelessly out-of-touch with the British public. Time the wretched, unelected place was put out of its misery.

Trapped

@ Daniel Maris

FINALLY someone who gets it. Yes. Workfare is a programme that should be put in place, but NOT to subsidise poundland, ASDA or Tesco, it should put the unemployed to work FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COUNTRY. Not the benefit of the companies who can afford to pay more, but don't, instead using government subsidies to keep wages deflated.

Barry Bilge

danial maris said: "You certainly can't reform the welfare system without causing some pain."

You can reduce it to a minimum. Implement new rules for new claimants and keep the old rules for current claimants. Not great in that existing cases of taxpayers being fleeced won't be dealt with but it would stop new ones taking their place.

To use an extreme example a council could have a cut off date after which it would no longer accept claims for housing benefit. Current claimants don't lose out because their payments continue and future claimants can't lose out on something they were not going to get.

Same for child benefit: Current qualifying children get covered by payments but future children do not - whether you are having your first one or adding to your brood.

Both extreme examples but I hope they illustrate what I mean. The existing circumstances of claimants do not have to be a barrier to welfare reform.

anxiouswarrior

your magazine brings out the worst in humanity

Steve T.

@Sam gold

You say "widespread unpopularity of the NHS reforms" and yet nobody even mentions it to me when discussing politics and current affairs.

This "widespread unpopularity" is, primarily, the Left doing their usual thing.

The vast majority are pretty non-plussed, I think - until some Lefty comes and rants in their ear until they agree to get rid of them.

Tom Pride

A man or woman earning £42,476 (£1 over the income at which the 40% higher rate band kicks in and at which point child benefit will be removed) will have £4,230 in NI and £7,000 in Income Tax deducted (total £11,230), leaving £31,245 net.

Our Lords now intend that a person on benefits receiving the cap of £26,000 (equivalent to earnings of £35,000) should receive child benefits in addition to this amount.

At £1,055.60 for the first child and £696.80 for each subsequent child (p.a.), seven children would produce an extra £5,236 in benefits, taking the £26,000 to £31,236 – more of less equivalent to the higher rate band earner’s net pay.

Of course the person on benefits would receive a further £697 for each further child while our higher rate tax payer gets nothing for any of his children.

Tom Pride

Out Statist bishops should have a read of http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9033483/Why-Church-leaders-should-love-the-benefit-cap.html

revolution

Paddy pantsdown the man even the Afghans rejected fighting for more British tax payers money to be thrown at high breeding third world scroungers allowed into UK by Tony the phony Blair and his labour stooges.
Vote UKIP.

Nicholas

@ Sam gold

What Steve T said.

But always interested in your polling evidence for that statement.

Clear Memories

re the NHS, Sam gold
January 23rd, 2012 10:39pm

I suspect it depends entirely how you word the proposals. "Do you believe in the NHS and free treatment at the time and point of need" - of course everybody will vote YES and oppose the Tories.

On the other hand "Do you think Britain should be the World's hospital and treat anybody who washes up on our shores, with Aids treatment for Africans, midwifery for rich Arabs, fertility treatment for all, bigger tits for schoolgirls, new kidneys for Indians etc etc and I suspect you might get a completely different response, especially from those that have paid their taxes yet see their parents/spouses/kids shoved to the back of the queue for life-saving treatment whilst non-contributors noisily demand 'their rights' supported by a wide variety of meia-savvy lefty MPs taking a break from falsifying their expenses claims.

kevin atkinson

The C of E property portfolio is cited on the Cof E website as providing about £178M of the approx £1 bill that the church needs to ruin. Most of this is small properties in NW London. If rents fall then the CofE gets less money. Let he who is without sin.......

Stepney

A great day for the working man. The idle rich confirming that we must work to provide feather-bedded largesse to those who don't.

And then 600k of council tax spent on one NUT Pilgrim in Haringey.

And there's the little matter of providing oodles of pension cash to the Public Service whilst foregoing a pension of our own.

If this carries on any longer then Lenin may well be catching the 15:03 to Waterloo.

A note to the ruling elite: you cannot afford to take the piss any longer.

Chris lancashire

Trapped: What government subsidies are these? I employ people and I want some.

Andy H

I am perfectly happy for people to get a tax free payment of 26K per year - so long as I can privately pay myself the same tax free.

Politicians always bleet on about fairness - so what is not unfair about that?

The personal allowance should be the limit for benefits.

starfish

"How then should we view the very unpopular NHS reforms? Is this evidence of the government doing the wrong thing?"

Hmm

The only sector of the population that seems to regard the reforms as unpopular seems to be those who work in it or comment upon it

My family and friends are all for it

Misty A

Barry Bilge,

I would advocate the system of remaining on the Old Rules for existing claimants, but only if the same applied for tax payers.

The principle would mean that tax payers would only pay the tax that they are already paying, at the rates that were in place when the entered the tax system, regardless of changes in the economy, personal circumstances, etc.

It would obviously not work, and to provide a comfort blanket for those who receive, whilst squeezing those who pay is simply not fair or sustainable. In any society.

Leo McKinstry

One of the more hilarious features of yesterday's row over the cap was Liam Byrne's abject performance on Newsnight. It reached new heights of twisting opportunism. Essenitally Byrne said, "We're in favour of a cap in principle, but against it in practice." Lloyd George once said of the Liberal politician, "He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul." How apt those words are today for Byrne.

Ostrich (occasionally)

Steve T. 24th, 12:10am

Fair comment. Also, the only protesters I've heard can all be lumped together as 'vested interests'. Not a bad bunch to antagonise, IMHO, as long as you don't allow them to overwhelm you.

Ostrich (occasionally)

daniel maris 23rd, 10:48pm

"Guaranteed employment"

Was there ever an expression more likely to guarantee wastrels leeching off the wasting corpse of the state.

Ian Walker

Andy H - I actually once worked out, for a lobbyist (boo!) friend of mine, a complete system of welfare and taxation based on a principle of a 'universal pension' - e.g. a national wage paid to everyone, regardless of circumstances.

Unfortunately, one inescapable conclusion was that in order to not have an infinite cost, it required higher earners to pay LESS tax (basically you could opt-out of receiving the pension and pay less tax) which seemed like quite a hard sell considering the lack of maths knowledge in the wider public and in politicians)

J Wright

Shirley Willians ,what do you expect from someone that rioted on the Grunwick picket line. Total hypocritical Toss Pot.

Andy H

@ Ian Walker

That sounds interesting and one worthy of reading one day. However my point is more of principle.

I am happy to let the state pay people a sum tax free - I just feel that if we want a fair and equal society, then this untaxed payment should be mirrored by our personal allowance.

However instead of the state paying this, this would be paid privately (or is there no private money, just tax and money the state allows you to keep?)

It drives me mad that the definition of fairness is so corrupt, that the basic concept of treating people the same, without making judgements of worthiness has been lost.

Why should it take someone to lose their job to gain such a huge tax break?

toni

LMc."We're in favour of a cap in principle, but against it in practice."

In favour of the cap, but safeguards needed to prevent people becoming homeless resulting in the council tax payer picking up the bill for re-housing.
The discussion is on the BBC website.

George Shepherd

The more setbacks the Tories endure (forests, health, welfare, riots, unemployment figures) the more popular they seem to become

Ours is an age of paradox politics - voters don't seem to want reforms - they just want a safe pair of hands - a UK technocratic government

This might get Cameron his outright majority at the next election but in the meantime, with no meaningful reform , the country stagnates

john gerard

The proposed benefits cap is still too high. No more than £20k, and that's being generous.

Jon Stack

Do you seriously think a cap at the equivalent of £35k gross earned income is popular? More popular, maybe, than no cap at all , but tell people working to earn this, or less, about it and I suspect you'll get more than a thick ear.

Trapped

@ Chris Lancashire :

They're the things you take for granted if you pay your staff a junk wage, namely the fact that the government makes up the difference to bring it to the point where the person in question can at least have a roof over their head for what they are paid.

Housing benefit, low wage benefits and tax credits create a disincentive to work, but not how IDS and his idiot brigade see it, the ones out of work are the ones getting a "living wage", the ones in work are being forcibly depressed under that through a set of nasty little loopholes introduced at various points, thus trapping them at a point where a life out of work starts looking preferable.

The fix? Wipe out all low wage support altogether, and -either- :

Forcibly mandate a living wage that ensures anyone in work is actually being paid enough that the government doesn't have to subsidise their existence.

OR.

Remove the minimum wage entirely and let the market go into disaster-shock mode for a year or two as our horrific immigration policy causes wages to spiral down so far that the low skilled jobs becomes ones you take up whilst living in a dormitory.

Both will get the message across, harsh as it sounds, it's what is needed.

Cynic

"It demonstrates to the electorate that they are trying to do something about the injustices of the something for nothing culture." If they don't ACTUALLY do something about the something for nothing culture, it won't go well for the government at all. Talk is cheap. We want action. It's ludicrous to pay people more in benefits than they'd get if they work. It's also imbecilic to pay people to have more children than they could otherwise afford - and reward them with a larger house for doing so.