You have to hand it to the Daily Mail; when you think it can't get any worse, it does. Today's gem is
an article by Mark Littlewood headlined "
Why Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant - and how much we pay them; An incendiary idea to save on our £500m A DAY welfare bill".
You might already have spotted the first clue to the flaws in his argument from this headline; the use of the words "we" and "our". He develops this, summarised in three quotations from article:
- "The amount we now spend on welfare is jaw-dropping. The average household is taxed to the tune of £8,000 every year to finance the State's programme of handouts."
- "Taxpayers have a right to know exactly who is claiming what and how much they are getting."
- "Many people now have a third of their wages - or even more - confiscated at source by Revenue & Customs. The biggest item this cash is then spent on is welfare. You have a right to know who is receiving it."
It's the language of "us and them". Personally, I don't know which category Littlewood would put me into. I am retired and receive a state pension. (He includes pensioners in his scheme; is my state pension a "handout"?) I'm also a taxpayer. But then, the majority of benefits claimants have been taxpayers, and will be again. Most of us are both claimants and taxpayers at some points in our lives. That's what a welfare system is for; you pay in when you can and draw out when you can't. But the Mail has been tireless in helping successive governments to draw a line round all benefits claimants and separate them from the "hard-working families" beloved by politicians. For someone like Littlewood, it seems to make sense. After Oxford he worked for various organisations including the Liberal Democrats, and is now Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank which is very secretive about its sources of funding. He can't see himself as ever being in the position of having to claim benefits. Like all his class, he considers himself far superior to all of us scroungers.
What about his central thesis; that there should be a publicly accessible database of what benefits everyone gets? No problems with that, surely? It's not naming and shaming, is it? Two more quotations:
- "Anyone ashamed to claim money from the State shouldn't be claiming it."
- "Surely no one needs to worry about violent retribution against claimants. The British are far too reasonable to start taking up pitchforks and burning torches and assaulting imagined benefits cheats. We are generous and fair-minded people." (Surely this is tongue-in-cheek!)
Leave aside the fact that there are many, many elderly people who are not claiming the benefits to which they are entitled because they are ashamed. That's not important compared to the fun we could all have looking up the incomes of our neighbours.
It isn't going to happen, and I suspect that Littlewood and the Mail know that. The point of the article is to further demonise anyone who is dependent on the welfare system.
