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New welfare system is not working
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Far from representing a more efficient use of public funds, the new income support system introduced to replace both parish welfare and a range of States-run benefits has already turned into an unmanageable drain on resources.
Whether the new system is out of control or merely going through a tough transition, as Social Security Minister Ian Gorst suggests in his response, Senator Shenton is right to have pointed out that this situation is not only unsustainable but also neatly disproves the notion that centralisation always brings savings.
A full Scrutiny panel review of the income support scheme’s first years is imminent and timely. It will now need to be read in the light of the Public Accounts Committee comments and in the context set by this week’s related announcement by Deputy Gorst that a new team of civil servants has been formed to tackle benefit fraud, employing a multi-media campaign and encouraging Islanders to report anyone they believe is abusing the system.
That background already leaves little room for doubt over one key conclusion – that the income support system as currently constituted and run has not achieved the aims so confidently promised by its promoters when they argued successfully for the end of parish welfare at the same time as States benefits were to be tidied up and placed under one umbrella.
With hindsight, it looks as though the sound logic behind the latter initiative has not applied equally to the latter. Not for the first or last time, the unique strengths of Jersey’s parochial system were probably underestimated. Certainly, there would be no need for a benefit fraud task force if the Constables, with their irreplaceable personal knowledge of their parishioners’ needs, were still responsible for welfare payments.
Cost is not the only issue where benefits are concerned, of course, but the new information also calls into question how effective, and how fair, a safety net income support provides.
And the wider question that must now exercise politicians is whether the States have inadvertently created the beginnings of a benefits culture. Such a phenomenon would be not merely financially insupportable but also socially and culturally disastrous in a small community like this, where ordinary taxpayers are squeezed ever harder and unemployment is already at record levels.
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