Balancing cost and fair play

It is only a few years since Jersey’s long-established but occasionally uneasy mixture of discretionary parish relief and centralised social security benefits was replaced by a new, co-ordinated and purportedly more efficient system of payments all to be channelled through the States, but a lot has changed in that short time. What may have looked in the days of plenty like administrative loose ends, with the hard decisions already taken, now seem more like unacceptable drains on hard-earned tax payments requiring more investigation and adjustment.

It is against such a background that Social Security Minister Francis Le Gresley has promised to look again at the criteria for receipt of invalidity benefit, currently paid to 1,000 people at a total cost of £10 million a year. Many of them are in genuine need and their interests must, of course, be carefully protected, but others are still claiming the money long after a change in circumstances which should instead attract practical help to get back into work, the minister rightly maintains. A similar picture has emerged in relation to benefits paid to surviving spouses after bereavement, many of whom have remarried or no longer live in Jersey.

In the new economic climate, and with unemployment benefits now added to the burden on the Social Security budget, such anomalies must be tackled, hard-nosed and ruthless though the process may sometimes seem. As with many other aspects of public spending, the days of unquestioned entitlement are past, replaced by a more pragmatic era in which scarce resources must be targeted where they are most needed.

For that reason, Deputy Geoff Southern is likely to succeed with his proposal to reinstate prescription charges, scrapped by Social Security in what now looks like a moment of affluent madness. Those who cannot afford prescriptions would still receive help but, argues Deputy Southern, the money saved by charging those who can afford to pay could be redirected towards reducing the cost of visits to the doctor, now prohibitive for some families.

For the second time in less than a decade, the Island’s benefits system is clearly in need of a significant overhaul, partly to resolve anomalies created and neglected last time and partly to meet new economic realities With careful determination from all sides of the House, with a team of Scrutiny members newly committed to constructive collaboration with the Council of Ministers and with a new Chief Minister who has a well-tuned social conscience as well as accountancy qualifications and relevant in-depth experience as a former Social Security Minister, this would seem as good a time as any to get it right.