Godfrey Bloom

The Lloyd-George government first floated the idea of a welfare state, it was a radical idea, paradoxically sparked by developments in Bismark’s administration in Germany during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was reappraised in wartime Britain by Beveridge in 1943, as a blue print for the modern welfare state. It matters not what style of welfarism a modern industrial economy runs it is always subject to moral hazard. The systems usually mutates into something quite different as politicians manipulate the concept to bribe voters with their own money. Given that politicians, with the aid of cronies at their central banks can print or borrow money almost without short term restraint the temptation to do so is irresistible to the electioneering politician.

Yet this was never the original intention the Lloyd-George and Beveridge ideas were to fund a system of benefits paid for by compulsory subscriptions called National Insurance Stamps. Still laughingly called so even today although everyone knows it is just another tax. (Remember vehicle excise was called the Road Fund Licence?)

The Attlee administration completely wandered from the path of self sustainability after only a few short years of government. As the welfare state grew to mind boggling amounts the original, perhaps worthy, concept of a ‘safety net’ was discarded. It became a cradle to grave monster and Kenneth Clark as Chancellor took it through the one hundred billion pound a year barrier in the 1990s.

Of course the problem we now have is that welfare has become a life style choice keeping people in a twilight world of semi poverty. Trapped in a system where the deserving and undeserving poor are treated equally. Welfare spending is out of control, as it was bound to be as it is non discriminatory. In the last few years we have seen a million immigrants come to the UK to do jobs at the unskilled end of the market, not because we have no one to do them but because a welfare recipient can get as much money for claiming benefits and watching day time TV as rising at 6am to pick sprouts on a frosty November morning.

It is natural therefore that anyone who is eligible to come here wants their hand in the till. Other countries think we are mad, try and apply for welfare in Italy as an immigrant and see how far you get. However it is too easy to blame the immigrants for welfare tourism when we need to blame the system. We must put in place a real safety net, not a life style alternative. It matters not whether you are British or foreign. No one should live at the expense of his neighbour.

I would argue the welfare state has been a failure encouraging moral decay in the nation over two generations and should be scrapped forthwith.