Editorial: Single benefit tinkering a waste of time

Opinion

The notion of a "single benefit" - meaning one size fits all - has been floating about in the ether of social welfare policy for as long as anyone can remember. The ideal of folding the various categories of need into one standard entitlement has an enduring, if superficial, appeal to the tidy mind, even if it does not amount to much change in practice. Successive governments have supported the idea in principle but not much has come of it. This Government says it will do it, in 2007 and 2008, but the awkward details have yet to be decided.

Even the vague announcement yesterday by Social Policy Minister Steve Maharey left the idea of a single benefit ridiculously compromised. Seven benefits available to working-age people would be replaced by a single basic benefit but there would be "add ons", he said, to meet particular needs such as accommodation, childcare or disability. What, then, is the point?

If the Government simply wants to remove any discrimination between beneficiaries who are unable to work for different reasons, it can do so by equalising the basic rates. There is no need to officially erase the various categories - unemployment, sickness, domestic purposes - unless it imagines that will remove a supposed stigma from some or all of them.

The reason offered by Mr Maharey does not make sense. He said a single benefit would dramatically reduce the time spent on administration, allowing case managers to focus more on moving people from welfare dependency into work. But it is hard to see how administration will be any easier if the standard benefit allows "add-ons". Most beneficiaries will need add-ons, usually as a consequence of their reason for needing the benefit. The unemployed will need accommodation assistance to remain in areas where they are likely to find jobs, single parents will need childcare supplements, the genuinely sick will need a range of supports.

In fact, when officials have finished sifting the various claims and entitlements of recipients of the single benefit, they will probably find the old system was simpler. At least it put those with similar reasons for dependency into the same category from the beginning. It is quite likely that in time social policy thinkers would come up with another new idea - that instead of a one-size-fits-all approach they could devise a dedicated benefit for distinct categories of need. It would not be the first time the wheel has turned full circle in public policy.

This sort of pointless tinkering with the system seems harmless until we hear Mr Maharey suggest the single benefit is the key to his hopes of encouraging all beneficiaries to seek paid work. He believes it will enable the ministry to spend less time processing claims and more time on case management to prepare people for full-time work. That intention is worthy but what happens to it if the single benefit makes life harder for assessors? If they now find it takes more time to sort out the incapacity and dependants of people on an omnibus benefit, the welfare-to-work project will suffer.

One useful consequence of a single benefit could be to close the options for malingerers. At present they can avoid a work-availability test by migrating from the unemployment benefit to a sickness benefit on the basis of a doctor's note. The numbers on the sickness benefit, and the frequent evidence in courts that they can commit quite vigorous crimes, suggests something has to be done. But to amalgamate it with others into an amorphous entitlement seems unnecessary and could even make life easier for the work-shy.

For all the fanfare preceding yesterday's announcement, the idea seems no more refined than it ever has been. Mr Maharey says the single benefit will be trialled in 11 centres from May, and the Cabinet has yet to decide the rate that would be paid and the add-ons. The visiting Australian Prime Minister politely said he would watch with interest. Doubtless the idea has been wheeled up regularly to his ministers, too. It sounds good but, on closer examination, it is a lemon.