Given my interest in matters financial, I was listening to the Budget Statement whilst wrangling a technical problem with my computer (I won in the end, thanks to a colleague). And, in terms of rhetoric, it was an interesting forty-five minutes or so. Lots of references to the Leader of the Opposition and his kitchen, his family issues, his personal tax affairs - anything to wind him up, although you would need to be either inside, or a keen observer of, the Westminster bubble to have gotten all of the jokes.
And, there is little doubt that some of the measures are probably a 'good thing'. Continued efforts to take more of the 'working poor' out of income tax should be applauded, although as the noble Lord Greaves of Pendle rightly pointed out two years ago, we're not actually doing that much now for those who were taken out of income tax by earlier increases in the personal allowance. We could, and should, have addressed the threshold for National Insurance Contributions - swapping the threshold per discrete job for a higher overall threshold, perhaps? - and the logic of subsidising low wage employers by giving their staff tax credits to make up the gap between subsisting and living.
It does strike me as perverse to allow such a obfuscation of the cost of employing people to do tasks. I require, for example, someone to stack the shelves of a supermarket so that I can find the things I want to buy. The price I pay for an item is therefore not the entire cost if I am paying taxes to subsidise the shelf-stacker's salary. Perhaps it would be better if I paid more for the item in the first place, therefore gaining a clearer understanding of the actual cost of my purchase.
And, of course, we need to address the issues surrounding those who want to work but can't, for whatever reason. At the moment, we seem to be happy to allow those in receipt of benefits to run the gauntlet of a system of sanctions for failures that may, or may not, be deliberate. Stuff happens, buses run late or are cancelled, meetings are missed because of ill-health or conflicting demands of childcare or personal crisis, and the system of sanctions kicks in without consideration of the impact.
Don't get me wrong, there should be a sanctions regime in place, but it needs to be considerate of its impact on individuals, not punitive and impersonal. We are, after all, trying to help bring people back into the productive economy, not driving them towards hunger and despair.
And, with Labour offering merely more pressure on benefit claimants, which undoubtedly means more sanctions (and please don't patronise me by trying to explain how you can be tougher on benefits without being more intrusive and more draconian), there is a space in British politics for anyone wanting to explore how you can focus DWP compliance and investigation work so as to enable those genuinely wanting to do their bit to focus on seeking work, and those who are playing the system to be tackled. That should be the Liberal Democrats, but if at present it is, we need to be more vocal in making the case.
