Interesting Policies on Offer in Uk Elections
Interesting Policies on Offer in Uk Elections
By Dr Muriel Newman
Good
policies do not have international borders. What works in
one country, can often be successfully adapted and used in
another. For policy analysts, general elections provide a
rich hunting ground for cutting edge policy options - and
the United Kingdom’s 2015 general election on May 7 is no
exception. The fact that the ruling
Conservative Party has put welfare reform at the heart of
its manifesto, is of particular interest to New Zealand,
since the National Government has also prioritised social
welfare.
British Prime Minister David Cameron put his party’s focus into perspective when he explained, “Our welfare reforms are a key part of our long-term economic plan. They are not just about saving money. They are about changing lives and making this a country that rewards work.” Under the direction of Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party, great progress has already been made over the last 5 years in turning around the UK’s entrenched culture of welfare dependency. This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator Matt Ridley, a Member of the House of Lords and an acclaimed author, explains: “The government’s reforms, pushed by Iain Duncan Smith, are indeed a crucial cause of the surprising surge in employment. The reforms have indeed used tough love to push people back into the workforce and off welfare. As long as they are no worse off, this is no bad thing. Given that welfare has treated people like children and conditioned them not to take responsibility for their lives, it is a good thing.
“For example, early trials found that making unemployment claimants sign contracts in which they promise to look for work (which is now universal) frightened quite a few people off the system straight away — they had been working while claiming to be unemployed. Regular re-testing of those who claim sickness benefits has brought many fit people back into the labour force, while actually increasing benefits for some of those whose conditions have deteriorated. Paying work programme providers by results, so that if they get people back into employment they get a bonus, has worked.
“And yes, the threat of sanctions if
claimants do not treat unemployment benefits as a wage for
the full-time job of looking for work has helped”.
Another policy that has been very
successful in driving down welfare numbers in the UK, as
well as being very popular with the public, is the
benefit cap on households. The benefit cap was
introduced to ensure that households reliant on welfare no
longer receive more than the average take home pay of
working households. If re-elected, the Conservatives have
pledged to lower the benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000.
The party has also pledged to tackle the
difficult problem of youth unemployment. They want to
prevent young people from going down the “well worn
path” from the school gate to life on a benefit. Under
their “earn or learn” proposal, 18 to 21 year olds who
have been jobless and out of education or training for six
months, will be barred from claiming benefits unless they
agree to start an apprenticeship or complete 30 hours a week
of community work - such as making meals for the elderly or
cleaning up public spaces. This ‘Youth Allowance’ is
designed to give young people much needed work experience,
as well as subjecting them to the disciplines of the
workforce. The party also intends
cracking down on almost 100,000 people who are claiming
sickness benefits, but are suffering from treatable
conditions such as drug or alcohol addiction, or obesity.
Since many have never even tried to get medical help, David
Cameron has promised to introduce incentives to
encourage them to begin treatment so they can go back to
work. He says taxpayers should not be forced to fund
the benefits of people who refuse treatment that could help
them back into employment: “Too many people are stuck on
sickness benefits because of issues that could be addressed
but instead are not.” Another policy
proposal that is proving very popular with UK voters is the
restriction of welfare payments to new
migrants.Between 1997 and 2009, under
the previous Labour Government, most of the employment
growth in Britain was accounted for by foreign nationals.
This was largely the result of the open border
policies of the European Union, which required member
countries to allow the free movement of labour. The problem
is that with the various EU countries now having vastly
differing living standards, the flow of labour from poorer
to richer countries has not only resulted in jobs being
taken by foreign workers instead of nationals, but it has
increased the pressure on welfare costs as new migrants gain
access to benefits.Growing public
concern over this matter in the UK has resulted in most
political parties taking a relatively hard-line approach to
immigration. The Conservatives have
pledged to re-negotiate EU migrants’ rights of “free
movement” with Brussels, ahead of their promised
referendum on EU membership in 2017. In the meantime, they
plan to control migration by not only restricting access to
welfare benefits, but also by clamping down on illegal
immigration through a ‘deport first, appeal later’
policy. By enabling illegal immigrants to lodge their
appeals from their home countries, the racket, whereby
thousands prolong their stay in Britain, by lodging strings
of appeals and judicial reviews that can go on for years,
will end.
While migrants’ access
to welfare has already been curtailed, if re-elected, the
Conservatives intend to not only stop EU migrants from
claiming any job-seeking benefits at all, but they will be
required to leave the country if they haven’t found a job
within six months. Migrants will also be
banned from applying for council houses, or other welfare
allowances - until they have been living in the country for
at least four years.The Labour
Party is also taking a tough approach, with plans to
restrict benefit availability for two years, and to
strengthen border controls to stop illegal immigration. The
Liberal Democrats, who call themselves the only real
“internationalist” party, have a softer stance with a
proposed restriction on the receipt of some benefits for 6
months. The UK Independence Party wants to impose strong
restrictions through a Migration Control Commission, and
they would crack down on illegal immigration through
improved policing technology. The Greens, however, would
encourage migration and enable illegal immigrants who had
lived in the county for five years to remain permanently.
With an estimated 1 million illegal
immigrants in the UK, immigration has been a hot topic
during the election campaign. But the issue has taken on a
new urgency as a result of the asylum seeker tragedies in
the Mediterranean. In particular the
drowning of more than 900 asylum seekers aboard a people
smuggling boat off the Libyan Coast earlier this month, has
raised concerns over illegal immigration to new levels.
Altogether, more than 1,750 migrants have drowned in the
Mediterranean this year.To complicate
matters, officials fear that it is not just refugees from
Middle East conflict zones who are using people smuggling
boats to enter Europe, but terrorist fighters as well. The
Islamic State has claimed it has already smuggled more than
4,000 militants posing as refugees into
Europe.In searching for answers to this
crisis, the European Union should study carefully the
policies introduced by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot
just after his election in 2013. Operation Sovereign
Borders was enacted in response to six years of
unprecedented tragedy during the previous Labour
administration when an estimated 1,200 people perished at
sea as more than 800 boats, 51,000 asylum-seekers and 8,400
children arrived in Australia - mostly from Indonesia.
Since the new policy was introduced 17
months ago, there have been no
deaths.Tony Abbott, who has called the
Mediterranean crisis a “terrible, terrible tragedy”, has
suggested that Europe should follow Australia's lead. He explains, “The only way you can stop
the deaths is to stop the people smuggling trade. The only
way you can stop the deaths is, in fact, to stop the boats.
That's why it is so urgent that the countries of Europe
adopt very strong policies that will end the people
smuggling trade across the
Mediterranean.”Australia now has a
strict policy of turning back asylum seekers' boats in a bid
to discourage them from even trying to reach Australia. Not
only that, but they have also banned asylum seekers, who do
manage to arrive by boat, from everbeing settled in
Australia. Any asylum seekers who do reach Australia are
instead held in detention camps on Nauru and Papua New
Guinea. Any genuine refugees are given the option of being
resettled – not in Australia, but in Cambodia. Many
are now choosing to return to their home
countries.Retired Major General Jim
Molan, the co-author of Australia’s hardline
border-protection regime, had some strong wordsfor European
policy makers in an article in The Australian:
“Europe needs to make a very big decision and to make it
soon. If it does not want to control its borders then it
should establish a sea bridge across the Mediterranean, let
everyone in who wants to come, and not let these people die.
If it does want to control its borders, as the most recent
voting patterns in almost every country of Europe indicates,
European governments should realise that border control can
be done and start showing a bit of
leadership.”There are many other
interesting policies on offer in the UK
election.On the economic policy front,
the Conservatives plan to raise the tax-free threshold from
£10,500 to £12,500 so that most people on the minimum wage
would pay no tax, they would raise the threshold for the 40
percent tax rate from £42,385 to £50,000, and they would
prioritise paying off the deficit without raising
taxes.
Labour would bring back the 50 percent top tax rate, introduce a new “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2 million, and scrap the “non-dom” tax status of British citizens who do not pay tax on overseas-earned income.
In education, the Conservatives have pledged to
refocus teaching on the “three Rs” of reading, writing
and maths, with “demanding new targets”. They also plan
to give schools judged by Ofsted (their equivalent of our
Education Review Office) as “requiring improvement” or
“inadequate”, new leadership or convert them to
academies. In comparison, the Greens want to scrap Ofsted,
“because of the stress that it causes
teachers”.As far as defence is
concerned, a key issue is Trident, which provides a
continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent through four Royal Navy
submarines armed with nuclear warheads based at Clyde on
Scotland's west coast.
Both of the
main parties have pledged to maintain Trident, the Liberal
Democrats would downgrade it, UKIP would change it, and the
Greens would scrap it. The Greens also want to scrap the
Army, turning army bases into ‘nature reserves’ and
converting the arms industry into ‘wind turbine
producers’. They want to reassign Armed Forces' personnel
to ‘policing fishing quotas, piracy and oceanic
environmental regulations’. They say that ‘Any threat of
invasion that might arise in the future is so remote that
realignment of the UK military and defence preparations
would be possible long before any invasion occurred’.
This along with other bizarre policies,
have earned the UK Greens the title of a “Looney Tune”
party - a label that has also been applied to the NZ
Greens.The latest polls put the
Conservatives and Labour neck and neck at 33 percent, UKIP
at 14 percent, the Lib Dems at 8 percent, and the Greens at
5 percent. In spite of not having MMP, the future government
of the UK will again be a coalition, which raises the
interesting question of whether New Zealand really needs MMP
after
all!
ENDS