Good stewardship of public finances?

IF the coverage of the general election goes beyond the repetition of simplistic slogans and name-calling, it must surely focus on the UK Government’s stewardship of public finances.

Traditionally, the Conservatives are seen as strong on managing the economy. Yet its failure to deliver more than £4bn in planned disability cuts is a further example of how the Government’s reputation may be ahead of its performance.

The whole issue of disability benefits is, of course, contentious. It is not often that politicians use feature films to illustrate their arguments, but Jeremy Corbyn challenged Theresa May over the contents of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake.

Loach’s film was an attack on the way disabled people were being treated by a welfare system increasingly driven by the need to drive costs down. It was dismissed as a distortion by supporters of the Government, but praised as an accurate depiction by workers in the benefits system, and by disabled benefit claimants themselves.

There is no doubt that a significant element of the Government’s austerity programme has entailed cutting back on the money paid in benefits to disabled people. The way this has been pursued is by reclassifying individuals so that the benefits they receive are reduced. There have been well-publicised examples of people who are terminally ill told they are fit for work. Similarly, disabled people without the use of one or more limbs have been judged, effectively, to be malingerers who should be seeking employment.

More than 160,000, however, have successfully appealed against the downgrading or removal of their benefits – clearly demonstrating how unjust and wasteful the process has been. Is the whole edifice of bureaucracy set up to deliver cuts at the expense of some of the most vulnerable in our society actually worth it? Compassion aside, it’s fair to say the process has been neither efficient nor effective.

It’s little surprise then that the hoped-for cuts have fallen several billion pounds short – with the consequence that other kinds of claimant have faced additional attacks on their income.

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the decision to cut benefit payments to disabled people was misconceived from the outset. On moral grounds it was highly questionable – and it’s now been shown that in economic terms it has been unsuccessful.

Whatever one’s political persuasions, a general election campaign gives voters the opportunity to focus on the performance of the government of the day across all its areas of responsibility.

Many will be unaware that since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 the national debt has risen from £978.8bn (65% of GDP) to £1,731.4bn (89%). The party of government needs to be challenged over its austerity policies, which were meant to bring the national debt down. We hope that political journalists, and others who gain access to the Prime Minister and her colleagues during the election campaign, seek answers to the right questions. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%