Social Security gets its timing wrong with report

THE States' general record on helping the poorest in the island is nothing short of shameful.

In the decade that has passed since the Townsend report identified that 16% of the island lived in relative poverty, it is reported that the figure is pretty much the same today.

There has been no progress despite the promises made in times of plenty, making the job of the Social Security Department that much tougher now that the economy dictates a very different mood.

Last week, it released a report that highlights just how great the shortcomings of the States are when it comes to helping those struggling down below the margins.

Up to £20m. a year could be needed under the department's benefits package, a figure that has been based on the minimum level of income people in the island need.

There were few challenges to the minimum income study when it was released last year and even then the department, knowing how quickly the States would baulk at any kind of significant spending, stripped out elements that had been used to calculate the original figure that it felt was unnecessary, such as a holiday.

So, assuming that study was robust, and we have no reason to believe it was not, and also assuming the department has done its maths properly, the argument for spending the money is cut and dried.

Sadly, nothing in life is that simple.

The report is already on the life support machine and in danger of being switched off and with that comes the very real risk of setting back for many years the debate on helping those who really need it.

It is all about timing – and the department appears to have got it very wrong.

Already the majority of Treasury and the Policy Council, as well as the Social Policy Steering Group, has told it to rethink the report and run the models again until they are more vigorous.

There is a massive margin between the upper and lower limit of the spending projections, something that will narrow given time.

What has driven Social Security to press on now and not wait must be the morality of the argument and perhaps a belief that it will get a second bite at it all with a new States if it does fail this time around.

But there is, and this is true of many of the reports coming to the States at such a late stage, something of an ownership issue – the belief that this group of deputies has done all the work and should therefore finish it off.

That kind of legacy thinking is dangerous and is perhaps leading to people making short-sighted decisions.

The argument that the States has already committed through the strategic plan to acting in this area is valid.

Social Security will rely on winning over the floor of the Assembly to carry its proposals through and will argue that this is not about immediate change.

The timing can be adjusted to suit the economic climate and much more work is also needed on the legal side of things before any changes happen.

But it is weakened on two major fronts beyond the level of spending.

It has failed to identify where the money will come from and it has failed to put in place any targets for what it will achieve.

How can success or otherwise be judged?

The report is only half-baked and if there was not so much experience on the board you would accuse them of political naivety.

When pushed, supporters will talk of the headroom provided by universal benefits such as family allowance – why, after all, should this be paid out to everyone regardless of how much they earn?

The trouble is, no one has costed or even won that argument.

What about an extra 1% on income tax? they may ask.

None of the supporters has spoken in a major way about funding this through savings – real savings and not just increased charges.

The environment would be so much better had the department held on until the cost-cutting financial transformation programme had really delivered in a few years' time.

The States already has a big pot of money.

Members must ask themselves whether it is all being spent in the right areas if there is such a shortfall in helping out those who genuinely need it.

Social Security's benefits report is not all about spending – within it is the already widely backed merger of Housing's rent rebate scheme so that people needing support for housing costs are all treated evenly.

That raises some fears about the effect on the housing market – there will be a cap on what will be paid out to those in the private sector so landlords will know what they can charge up to.

It has already been acknowledged that minimum standards of accommodation will need to be enforced to stop people cashing in.

But that will be a sideshow to the main debate.

It will be top-level politics to win the day.

But the wiser and braver move would be to concede that more work is needed, withdraw the report and fight it out in the new Assembly with a fully-loaded weapon.