By
David Williams
27 September 2010
Decisions over benefit payments should be
localised and welfare spending incorporated into pooled area-based budgets, the
government has been told today.
Richard Kemp, leader of the Liberal
Democrat group of councillors at the Local Government Association, has written
to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander this morning urging him to
consider radical reforms to the benefits system.
Kemp called on Alexander to follow up on
visits to Total Place-style schemes he made in Liverpool during last week’s
LibDem conference. As Public Finance reportedlast week, the visit left senior LibDems frustrated at a lack of
co-operation from the Department for Work and Pensions.
He has also pledged to discuss the ideas
with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Wednesday.
In a letter to Alexander, also copied to
Clegg and Clegg’s chief political advisor Norman Lamb, Kemp argued: ‘Benefits
payments are one of the three biggest wastes of public sector money.
‘The vast majority of people in receipt of
a range of benefits want to work. Even many who are incapacitated want to do
something both for society and for themselves as work provides a physical and
mental challenge.’
But, he adds, benefits entrench inactivity
and inhibit ‘individual enterprise’.
His solution is to put the
administration of all benefits into the hands of local councils, to localise
decision-making about who receives benefits and how much they are given, and to
pilot more ‘welfare-to-work’ initiatives.
But Kemp acknowledged that radical reforms would not happen immediately.
Speaking to
Public Finance, he said that although he expected a significant announcement on place-based budgeting in next month’s Comprehensive Spending Review, it was unlikely to incorporate reforms to DWP budgets.
‘That’s tomorrow’s fight,’ he said, explaining that the issue would be dealt with over a longer timescale.
Kemp said that ministers ‘instinctively get this agenda’ but are forced to ‘battle’ through civil servants who ‘go into defensive mode’.
He added: ‘The biggest thing that is going to stop place-based budgeting happening is the perma-frost of middle management.’ The worst of this, he said, was in the DWP.
Local government expert Tony Travers, director of the London School of Economics’ Greater London Group, said he believed the government would be looking at ways of pooling welfare budgets with other local revenue streams.
‘It would be amazing if a government that is happy to do very radical things was not thinking about this,’ he said, noting the glee with which some ministers were tearing up the ‘inherited order’.
