Welfare cuts - harming the vulnerable or grown-up government?

“It’s one thing to say the economy is not doing well and we’ve got a fiscal challenge, but the context we’re now in is that we are having to increase defence spending and, two weeks ago, it was announced we’re going to cut international aid.

But cutting the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society who can’t work, to pay for that, is not going to work. And it’s not a Labour thing to do…It’s not what they’re for.”

Well, those are the words of Ed Balls, the former Shadow Chancellor, on his Political Currency podcast with George Osborne. He is, of course, the husband of Yvette Cooper, Home Secretary and current member of the Cabinet who are pushing ahead with the aforementioned welfare cuts. Good luck sorting that one out at home…!

The statistics are pretty damning. Roughly a quarter of the working-age population in Britain are out of the workforce (10.8 million people). For some, that will be out of understandable choices: take, for instance, the young mother who wants to take a more active role in raising their children. For others, it will be due to ill-health (whether physical or mental). And there will even be a handful - for we know that within any human system, there will be flaws - who do not actually want to get a job, even if such stories are over-represented within the media.

This has all meant dramatic rises in the amount we are spending here in the UK on benefits. Take, for instance, the following statistics:

• In 2019, the UK spent £28 billion on health and disability benefits. The figure is now £52 billion/year. It is estimated that it will rise further to £70 billion by 2030.

• 11 million fit-notes are issued every year by GPs, with 93% saying that the patient is not fit for work. 44% of these refer to an absence of 5 weeks or more.

• Back in 2002, 360,000 working age adults claimed disability benefits for mental or behavioural health conditions. The figure is now 1.28 million. This accounts for 44% of disability claimants.

• Spending on Personal Independence Payments (PIPs), one of the main forms of disability benefit, has risen from £13.7 billion/year year in 2019 to £21.8 billion/year today. It will reach £34.1 billion/year by 2030.

In response to the ballooning bill, the Government are looking to encourage people back to work, and will reduce those who are eligible for the Personal Independence Payments (particularly those with mental health conditions). Plans to freeze the Payments rather than them rising in line with inflation have also been mooted (although reportedly shelved after a backlash from Labour backbenchers). The reform to PIP is estimated to wipe off £5-6 billion from the total bill.

Welfare cuts is one of those topics which is bound to bring out some of the worst caricatures in politics today. Believe that people should be responsible for their actions, and worried about people gaming the system and the benefit scroungers? Classic Tory. If you’re a Labour person, to quote Mr Balls, ‘what are you for’ if it’s not to support the vulnerable? There can only be one course of action: more funding. After all, it’s the only compassionate course of action (it is one of the great ironies that the word ‘compassion’ is so weaponised).

It’s a false dichotomy really (not that you’d think it from the media). No one only cares about compassion, or about personal responsibility. And we can rarely spend as much as we would like on anything within politics; there is no magic-money tree, and other external factors shape - to some extent - where we must invest money, such as the current increase in defence spending. Cuts or compassion? The world can rarely be split into such simple binaries.

And as Christians, we know that to be even more true. The Bible does not present us with a catechism for policy; rather it lays out competing principles and priorities (some of which are sketched out below), which we are to hold in tension with one another.

I hope the following will be of value as you try and work out where you stand amid a typical shrill debate.

God made mankind “in the image of God”. But part of what that means is that men and women are made to work, for God himself is the original worker. We read at the end of the first creation account, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” (Genesis 2:2). Adam, the first man, was given a task to do in Eden: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15).

Work is a good thing. At times, it may be hard (after all, work, like all things, is affected by the Curse of the Fall, which meant the ground would bring forth “thorns and thistles”), but it is good for humans to work. To not do so is to deny something of the divine image which is inherent within us.

Of course, the definition of ‘work’ is not as simple as being in paid employment. The mother who raises a child, or the unpaid carer who is looking after an elderly or sick relative may be working just as hard (or indeed, even harder) than the person in a simple 9-to-5 job, and their work is just as valid.

But the principle remains: work is a good thing. In fact, it will even be a part of the New Creation! The Christian image of heaven is not one of us all sitting around in the clouds strumming our golden harps; in Isaiah’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth, we read: “They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit” (Isaiah 65:21).

By contrast, laziness, or idleness, whenever it appears, is not a good thing. The general rule of life is not that people should expect to be supported by others, which might then provide them with a disincentive to work hard. Paul writes at length in 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10:

“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’”

One of the most surprising things I learnt this week was that within the pre-existing system, someone might actually only receive half the money from the Jobseekers’ Allowance as they might for being out of work and not even searching for a job!

It was encouraging, therefore, to hear Liz Kendall, the Minister for Work and Pensions, announce that the jobseekers’ allowance and employment support allowance would be merged, so that people who do work get more than those who do not, in order to encourage people to join the workforce. It is one of a number of measures announced by the Government that are designed to push people who can back towards work.

God has a special heart for the vulnerable. Theologians often talk about the Old Testament “quartet of the vulnerable”: the orphan, the widow, the foreigner and the poor, who God regularly says He cares about. It is actually intrinsic to God’s identity: when God defines who he is within Deuteronomy 10, He says, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.”

When Jesus came to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God, he declared he had come to preach “good news for the poor”, as well as “freedom for the prisoners” and “recovery of sight for the blind” (Luke 4). To look after the vulnerable is part of what God does.

And that means, in turn, that is part of who we are to be as Christians. James, looking to stress the continued importance of social action (even though we are saved by faith alone), drew on Old Testament language: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:17).

At times, we have to even be prepared for this to re-shape our natural views of what is fair, or just. Within Old Testament Israel, there were a number of radical measures which - if they were to be enacted again today - many of us would naturally recoil against, from the year of Jubilee to the cancellation of debts, which prioritised equality over what we might think of as the ‘rights of the rich’. (For an example, see what you would make of Deuteronomy 15:1-6) today).

Some measures which God introduced we would today think of as a ‘hand-out’. For instance, in Deuteronomy 14:28-29, we read of the triennial tithe, in which 10% of all produce was devoted to creating a social fund for those in need, not too dissimilar to a food-bank. There was a special mercy due to the poor: Israelites were forbidden from charging interest when lending money to those in need, and were expressly told, “do not treat it like a business deal” (Exodus 22:25).

However, more common was what we might think of as a ‘hand-up’. For example, in Leviticus 19:9-10, we read of the laws around gleaning, in which the reapers were instructed to leave behind some of the harvest for the poor to collect. The poor then had to work to collect the remains, rather than just being given them; Ruth collected an ephah, or around 13 kilograms worth, in just a single day. Hard work was to be encouraged!

It was interesting to read this week about how the Foreign Secretary David Lammy, in a Cabinet meeting, disclosed that a member of his family was currently on benefits, who probably should not be.

At points within the Bible - and here I am aware that I am on controversial ground - it does seem that there is a sense of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. It is not just as simple as giving help to everyone who is vulnerable without any discernment.

This presents us with difficulties; as Christians, we believe in a God of both mercy and justice. Balancing the two is not always easy.

Within the New Testament, in order to protect some of the most vulnerable within the church, there was an official list of widows, administered by seven deacons appointed by the apostles (Acts 6:3); this structure quickly spread beyond the Jerusalem church (cf. Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:8), and the list of widows is known to have continued until at least the 4th Century AD.

It was not just any widow whose name was put on the list: families were encouraged to take care of their older relatives, and if a widow already lived in a household, Paul wanted them to remain there, rather than becoming the church’s responsibility; instead the aim was to “help those widows who are really in need” (1 Timothy 5:16). (Of course, this raises another point: the state is not the only body which is supposed to have concern for the vulnerable. The church and the family are two other such units.)

But interestingly, Paul does seem to have made a distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor within the Church community: to qualify for the list of widows, a woman would have had to fulfil a range of requirements, including being over sixty, having been faithful to her husband, and being well-known for her good deeds, including showing hospitality, helping those in need and foot-washing (1 Timothy 5:9-10).

It will not always be easy for policy-makers to be able to define who is ‘worthy’ of help. But if your sensibilities rail against simplistic dichotomies around compassion in welfare, it’s important to know that it can be valid to say no to helping someone sometimes. Justice does matter.

This point does not apply to a (largely) secular government. But it does apply to us as Christians.

It is only right that a state - which has endless policy areas and has to face certain political realities - has to make judgements about where its finances can be best used.

But although the state ought to define who is ‘worthy’ of help (and to tighten legislation as it sees fit), we also need to remember that as Christians, we are people who must be shaped by the Gospel, recognising our own unworthiness.

God did not give us help because we ever deserved anything; he did it out of self-sacrificial love.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul writes to encourage the church to give financially to a collection he is putting together for the believers in Jerusalem who are in the midst of famine. His words root our help for the vulnerable within the picture of the gospel:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Whatever your thoughts on welfare - whether you lean towards one side of the debate or the other - fix your eyes upon our Lord on the Cross, and recognise that we are sinners saved only by love, mercy and grace. It might look like financial giving. It might look like practical help. It might just look like rethinking your attitudes towards those who are vulnerable (even in a case where it is of someone’s own making).

A story is told about a time when CS Lewis entered a room of academics, who were debating the difference between Christianity and other religions. He said, “Oh that’s easy. It’s grace.”

It is grace that is the hallmark of the Christian. It might be challenging, risky, or even feel dangerous. But it is transformational.

Or as Jesus once said, “Freely you have received. Freely, give.” (Matthew 10:8)