The coalition can do more for less on benefits reform

There is a lot to like about Iain Duncan Smith’s new proposals for welfare reform.  The chance to move towards a radically simplified benefits system is enormously exciting.  As I wrote for Coffee House last week, the current system is a complete mess and failing on just about every criteria.  It is so complicated that £4.5 billion a year is lost to error and fraud; working at the minimum wage of £5.80 an hour can be worth as little as 26p an hour; and too many families slip through the net so that the number living in severe poverty has actually increased from 5 to 6 per cent in the last decade.  We can definitely do better and it is great news that the Government are planning to overhaul the system properly instead of applying more counterproductive sticking plasters.
 
21st Century Welfare sets out a number of options for reform that would create a drastically simpler system.