Why Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant - and how much we pay them: An incendiary idea to save on our £500m A DAY welfare bill



Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, needs to be transparent about exactly what the welfare budget is going on

This week, George Osborne faces a problem largely of his own making. In his new review of Government spending, he will make some fairly trivial announcements while desperately trying to sound brave about making difficult decisions. Saving a few million here or there will sound bold, but won’t really amount to much in the wider economic picture.

The brutal truth is that under the Coalition, the State is living further beyond its means than ever before. By the next Election, Osborne will have increased Britain’s national debt by about £600 billion – about £10,000 for every man, woman and child.

This isn’t austerity, it’s largesse on a scale unprecedented in our lifetime.

The reason that the Chancellor can’t get spending under control is simple. If you can’t or won’t tackle Britain’s ballooning welfare budget, it is very difficult indeed to balance the books.

The amount we now spend on welfare is jaw-dropping. The average household is taxed to the tune of £8,000 every year to finance the State’s programme of handouts. We spend about twice as much on welfare as we did just a decade ago.

Even Labour now agree that this scale of expenditure has reached its limit. But Osborne doesn’t need to try to make this a party political battle.

He just needs to be transparent about exactly what the welfare budget is going on. If he’s willing to do so, he can expect millions of Brits to demand colossal reductions in spending.

The welfare benefits claimed by every individual – including pensions, jobseeker’s allowance, bus passes, winter fuel payments and child benefit – should be put in the public domain.

They should be listed, in full, on a publicly accessible website for all of us to inspect. Taxpayers have a right to know exactly who is claiming what and how much they are getting.

The welfare benefits claimed by every individual ¿ including pensions, jobseeker¿s allowance, bus passes, winter fuel payments and child benefit ¿ should be put in the public domain

This wouldn’t be a matter of ‘naming and shaming’ anyone. After all, if you are legally entitled to a particular benefit, what is there to be ashamed about? Anyone ashamed to claim money from the State maybe shouldn’t be claiming it.

At the G8 gathering of world leaders in Belfast last week, we heard a lot about the need for transparency in tax affairs. What they meant was that we want to know more details about wealth creators and tax contributors – companies such as Starbucks, Google and Amazon.

But surely we also need to know about tax consumers. Why are we only worried about the people contributing tax and not those being funded by it?

If you get up early, work hard and notice that your take-home pay is far less than your advertised salary, you are not alone.

This wouldn't be a matter of 'naming and shaming' anyone. After all, if you are legally entitled to a particular benefit, what is there to be ashamed about?

Many people now have a third of their wages – or even more – confiscated at source by Revenue & Customs. The biggest item this cash is then spent on is welfare. You have a right to know who is receiving it.

Publishing this sort of information should be quite straightforward. The Government has never been competent at running an IT system, but uploading to a website each payment handed out, along with the name and address of the person claiming it, must be doable. Even by the dimmest bureaucrat.

To claim benefits, you need an accurate name, a real address and proof that you qualify. Sometimes you will have to navigate your way through a lengthy and complex form.

If the bureaucrats in the welfare department can process this sort of data, they should find it easy to hit an ‘upload’ button when the handout is issued. The recipient still gets the money, but those of us paying can be sure of the exact amount and the individual we are paying for. This shouldn’t be controversial. By all means, have our tax contributions, just tell me who you are and how much you get.

Surely, no one needs to worry about violent retribution against claimants. The British are far too reasonable to start taking up pitchforks and burning torches and assaulting imagined benefit cheats. We are generous and fair-minded people.

Unitl the Conservatives decided to pay for increased foreign aid out of my taxes, rather than rely on my charity, I sponsored a young girl in Cameroon far less fortunate than myself and with many fewer chances in life.

I was more than happy to send a modest £12 every month. I felt confident that the charity, Plan International, was using my money wisely, but I was also grateful for their feedback. I was told exactly what my money was going towards, how things were progressing in this African village, and received some very touching messages of thanks.

I pay much more than £12 a month to the welfare state.

' Publishing the data will clearly show that we now give payouts to people who don’t really need them – and for long periods of time'

At a rough guess, I’m paying about a hundred times as much to support British people who are apparently unable to support themselves, even though none of them is as impoverished as the girl I was supporting in Cameroon.

I receive no specific information about who is getting the money, how they are getting on and what steps they are taking to improve their prospects. I certainly never get anything even approaching a thank-you.

I’m simply asking, on behalf of all those who pay for the welfare state, for a bit more information and transparency.

In many areas of British life, we are already comfortable with this principle. Criminal trials are held openly and the name of the defendant is often widely publicised even if they turn out to be innocent. Rightly so.

In the case of our MPs, not only do we know their salaries, but we also insist that they provide receipts for each and every item they claim on expenses. This seems right, too.

So, why can’t we know who the recipients are of our Government’s enormous, £500 million a day welfare spending?

If the Government were willing to be honest and open about who is paid what by the welfare state, two things would happen.

Most importantly, the public would appreciate that the welfare state has got out of control.

When it was set up in the 1940s the remit was clear – to provide temporary support at subsistence levels for a small number of people. Publishing the data will clearly show that we now give payouts to people who don’t really need them – and for long periods of time.

Secondly, it will get Osborne out of a hole. Rather than looking like a silver-spoon-in-his-mouth Lord Snooty, he would be able to slash welfare spending on a wave of public enthusiasm.

With the courage to halve welfare spending, he can cure the deficit almost overnight.

He should just shed some sunlight on what his Government is spending and who is getting the money. If he is bold enough to do that, the British people themselves will insist that our bloated State be put on a diet.

So, go on George, tell us the truth.