Paul Spicker - How Social Security Works: An Introduction to Benefits in Britain

HOW SOCIAL SECURITY WORKS

An introduction to benefits in Britain

Paul Spicker

First edition published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Policy Press University of Bristol 6th Floor Howard House Queens Avenue Clifton Bristol BS8 1SD UK Tel +44 (0)117 331 5020 Fax +44 (0)117 331 5367 e-mail

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Paul Spicker 2011

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ISBN 978 1 44731 792 0 epub
ISBN 978 1 44731 793 7 Kindle

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Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol
Front cover: image kindly supplied by Paul Green

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List of tables and figures

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Paul Spicker holds the Grampian Chair of Public Policy at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His research includes studies of poverty, need, disadvantage and service delivery; he has worked as a consultant for a range of agencies in social welfare provision. In 2007 he was a special adviser to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee for their report on benefits simplification. His books include:

Stigma and social welfare (Croom Helm, 1984)

Principles of social welfare (Routledge, 1988)

Social housing and the social services (Longmans, 1989)

Poverty and social security: Concepts and principles (Routledge, 1993)

Planning for the needs of people with dementia (with D S Gordon, Avebury, 1997)

Social protection : A bilingual glossary (co-editor with J P Rvauger, Mission-Recherche, 1998)

Social policy in a changing society (with Maurice Mullard, Routledge, 1998)

The welfare state: A general theory (Sage Publications, 2000)

Policy analysis for practice : Applying social policy (The Policy Press, 2006)

Liberty, equality, fraternity (The Policy Press, 2006)

Poverty: An international glossary (co-editor with S Alvarez Leguizamon and D Gordon, Zed, 2007)

The idea of poverty (The Policy Press, 2007)

Social policy: Themes and approaches (The Policy Press, 2008)

The origins of modern welfare (Peter Lang, 2010).

How social security works is concerned with how the system of benefits is put together, what it does and how it does it. The book tries to explain the shape of the social security system, to explain how benefits are provided and to give readers an understanding of the key issues. The approach is founded in Social Policy and Administration. The subject was developed for the purposes of training people who would work in the social services. People who are doing that sort of training could be following a variety of different courses. Some will be taking professional qualifications, like social work, housing management and health studies; some will be doing other courses in further education, like certificates in Health and Social Care; and some will be studying the subject as part of a degree in Social Policy, Public Policy, Social Work or Law.

The book offers an outline of benefits, rather than a detailed analysis. Before it is possible to understand the system in greater depth, students need to put together a mental map of the field. This should make it possible to go on to read other texts in the subject with enough background to make sense of them. It also implies, necessarily, that some substantial topics have to be dealt with briefly. If you are looking at a map of Europe, London will be little more than a blob, and if you are looking at a map of benefits, the Social Fund is not going to loom as large as it often seems to welfare rights officers.

I have not attempted to summarise research in the field, because it would divert from the purpose of the book. Much of the empirical research currently being done reflects the agenda of governments, focusing on issues like transitions to work. Academic studies have tended to focus on issues that cast light on social science: sociologists are particularly interested in work, gender and inequalities, economists in distributive issues and incentives. Few writers seem to be interested in social security in its own right: there is precious little being produced on the design, management, operation and delivery of benefits. Currently, there are two main types of basic text in the field. On one side, there are some useful texts in this field that discuss social security policy, such as those edited by John Ditch or Jane Millar. This can be difficult to get to grips with; an outline like this should help to give some shape for an understanding of the material.

The books aims are modest, then, but they are not easy to meet. The first problem is that the system is, frankly, baffling. You might as well try to make sense of the telephone book the main legal text on Social security legislation has nearly 6,000 pages, and even the CPAG guide has started to list the classes of benefit in alphabetical order. I have tried to get around the problems partly by trying to structure the material thematically, and partly by dealing with the material very selectively. To cover the range of topics, I have written the book in 27 short chapters. The selection is based on what is needed to support that structure, but I have also tried to include material that will help to make sense of the system in practice. There is a limit to how clear it is possible to make things the structure of benefits does not make sense, some of the areas covered are not well supported by the literature and any book that made it all seem coherent and rational would not be doing justice to the topic.

The second problem is that the things which are important in principle are not always the things which matter in practice (and vice versa). The book is practically oriented as you might expect from a book with the title How social security works but that phrase is interpreted in fairly general terms. It is intended to give an understanding of what social security benefits do, how they do it and how they fit together, rather than the more specific questions that need to be addressed for welfare rights. If you want to make sense of the system, you need to understand concepts like residual and institutional welfare, the structure of National Insurance, and means testing. All of those are covered in this book. If you are advising or working with claimants, or if you are a claimant yourself, you need to know quite different information. For example, the rules on backdating are complex and thorny, despite the governments attempt to wipe them away, and many if not most advisers will have had a problem relating to late claims at some point. In this book, I only have one sentence on late claims (apart from the last one). The book offers some foundations for later learning; I think it will be interesting for welfare rights workers, and I hope for some claimants; but it is not a book about welfare rights in practice.