WELLFAIR STATE
THE Centre for Policy Studies, founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Mrs Margaret Thatcher shortly after the fall of the Heath government, has just published a pamphlet called The Wealthy Wellfairs: how to care for the rich (CPS, 8 Wilfred Street, London SW1; £3.60). It is written by Oliver Knox, director of publications at the CPS, and is about a family called the Wellfairs who not only possess ample private means, but extract large benefits from the Welfare State. Indeed, they manage to get much more out of the Welfare State than poor people do, even though it was set up to help the poor rather than the rich. One of the Wellfairs has been stuck on a desert island since 1944, his only reading, as it happens, a copy of the Beveridge report, and his astonishment, on being rescued and returning to England in 1986, at the extraordinary range of state subsidies which his prosperous relatives take good care that they should, quite legally, obtain, lends edge to the satire. But lest the satire be thought to be merely rhetorical, it is supported by footnotes, in which it is remarked, for example, that 'Children under the age of seven from Class V are twice as likely never to go to a dentist as those from Class I. . . A government which wishes to attend to the welfare of the needy should cease to distribute "free" benefits to those whose prosperity it no longer lays waste by taxation.' Of mort- gage tax relief we are told: 'The top 25 per cent of income earners now get six times more subsidy from this source than the bottom 25 per cent. True, this is partially redressed by taking into account council- housing rents. All in all, the top quarter benefit twice as much as the bottom quarter from housing relief and subsidies.' The Wellfairs also happen to have a farm, which entitles them to many other sub- sidies. The evident conclusion to be drawn from Mr Knox's fable is that the Tories have failed to come to grips with the middle-class Welfare State. So it is curious to read, in the first instalment of Mr James Prior's memoirs, published last Sunday in the Observer: 'Those of us in Cabinet who were out of sympathy with Margaret's views grossly underestimated her absolute determination, along with Geoffrey Howe and Keith Joseph, to push through the new right-wing policies.' In fact, many of the new right-wing policies have never been pushed through. Sir Keith himself re- treated in disarray after a timid attempt to make the prosperous middle classes pay for the university education of their children. As a result, we remain a grossly over-taxed nation, our only hope of lower taxes those vestiges of self-criticism still found in Gov- ernment circles. The other parties wish to increase taxes, but Mr Lawson seems to think this would be unpopular.
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