POLITICS
Is the State encouraging Britain to become a nation of curtain-twitchers and whisperers?
BORIS JOHNSON
I f I were an immigrant, there is one main reason why I might feel alarmed by Michael Howard's plan to sniff out illegal workers in the office and factory. It is not that the measure imposes an extra burden of bureaucracy on employers, though it probably does. Nor is it that the measure is necessarily racist, though it may prove to be so, and is certainly designed to suggest as much to those who approve of racism.
Nor, again, is the latest Howard 'crack- down' demonstrably hysterical. Perhaps the Tories are right to say the country is being `swamped' with illegal workers of all hues; though one would have thought the econo- my benefits from cheap labour vacuuming our hotel rooms, and doing so, moreover, without defrauding the benefit system, since the mere act of signing on exposes them. No, the reason for distrusting the measure is that it accelerates progress towards what one might call a Nark's Cul- ture; by which I mean a Britain in which neighbour informs anonymously against neighbour, and in which the state encour- ages him to do so — sometimes financially.
In the new Michael Howard era, immi- grants will be vulnerable not just to bosses who may wish to discriminate against black faces, but to the malice of their fellows, who may wish for whatever reason to see them gone; and who have only to lift a tele- phone or whisper privily to achieve their end. These corveaux of the workplace will have a new way of spreading misery, and without any necessity to ensure that their allegations are true.
The state has always relied on sneaks: the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise and Maff will all tell you that most fraud is uncovered through tip-offs. But so far as I am aware, the State has not hitherto incited such people. Already, in certain parts of the country, the Department of Social Security pays Post Office workers a tenner a time if they shop a benefit fraudster. Following the roaring success of the scheme, Peter Lilley has just announced that he wants to go fur- ther. A hotline is being established, with a toll-free number.
The next time you see that fellow on Incapacity Benefit hitting the tennis court or giving aerobics classes, just pick up the phone and relax as he gets his come- uppance. In a way, this is to the good. As the DSS explains, benefit fraud is costing us all a fortune. According to a lately complet- ed survey, about £1.2 billion is ripped off from Income Support alone. The Govern- ment itself admits that the total lost in fraud is about £3 billion; heaven knows what the true figure is. And there is nothing wrong in itself with bearing witness anony- mously against another. If you saw a hooded man with a gun breaking into the next-door house, you might not challenge him, for fear of being shot. But you would be quite right to pick up the telephone to call the police. There seems no reason in principle why people should not be urged to inform against all law-breakers. My only question concerns the practical effect of this mass delation on people and on communities. In Scotland recently I talked to a couple who had just built their own house. A neighbour who had suffered a heart attack and had time on his hands offered to rally round, unpaid, on the site. He gave advice.
Now and then, they told me, he passed the odd brick. Alas, the neighbour was spotted by person or persons unknown, who tipped the wink to Mr Lilley's agents at the DSS. They swooped. They demanded to know how he could be fit to pass bricks, and yet claim Invalidity Benefit, as it was then called. Perhaps this helpful neighbour was indeed a fraud. Perhaps he deserved to be humiliated. But — and this is the point —he had no idea who in that small Scottish village had ratted on him.
His life was poisoned; and the same is happening across the land. As any lawyer 'I was a test-tube baby, but now I'm a test-tube teen.' Boris Johnson is associate editor of the Daily Telegraph. who has prosecuted benefit fraudsters will tell you, they have almost all been nailed by sneaks. I don't think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that we are starting to live in a kind of Vichy society, a world of curtain-twitchers and whisperers, which has institutionalised the kind of behaviour which would be punished at school by ostracism, if not debagging. The root cause of this rising national urge to Tell Sir All is • not an increase in the natural dishonesty of the British people. It is largely that the expansion of welfare tempts good people to break bad rules.
With £90 billion circulating through the tax and benefit system, and with one in three households receiving a major benefit, Beveridge's plan has become like the Com- mon Agricultural Policy. People feel silly, indeed irresponsible towards their families, if they pass up their chance to take a slice of the enormous communal pie, especially while everyone else is doing the same. The logical answer might be to apply free mar- ket principles, and attack this irrational sys- tem of subsidy, the excessive disbursements that warp honest people.
As Adam Smith pointed out of a differ- ent set of bad laws: if there were no excise duties, there would be no smuggling, at least of legal substances. And if there were no smuggling, there would be no tell-tale tits, no poisonous atmosphere of doubt and recrimination. The difficulty, of course, is that at this stage in the electoral cycle, the Government is in no position to cut the welfare state. It will not happen; and we will slip further and further into a mire of cheating and sneaking.
One thing could be done, though, to end malicious informing. We may reluctantly accept the need for Mr Lilley's fraud hot- line, and perhaps also for Mr Howard's plans to persecute illegal immigrants. But I propose a small modification which might serve as a deterrent to those who make miserable the lives of others without good cause, by bearing false witness, or witness they do not positively know to be true. Any- one who uncovers anyone else falsely testi- fying against another should, without delay, dial the new Sneakline. Do you know a mendacious sneak? Sneakline is on 0171 538 5000. Ask for me. Do call.
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