Benefits should be for people who need them, not people who want them

The first was about the relationship between tax and public services. Ms Thorning-Schmidt was explicit about the basis for Denmark’s social contract; they have amongst the highest taxes in the world and as a result she feels an obligation to provide amongst the best public services in the world.

This will seem obvious to many people, particularly those who are not involved in partisan politics, but in this country our political debate does not reflect such sentiment. We have, in effect, disaggregated the collection of taxation from the delivery of public services by persistently claiming that all of these services are "free".

This perception, of free winter fuel payments, free prescriptions, free university tuition, free bus passes and so on and so on, has proved to be corrosive to our political debate, because it has prevented us from asking questions about how our money is spent, and from demanding quality in return.

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So, instead of seeing Ms Reeves’ decision this week to end taxpayer-funded winter fuel payments to those pensioners not poor enough to receive means-tested benefits through the lens of a 40-year-old working taxpayer who struggles to pay their own fuel bills or indeed to put food on their table, our debate has centred on Ebenezer Reeves sending penniless pensioners to an early grave.

We live in a country where, perhaps for the first time, the working generation will be poorer than their parents. The most basic, fundamental sign of progress as a society may, for the first time, go into reverse.

That, in large part, is a consequence of politicians who have spent decades focused on gathering votes in a five-year election cycle, and making a conscious decision to leave the long-term problems to their successors. No politician, in private, thinks that the pensions triple lock, for instance, is intergenerationally fair. But no politician, in public, will tell us that, because old people vote.

This decades-long conspiracy of silence, both on pensions and on the welfare state in general, has had two consequences. Firstly, it has decimated our public finances. 25p in every single tax pound spent in this country goes on welfare. A further 20p goes on healthcare, and that proportion is rising alarmingly quickly (we used to spend around two per cent of GDP on health; now we spend nearly 10 per cent). And nearly 10p in every pound goes on paying back the national debt we constantly take on in order to pay for the 25p and the 20p.

Do the maths; that leaves less than 50p in every pound to spend on absolutely everything else this country does, from fixing the potholes in your street, to paying for your children’s schools, to defending ourselves against Russia and China. It is so clearly unsustainable, and yet we are so very far away from having a political debate mature enough to meaningfully change it.

Secondly, it has created the most corrosive, obnoxious sense of entitlement in our society, at all age ranges. We have been told, by all parties and in all areas, that we are entitled without question or consequence to a range of perks from the magic money tree.

If work doesn’t suit you, then don’t worry, we have a range of options on the benefits menu, because you deserve the same lifestyle as the taxpayers who fund you. Don’t lead a healthy lifestyle? Not to worry, it’s not your fault, and the NHS will save you.

I’m pejoratively exaggerating, but not by much.

It is hardly a surprise, then, that when a brave politician decides to level with us, to tell us that actually we’re the ones who’ve been paying for the splurge all along and now we’re broke, that we recoil. Hardly a surprise that when, in response to the problem of a rapidly growing non-working grouping combined with a rapidly shrinking working population, mainstream political parties offer tax rises as a solution, we largely don’t understand that there is an alternative.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Image: PA)

Ms Thorning-Schmidt and her Danish colleagues seem to have less trouble with mature debate. The second of her contributions which stayed with me was her rather blasé mention of Denmark’s state pension system. The Danes made a decision that they were prepared to fund state pensions for an average of 15 years. So, they linked the pensionable age to the average life expectancy. Danes draw a pension precisely 15 years short of the average life expectancy, whatever that may be. As people live longer, the pension age rises.

If we were to inject such honesty into our debate, we would not be talking about tax rises, or more bowing to fund current spending. We’d be talking about a national savings plan and a generation reset.

We’d be saying to young workers: “I’m sorry, but we’ve screwed you over and you’re going to have to accept that you won’t be getting a pension from us, or ‘free’ healthcare.”

We’d be saying that nothing is free, and we’d be rewiring to create a compassionate system offering the safety blanket society provides to those who need it, and ensuring they are not homogenised in the morass of universal provision.

State benefits are the foundation stone of a decent society. But taxpayers must only be expected to give them to people who need them, not to people who want them or have been told by politicians that they are entitled to them.

The public is much more ready for that debate than politicians think.