AIBU in thinking " some can afford children's sandwiches, so we don't need free school meals" is too simplistic?

[deeedeee]

Means testing of benefits. This is one of the crucial differences in approach between the Labour and Conservative manifestos and it deserves a closer look than it is getting.

The Tory approach is to means test each benefit so that they are only paid to those who most need them. Which seems fair enough on the surface if you don't think too deeply about the practicalities. The Labour approach is to avoid the means testing a pay the benefit across the board and then claw back the costs from the better off recipients through the tax system.

There are two advantages to the latter which don't seem to be immediately obvious to people. Means testing is generally a fairly complex and tedious process. So the first failing is that many people who most need a benefit will not go through the demeaning and unpleasant process of means testing. Which means the societal benefits ( i.e. having healthy nourished children that learn more, grow up to contribute more and are healthier therefore ending less from the NHS) aren't as effective.

However it is the second failing that needs a lot more attention because it is symptomatic of a consistent failing in political debate. Means testing IS NOT FREE. There are significant administrative costs involved. So more of the money goes on paying civil servants to process forms. Not only that but they will outsource the means testing to a private company ( such as ATOS) with limited knowledge who will take their own profits and get many of the assessments wrong leading to appeals costing even more in administration while people are left in distress aka mobility allowances

Clawing the money back from the better off through taxation does not incur that extra cost, or at least not more than a tiny fraction of it, because the administration of taxation is going to take place anyway regardless of whether or not means testing takes place.

Means testing of benefits is one of those things where a nice sounding theoretical case can be made but a case that fails when applied to the real world. My view is that it is the end result that counts rather than micromanaging every single payment in order to claim that nobody gets anything they don't need or deserve. Best to use the approach that involves the least waste overall.

I'm quite happy for a millionaire to get winter fuel payments and then pay back the whole lot as part of their taxes if it means wasting less public money on shuffling forms about.

I guess the counter argument (and I know there is a morality counter argument to this argument) is pay to all and claim back from the rich by increasing their taxes isn't necessarily going to result in an increase in revenue for the government due to tax avoidance techniques, therefore they'll spend the money giving to all without a revenue stream to pay for it. So instead of paying people to means test the poor (which has a negative rate of return) they should pay them to catch tax evaders and plug loopholes in the tax code (which will have a huge positive return).

What an excellent post. I completely agree.
It's probably too much to hope it ever comes to pass.

What about the long term effects?

IMO benefits should be for those who really need them, like people with disabilities who cannot work. I agree with means testing to reduce the number of people using benefits as a 'lifestyle choice'.

If you can afford to make your child a packed lunch or pay for a hot lunch, you should. Why take others' resources just to save yourself a bit of money? If you can afford winter fuel, you shouldn't get a top-up payment. Those benefits were designed to help people in real need, not as a nice to have freebie.

People need to be encouraged to plan their lives around what they can afford. Encouraged to study, train, get steady jobs and save up before starting a family. To plan their retirement. There needs to be more career support and budgeting advice in schools. Making benefits easily accessible to all will encourage people to rely on them instead of striving for independence.

I'm planning to vote Tory but interested to hear the other side.

having healthy nourished children that learn more, grow up to contribute more and are healthier therefore ending less from the NHS) aren't as effective

How will school lunches change this? They are notoriously unhealthy in many schools. Wouldn't it be better to educate parents about providing healthy food? To police school lunch boxes so parents who fail to provide a nutritious lunch recieve extra guidance? Also I understand they are having free breakfast instead of lunch.

Means testing provides jobs for people to do to earn money to not need so many benefits.

You would have to be seriously on your arse not to be able to provide a basic packup. I costed up a ham salad, yoghurt, fruit, crackers lunch £7.40 split between 5 days that £1.48 for lunch a day. If someone can not afford that when they have children we have much bigger problems than if ks1 and fs should get free lunch.

People have become accustom to the tax payer picking up the tab for everything. You get £20 a week child benefit unless you earn over a certain amount, if you don't earn much or don't work you then get tax credits on top of that. Nobody shouldn't be able to afford to feed their child unless they cannot manage their own budgets and are spending on unneeded items at which point throwing more freebies at the problem won't fix the issue it's purely a bandaid.

Daymoth, two points

1. about school meals in particular:

Another possible way of looking at it is the Scandinavian one: that this is not about charity but about ensuring the general health of the population for the benefit of everybody. Healthier people= less cluttered up health system, less risk of infectious diseases etc etc.

This is why no Swede I have ever heard of resents free school meals to all school children. It's about the general good.

But obviously this only works if you can get everybody on board with the idea that school meals will be healthy options, not junk food, and that there will be a limited amount of choice. Probably wouldn't work in this country.

2. "Encouraged to study, train, get steady jobs and save up before starting a family. To plan their retirement. There needs to be more career support and budgeting advice in schools. Making benefits easily accessible to all will encourage people to rely on them instead of striving for independence."

The problem with this is that a large proportion of the people presently dependent on benefits are already working hard and conscientiously- but employers do not pay enough to live on, given the high costs of rent etc.

You speak glibly of studying and planning your career. If everybody did this- would there suddenly be enough well paying jobs for everybody in the country? All managers and no workers?

And what would happen to the shit jobs that nobody wants to do and that we all absolutely depend on? Who would be cleaning the streets and the toilets? Surely if everybody followed your advice, the outcome would be that we all died of dysentery?

The unpalatable truth is that as a society, as reasonably well remunerated workers, we are absolutely dependent on people who do shit jobs for money that is not enough to cover the rent even in the most appalling accommodation.

Telling those people it's their own fault for not studying and getting different jobs is all about making us feel better. Better about the fact that we rely on those jobs, better about the fact that we aren't prepared to pay for them.

I think the issue is more than money, but I don't know how to solve it and school meals won't by itself - one school meal a day, whether breakfast or lunch is a fairly small percentage of a child's total meals - less than 20% when averaged over a full year, meaning that over 80% of meals need to be provided by parents anyway.

Even on a very low income, tax credits etc should ensure that there is enough money for housing, bills, childrens clothes and basic food even if nothing else.

People need to be encouraged to plan their lives around what they can afford. Encouraged to study, train, get steady jobs and save up before starting a family. To plan their retirement*
We've done that moth
All thrown right into the air at the prospect of disability. One that could not have been foreseen. And one that if the new law about ransoming your house for in home care comes In, is going to cause us significant difficulties. Not so much in losing an inheritance for the dc but in actually living our lives, being able to move, putting dc through university etc. We will fall foul of deprivation of assets by realising any of the capital we have built up. Whilst having children still at school. Whilst still working.
I feel massively shat on right now.

So the first failing is that many people who most need a benefit will not go through the demeaning and unpleasant process of means testing.

I agree with you, but it's not just this - many people who should be getting benefits do not, because they lack the literacy/cognitive abilities to apply. It's not just that the process is unpleasant, but that it's genuinely too difficult for a lot of people to (a) work out what they are due and (b) apply for it. People with LD are particularly affected - not all have help.

Daymoth, I agree that school lunches aren't the best, but you'd be really surprised how undernourished some children are. For some, the school lunch will be the only decent meal of the day (and that's just 5 meals out of - one hopes - 21).

I thought it was common knowledge that the reason the winter fuel payment is universal is that elderly people are notoriously unwilling to accept "handouts" - therefore the only way of making sure those who need it get it is to give it to everyone.

I can see arguments for universal free school meals and against.

I actually do the administration for school meals. The 'means testing' that would need to take place is already done in school as it's the same process to access pupil premium funding. We take everyone's national insurance numbers and they declare if they receive specific benefits. In fact the system we use then marks them up as receiving a free meal in the accounts system anyway, even though no one is paying. So there would literally be no impact.

The admin time we have lost is chasing up payments from those who have to pay and making the accounts balance and banking the moneye.

The food is ok and there are a lot of borderline families that benefit this way.

""People need to be encouraged to plan their lives around what they can afford. Encouraged to study, train, get steady jobs and save up before starting a family. To plan their retirement. ""

The Government, in-return have to make laws so every job, were possible, is a "steady job". That there are working contracts and a liveable wage.

For anything less than a BA (or equivalent), the course should be free.

My DD (with LDs) will end up with debt, to work in a Kitchen. SO before she starts out, like many others will have debt hanging over them.

Rents being what they are means little chance to save.

I'm in Liverpool, there isn't work for everyone, there also isn't reasonably paid work, for the majority. We have cheaper house prices, but not rents.

Our model of Welfare excepts that we won't have full employment and there will be 'boom and bust' times. People need to be sheltered from this.

We need people in the service industry and cleaners etc, these people shouldn't be treated as the 'untouchables' in India, as some seem to want.

If it was up to some, those on the bottom wages wouldn't be allowed to have children.

Several lurking teenagers were around yesterday for lunch and discussing this, and the suggested change to free breakfasts.

All of them reckoned that the switch to breakfasts would be because it was so cheap to chuck a slice of white bread in a toaster or offer a bowl of Rice Krispies. Two of the girls went off into fond reminiscences of going to 'school breakfast club' and scoffing toast with chocolate spread, without anyone nagging you to brush teeth later.

I bet they're right.

I hate the utter fucking disdain the tory party are showing the British public, including their voters. Changes to health and social care is a disgrace. As is the idea of means testing everything going as sometimes things can look fine on paper but actually they are a struggle and people are too proud to claim. Also the most vulnerable will miss out because they don't know how to go about it or are too proud to "beg". They won't do any leaders debates and tax cuts for the rich and bring back fox hunting! Is their go to. Ffs at this point in politics they could ask the country to bend over and drop their pants and the tories would still win.

But Labour aren't proposing to claw back the cost of free school meals from everybody who can actually afford to pay for them and who receives them. They are looking at clawing back the cost of free school meals for a number of people from only those who earn more than 80k (regardless of whether those people have children at school). I have no issue whatsoever paying more tax to pay for those who need it. I have a real issue paying more tax to pay for those who don't need it.

Yes, providing breakfasts will be cheaper, and a lot less nutritious. At least the lunches have fruit, veg and protein in (as well as a decent calorie load). The nutrition in a slice of toast is negligible.

Indeed, KatherinaMinola. My mum has her own home, worth less than 40k, Band A council tax. She exists on the state pension & my late father's SERPs. The house has damp, she has a thyroid problem which makes it hard for her to get round to doing things (lethargy). She has just a gas fire in the living room and a small electric heater for the bedroom. Since the oven stopped working, she uses the gas burners to warm the kitchen. She won't apply for pension credits because it's a handout & she won't accept charity. And now they want to take her fuel allowance away.

But Shamoo, do you not see the "everyone benefits" argument? As touched on above, if you give children a good start in life it helps later on with issues like health, crime, etc. A more equal society is a safer and more orderly society for everyone (I appreciate that FSM are a very small step towards that, but they are a step in that direction).

""People need to be encouraged to plan their lives around what they can afford. Encouraged to study, train, get steady jobs and save up before starting a family. To plan their retirement"

Yup did that. Had a comfortable if not extravagant life. 2 kiddos bumbling along happily, modest savings. Then bam I'm disabled.

My £1600 a month take home wage has been replaced by just over £400 a month in PIP (which I also had the joy of explaining to a stranger how I struggle to wipe my own arse and change my own sanitary protection to qualify for) we get some tax credits but nothing else because my partner works. The fact that he has to take time off work and can't go for promotion because he has to help care for me is apparently irrelevant.

Oh and by a magical quirk of the system the tax credits we get because I'm severely disabled means we don't qualify for FSM beyond the early years and don't qualify for healthy start vouchers either.

So now we've studied,trained and planned and are still fucked. What are we ment to do now?!

iccle
As per my earlier post we've got to start planning for this. I've been in tears already about it.

KatherinaMinola - Totally get that point, and I am not necesarily against free school lunches for all, but the OP seems to be premised on the basis that the payments for those who can afford it will be "clawed back", which makes it fair and is essentially equivalent to means testing, but without the cost of means testing. But of course it isn't equivalent, because it won't be clawed back from everybody that can afford it. It will be clawed back from a small percentage of the people, for a large number of people, many of whom can afford to pay. What I can't stand in these sorts of conversations is disingenous justifications, which just weaken the argument.

If we want to say that school lunches should be free because it gives kids a better start in life thats fine. However, why can't it be achieved by a different means? Why can't it be mandated that all those above the means testing threshold have to pay the school £x per month to cover school lunches for their children? At least then the people who are paying for it are the right people.

And maybe that doesn't capture all of the kids that need to be covered, but then look at the means testing threshold.

Plus, from some of what I have read, the quality of the free school lunches in many schools is actually complete rubbish, and so the idea of a better start for children isn't even real. I must say I have no experience on this myself, but would be interested to know to what extent there is a quality control on what the schools spend on the meals and what the quality of the food is?

My daughter is in receipt of free school meals along with the rest of her year 2 class. We could certainly afford to pack her a lunch, but she enjoys eating the school meals and it gives her a hot meal which is better, in my opinion, than a sandwich (Perhaps nutritionally not so, but it satisfies her and fills her up better). I might be concerned if only some of the children who qualified through means testing received a free lunch--could this lead to bullying? As in you know if so-and-so gets a free lunch, she must be poor?

That being said, I would be happy to pay for the hot meals next year. It saves a lot of faff!

School meal quality is not good where we are and there have been many issues of kids being given the wrong food (i.e. kids who are vegetarian for religious reasons being given meat, etc.). Thankfully yet no allergy issues, but mainly because the meal provider said they couldn't accommodate those children, so they have to sit in a different room on their own (so it lacks the integration benefits that it was brought in on). The school had to change timetables to accommodate the increased number of children. Yet, there are still many obese children in the playground, time for PE is cut short as children do not behave in a way that means the teacher can run the class and they are still being plonked in front of Disney DVDs whenever they can find an excuse (packed lunches are babysat by TV while eating) and the school often sends out letters for books contributions. The original reason for the school meals was not to do with children's diet and nutrition, it was the effect of the inclusion in free school meals of those already receiving free school meals. That's why so many are low quality - it was not the main driver. A healthy start for kids would be exercise, especially considering the numbers and the effect that will have on the NHS in the future (and the cost impact that is already being seen) and books for the kids to read? No brainer.

School lunches are essential for those kids not being fed at home, but those always were given free school meals. Those that don't need them should absolutely be paying for them.

Baldricks - that's how the system worked for years and years. That's why they changed it. Now other kids get isolated and bullied. Yey! But they're not the poor ones so no one cares. Yey! Win for the government.

(heavy sarcasm ^)

However, I am intrigued by and so far mostly in favour of the Universal Income trials going on around the world. It is at least a leveller that least people can moan about, maybe? I guess we'll see in time.