As a relatively young pensioner, who saved for retirement from self-employment and the proceeds of DH's SME, I'd be happy to forgo the free bus pass and the free meds. DH would have continued to buy his annual pre-payment multi-prescription pass for £110. Well-off pensioners might grumble a bit, but would eventually accept that if you own your own home and have a personal plus state pension, then some restrictions on entitlements need imposing: perhaps via an age limit (the over-85s?) or available only with certain medical diagnoses/disabilities.
Withdrawing, then restoring the WFA was an own goal, but the ceiling should have been limited to around the equivalent of NMW. I am sure that the triple lock will have to go, but an average of inflation and wage increases would need to be retained because whatever MN thinks, there are a great many elderly people, most of them women, who get by on the state pension and maybe a few quid monthly pension from a PT job.
I would limit the scope of the NHS to remove fertility treatments and some elective procedures, including non-emergency caesareans. If you are too posh to push, pay privately. If the NHS pathway for elective care is very long, I think there should be a tax credit for anyone paying privately for e.g. cataracts or orthopaedic surgeries.
All children's medical care, including basic dentistry, should be free, but not orthodontics.
I would retain the two child cap, because all the stuff about children in poverty is based on a relative and arbitrary definition of poverty.
I'd like to see large parts of the civil service on a hiring freeze, but HMRC expanded.
But all this is just skirting around the issue of disability. What disabilities are sufficient to qualify for the higher levels of social support? The medical advances since the 1950s have been remarkable and we all welcome the progress but the future for premature babies has improved so much. My cousin's 23 week DD is now 30; apart from minor learning difficulties, she has a normal life. But we have all read about the (possibly apocryphal) individual's
whose school transport budget is £90k pa.
Should anxiety qualify a young person for benefits? What training should be provided for those unsuited to a mainstream academic education? These are questions for us all.
And housing? Prohibitively expensive in most of the southern UK or even anywhere there's decent employment prospects. Rather less of a mountain to climb elsewhere, but nurses, teachers, office, construction, engineering, retail and hospitality jobs are all over. Doctors, accountants and lawyers likewise.
But the government and its regulation of the economy has to be moderated in light of the size of the enterprises being regulated. It's ridiculous to expect a small company with one part-time admin person to follow the same rule book as Sainsbury's.