Both on this blog and the national UK news alike, immigration has been raised as one of the main national issues. And, combined with the national finances (and the consequences of problems with the national finances, being higher taxes, spending cuts, and the threat posed by the growing cost of national debt), they probably cover at least some of the main concerns of all British people right now.
Recently, I have come to the conclusion (whether rightly or not) that the two issues of precarious national finances and excessive immigration are linked by one, big problem: misuse of the welfare state. The concept behind the British welfare state, and the good it has achieved over the decades, are something I take pride in. However, whilst it has long been known (and is a problem with most systems created to provide support, I'm sure) that there are those who exploit the welfare state when they don't really need its help, the amount of people relying on the welfare state has grown significantly in the twenty-first century, and particularly since Covid. But the impression given of the increase seems excessive- and, surely, there can't be so many people incapable of working who are claiming that that's the case. Nevertheless, despite politicians repeatedly talking of clamping down on misuse of the system, welfare costs remain vast, and seemingly ever-growing numbers of people use it to sustain their way of life- both rightly and wrongly. People relying on the welfare state to live have two significant consequences on the UK, which link to those two major national issues originally mentioned. People relying on the welfare state cost a lot of money (the last I saw: the biggest single expense the UK government has), which then has to be funded through a combination of high taxes, spending cuts in other areas, and/or increased government borrowing, which means debt repayments in turn require even more tax increases/spending cuts. Then there is a double hit, because people are not only receiving money to fund their lifestyle, but they are then not contributing money to the state to cover their costs.
This loss of income from potential workers relying on the welfare state is recouped not only from other workers already in the country, but also taxes from new immigrant workers- who the government and businesses alike have come to rely on to fill the vacancies left in the job market by the growing number of people receiving an income from the welfare state instead of a job.
The impression you get is that, rather than focusing on really getting to the bottom of the ballooning welfare state and people dependent on it; politicians, civil servants, and doctors instead find it easier to allow this to continue uninterrupted, given the effort of investigating all cases, and the threat of legal action when people contest that they are deserving of welfare support for health reasons (rightly or wrongly). So, over recent decades, we have seen governments of all political parties just sustain this system through growing taxes, cutting spending, and/or borrowing more money, to the detriment of the country. Then, with the gaps in the workforce, instead of focusing on cultivating the British workforce to fill gaps in the labour market, it is cheaper and easier for governments and businesses to import those with the required skills from abroad. As a result, twenty-first century Britain has consistently seen net migration in the hundreds of thousands of people, despite repeated promises by governments to bring these numbers down. And the impact of this has been seen widely across the country, in terms of strain on the national infrastructure (not least housing supplies that can't keep up with the demand, most sharply felt in the southeast of England) and the integrity of communities. It is widely felt that this was a leading factor in the decision of the vote in favour of Brexit almost a decade ago.
So, rather than take the difficult steps to review the welfare state and clamp down on those not entitled to use it, governments instead seem to continue to rely on the short-term fixes to the issues an overwhelming welfare state creates: harmful, short term economic management, and large scale immigration. Until a government decides to seriously address this issue, I fear that dubious national finances and heated debates on immigration will continue to be overwhelming characteristics of modern Britain.
