Adam Smith Institute

The UK state pension should be remodeled on Chile's privatized system which replaced its state pension with compulsory personal savings accounts which have become actuarially sound and secure, and secure, and offer flexible retirement ages, higher rates of return and stimulates economic growth.

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Individuals should be able to opt out of the state welfare system into an individual, funded and privately managed 'Fortune Account' which will provide lifetime insurance and basic pension benefits. This will allow people to accumulate savings when young, fit and in work, in order to fund their needs in retirement or when unemployed, sick, or disabled.

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This report argues that it is time for the welfare state to be transformed. The authors argue for a new structure which can gradually be built out of the existing one. They present ways in which this can be achieved despite the financial constraints which contributing individuals and Treasury officials will impose. As such, this report sets forward a clear and intellectually coherent alternative to the welfare state, together with the means which can be used to bring it about. It thus presents a bold challenge to the conventional welfare thinking which has so visibly and lamentably failed to achieve its objectives.

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"To offer people the chance to work and contribute their bit to the community must be better than trapping them in a depressing state of enforced idleness that leaves them less and less able to get back to work." So wrote Ralph Howell in 1991. Following on from Why Unemployment, he argues for radical changes to the welfare system so people can get back to work.

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Based on the ideas of Labour MP Frank Field, this report suggests steps toward localization of welfare services through the old Friendly Societies system, rather than the modern state-centered organization. In a bold move away from his party, Field recognized the problems of the state controlled system and the benefits that market forces and local control could incur on the system proposal. In the move back to the Friendly Societies, unemployment benefits would be dispensed locally with specialized services specific to communities, giving customers options of moving to Societies which benefit them most - increasing level of service for all through competition. This report finally concludes that such a change could improve not only the UK, but services across Europe as the trends of competetiveness spread.

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