The threat to the welfare state has been a significant issue in the referendum campaign.
With the Yes campaign making much of the UK Government's relaxed attitude to the appearance of foodbanks, as well as criticising benefit cuts and sanctions there are plainly those who hope that an independent Scotland could have a more reliable safety net. That makes the appearance of a new report timely.
Let's Scrap the DWP lays its cards on the table right from the title. It claims independence or greater devolution could give a future Scotland the chance to promote social justice through radical reform of the tax and benefit system.
Its authors are John Dalrymple of the Scottish Campaign for a Fair Society and Simon Duffy. Duffy, through his work in Lanarkshire, became one of the leading architects of the personalisation policies which are still pursued by both Westminster and Holyrood to plan care for disabled people.
He later disavowed the way the policies had been used in pursuit of cuts.
The report calls for a new system in which every citizen is given a basic income, high enough to end poverty. It describes the current welfare system as deeply unjust and says reforms are making it worse. It argues the benefits system is now so complex and incoherent as to be beyond rational reform.
So it proposes dispensing with the department for work and pensions and merging the tax and benefit system.
A basic citizen's income may seem utopian or unrealistic, the authors acknowledge but they insist this is not the case. It is affordable and just.
Meanwhile the current system is the opposite, they say: "There is a widespread, and utterly false, belief that benefits are expensive and that the poor don't pay taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the poor pay the most tax - and the real cost of the benefits system is very low."
Instead of disincentivising people to find work - as happens at present to those on low pay - the report says a new system would lead to less wasted talent.
In fact, welfare has not been salient enough in the indy debate, Duffy says: "Instead, the focus has been on economic questions - as if there were any doubt a country of five million talented people couldn't run a functioning economy," he argues. But he thinks it could still be decisive: "If the Union does end this may be because we have failed, for far too long, to challenge the centralisation and bureaucracy that sits at the heart of the UK's welfare state."
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