Forum Home → Discussion → Other benefit issues → Thread
‘Fortune Accounts’ instead of ‘welfare’?
‘... a single private provider for an account which [gives] ... long-term care insurance, disability cover, health insurance, savings fund management and unemployment insurance.’
The article says no concrete work has been done on this, which at least puts it on the same footing as Universal Credit…..
kicked off in the telegraph at the weekend:
‘Mr Duncan Smith is pondering even more radical plans, though he emphasises they are not yet official policy.
He says the future for young people starting work today must be to save into flexible accounts from which they can draw down when they need to rather than wait until retirement as with pensions.
”We need to support the kind of products that allow people through their lives to dip in and out when they need the money for sickness or care or unemployment,” he says.
Similar systems exist in many countries, especially in the Far East where welfare states never took root, such as Fortune Accounts in Singapore.
Mr Duncan Smith says people here still think they are saving for their future through the National insurance Fund whereas all the money goes on current benefits, mostly pensions and still has to be topped up.
He has in mind something that is truly an investment in an individual’s future.
“We need to encourage people to save from day one but they need to know that they can get some of the money out when their circumstances change. This is not government policy but I am very keen to look at it, as a long-term way forward for the 21st century.”’
Hmmm. I think I know who’ll make the ‘fortunes’ here.
far be it from IDS to look at the history and find out that that is what national insurance is for….... gah.
Yes it’s for 6 months of JSA or 12 months of ESA.