I thought the brief a very unsatisfactory one (and this does not refer to Paul?s handling of it, which was excellent.) It should have let us know the overall total of the Welfare budget and its relation to overall government spending and to G.N.P. and some idea of the rapidity of its growth. Then we would have had a context in which to make judgments.
The most important problem was to decide between taking a rigorous stance to reduce the opportunities to abuse the system, even if it resulted in eliminating some meritorious cases or a more permissive stance to ensure the coverage of a maximum of deserving cases, even if it resulted in permitting cases of abuse of the system. A knowledge of the total financial situation would have helped in this.
We should also have been given an idea of the cost of the different items. I could have taken a more generous position when dealing with an issue with a total cost of 50 million pounds rather than one costing 5 billion.
As it was, I felt I was making snap decisions on some items, with little relation to decisions on others. No context.
I would hope that these opinions could be passed on to the designers of the brief.