大象传媒

It's nearly 40 years since Maggie Thatcher declared the end of society.
"There is no such thing. There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business.
'It is I think one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill, there was a safety net and there was help, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system. When people come and say 'But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole'
Her words have come to mind again in recent months, with much of the focus of Westminster on cutting welfare payments. Across the UK, one in 10 people are on sickness or incapacity benefit, up to 3000 people go on the sick every day- half of those are for mental illness. The cost of these payments is 拢65bn a year. Almost 10 million people of working age aren't looking for work and Sir Keir Starmer has described this as 'unsustainable, indefensible and unfair'
The Westminster government says that the case for cutting welfare is a moral one.
Is it? And as those on benefits struggle to cope with what they have, is it pushing people further away from each other- thereby killing any notion of society?
Presenter Audrey Carville in conversation with Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick- lecturer at Ulster University, currently researching the social security system and socio-economic rights, Anne McElvoy is executive editor of Politico and Alex Kane is a columnist and writer