This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
I have been planning my parent’s death with them for some time. That is not to say we have bought tickets to Dignitas or are writing in support of the dreadfully drafted “Assisted” Dying Bill; rather, we are thinking about how to manage their assets.
It is complex. There is not only the inheritance tax to think about, but that care home fees can wipe out your whole estate in just a few short years.
Throughout, the constant refrain of my father has been “this isn’t right”. Despite having both paid into the system all their lives, they are having to contemplate the almost complete erosion of their life’s work at their greatest time of need — whilst those who have never contributed, as my father also regularly points out, have nothing to fear.
For many … attitudes toward welfare have become more transactional
The modern welfare state is foundational to the post-war identity of Great Britain but remains a central feature of the modern Blairite “YooKay” state in which, to quote David Goodhart, “the glue of ethnicity (‘people who look and talk like us’) has been replaced with the glue of values (‘people who think and behave like us’).” The welfare state is simply a pooling of tax revenue and redistribution as a way to collectivise social risk. The central moral contention upon which it rests is that recipients are similar to the taxpayers, that the recipients are individuals facing challenges that contributors might encounter too. Today, it is he; tomorrow, it might be me.
For many, however (including my parents) attitudes toward welfare have become more transactional: I contribute this much, and the state provides that in direct return. As society has grown more divided, the bonds that once united workers in a risk-sharing welfare system — first locally, then nationally — have weakened. Generosity has become more abstract and obligatory, driven by enlightened self-interest rather than a sense of mutual responsibility. This is reflective of the trend in social spending across generations. As The Economist has calculated, “on average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net.”
The social contract for Britain’s young is markedly less generous. Someone born in 1996 will receive less than half that amount. A 27-year-old today will get only slightly more than someone born in 1931 — nearly a decade before the term “welfare state” gained popularity.
One might think that a more transactional approach to the welfare state, combined with the poor rate of return, would mean that support for the welfare state is low amongst Britain’s younger generations. The reverse is true; according to British Social Attitudes data, support for welfare rises is climbing, in particular amongst the young. The National Centre for Social Research has shown that nearly 60 per cent of Gen Z want to see the government pick up the whole of the adult social care bill, with older generations putting more emphasis on the responsibility of the individual — although Gen Z do not stand out as any more in favour of a tax-and-spend approach than other generations.
The welfare system is sustained by Britain’s shrinking productive tax base, and polling does not distinguish levels of support for the welfare state between net contributors and recipients. Revealed preferences may offer more of an insight; the British Expat Report 2024 claimed that 38 per cent of Britons aged 25 to 34, and 36 per cent of those aged 18–24, are considering leaving within the next five years. 11 per cent are actively planning their departure. 45 per cent of prospective expats seek a better quality of life, while 39 per cent are driven by cost of living pressures.
Perceptions of comparative state generosity to the newly-arrived has become a major source of contention when it is felt new arrivals are “bypassing” the queue. Attendees erupted at a meeting in Greater Manchester when they were assured that migrants would not put any pressure on local NHS services because all 300 would be given access to private healthcare. The overrepresentation of foreign born people occupying social housing has become a source of grievance, particularly in London.
This is not new. When immigrants arrived in London in the 1960s, they often lacked the local connections needed to get on the housing list and ended up in poor-quality private rentals. Many recognised this as unfair and pushed for change, replacing informal networks with a universal system based on need. Under the new rules, a Bangladeshi family in substandard housing could receive enough points to move ahead of young local white couples who had been waiting for years. Now, that sense of injustice is not borne by London’s white working class communities — who have become scattered — but by Britain’s economically active young, who find themselves priced out of the housing market but unable to qualify for the social housing they provide, as the need-based qualifications functionally prefer new arrivals.
Assisted dying, by its very nature, will affect those who require most from the welfare state
But now assisted dying presents another threat to the welfare state’s legitimacy, particularly its impact on the notion of contribution upon which the welfare state was founded. Assisted dying, by its very nature, will affect those who require most from the welfare state. For those at the end of their life, the desire “not to be a burden” embraces financial considerations as well as medical concerns.
For people like my parents, who are conscious of protecting their assets in order to provide me with a stock of their hard work — the natural impulse of any parent — the financial realities of the welfare state as currently constituted will impel them, inexorably, towards assisted dying. If one is diagnosed with dementia, the financially rational decision is to plump for assisted dying so that your estate, carefully built up for years in order to provide for your children, does not waste away on care home fees. This is all the result of incentives set by the state.
Sam Ashworth-Hayes has laid bare the lie at the heart of this settlement: “Work hard to provide a roof and prosperous lifestyle for your children, and the state will confiscate an ever larger share of your income to fund those who choose to raise their families reliant upon government largesse.” The universal nature of the modern welfare state is increasingly questionable.
A generous welfare state is not compatible with open borders, and is unlikely to survive the addition of assisted dying with any degree of legitimacy. Britain’s younger generations face a record-high tax burden. But as lifestyles of the recipients and contributors become further differentiated, the obligations of the contributors generate more hostility. When those with the closest ties to the contributors — such as, in my case, their parents — are most in need, the welfare state will offer them assisted dying instead of unconditional support.
What legitimacy will the welfare state then have in the eyes of young contributors? They will contribute all their lives and receive few benefits, which will instead be redirected to people with whom they share few connections and feel no obligations. The remaining reason for contribution — paying into a system so as to benefit in old age — will die as soon as their parents opt for assisted dying (whatever savings this wave will bring to the welfare state will merely be redirected, of course). If today, it is not me, and tomorrow it will not be me, then why pay in now?
