Ben Colburn and Hugh Lazenby have been awarded a grant by the Royal Society of Edinburgh to run a series of workshops assessing the role individual responsibility should play in the delivery of public services.

The idea that the welfare state should provide unconditional support has come under attack. Governments seek to reduce the overall welfare bill by adopting more restricted criteria for eligibility; and many worry that an unconditional welfare system encourages a culture of dependency, unfairly forcing the prudent to subsidize the profligate. Such thoughts lie behind the Westminster government’s current reforms, which are shifting many benefits from an unconditional to a conditional basis, thereby – at least in aspiration – making the welfare state more responsive to individual responsibility.

Can Scotland do things differently? This collaborative project will explore the possibility of finding an alternative set of principles to underpin the welfare state. Through a series of cross-disciplinary workshops, we will assess the chances of finding a financially prudent solution which pays due heed to the importance of individual responsibility while rejecting the moralized austerity that is dominant south of the border.

First published: 24 January 2014

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