The Right Approach to Social Security: The Case of the Board and Lodging Regulations

cost ceilings were set for local application and time limits after which young claimants had to move to another area or take a cut in benefit, with no right of appeal against this centralised exercise of the Secretary of State's discretion. The regulations were immediately contentious and have retained a high profile for more than a year, receiving legal and parliamentary challenge, pressure group campaigning and unusually wide media coverage for an intrinsically obscure item of social security law. What follows is a detailed analysis of the regulations examining stated policy objectives against actual effects. It will be argued that the regulations lack a rationality which can coincide with supposed objectives of the Department of Health and Social Security (D.H.S.S.), particularly since ample evidence was available at an early stage to refute many of their basic assertions. Rather, the regulations are explicable in terms of a policy which is openly discriminatory against certain groups whom the government sees as marginal to its political interests. Yet, despite some apparent successes in challenging the regulations, the law can hardly be viewed as allied to the interests of the groups affected by this measure. Attention has been focused on four aspects: constitutionality; social effects on time-limited young claimants; financial effects on the burgeoning market in private residential care; impact on local government, particularly the work of social services departments (S.S.D.s). We shall explore briefly each area in turn.