For a government which states it wants to defend the family with all possible means, it is actually threatening and undermining the family as an institution through allowing the counter-family lifestyle to prevail due to well-meaning but ultimately dangerous welfare state generosity.

Ever since the welfare state was introduced by the post-war Labour governments, successive administrations have vied with each other to give, give and give again, finding ever more creative ways to create social help and assistance.

Which is mainly a good thing, a very good thing, through which many families and needy persons have benefited. But, as always, anything that is created to solve the problems of the few needy may become a Trojan Horse through which many benefit, even if the measure was not aimed at them. That is why each and every measure must be continually looked at and critically evaluated to ensure it is doing what it was created to do and not anything else.

Unfortunately, successive administrations have been more apt to create new social assistance measures than to see that each measure introduced by them or their predecessors is doing what it was designed to do and nothing else. Look at the number of people enjoying free medicines and you see what can happen to well-meant measures which end up ‘enjoyed’ by one and all.

This is not being said now because we face a period of international turbulence (which would lead to preserving and defending any and all social assistance measures) nor because the government’s finances again went haywire (again, through no fault of the poor) but because now is as good as any time to ensure that social measures do what they were set out to do and no more and no less.

In fact, the 2009 Budget Speech itself states that in the current year, while wages in the public service increase by EUR 31 million, due to the collective agreement, pensions, social benefits and subsidies have increased by EUR 74 million over 2007.

Let it be said, and repeated, that most of this is going to the right people. But also, as everyone knows, there is an awful amount of social assistance fraud going on – people who work and draw benefits, people who accumulate social benefits and live nicely, etc.

This does not mean, either, that no checks are done. On the contrary, there is a quite strict approach to certain areas, such as those who register for work and the Budget’s announcement that those who have been registering for work for over five years (and finding all kinds of excuses to refuse all job offers they are made) will have to do community work, is welcomed.

But more, much more, needs to be done. People still get under the net and a trickle soon becomes a flood as more people learn the loopholes and the chinks in the net.

Perhaps the officials responsible to ensure that government funds are not squandered could run a check, cross-wise so to speak, not on each social assistance measure but on what a person gets through accumulated social benefits. That may yield some interesting results, as some ‘furbi’ will emerge.

Then again, the issue of single mothers must be tackled, with prudence and sensitivity to be sure, but tackled it must be. The experience of other countries, foremost among them the UK, should teach us valuable lessons. Our country must not end up like the UK, or other welfare states for that matter, where it is financially more advantageous for a girl to have a baby than go to work, where you get a house for free, in addition to other benefits, where lover/husband/father flits in and out of the scene and the couple enjoy all the benefits of a family without actually being one. See what we meant when we said that for a government which states it wants to protect the family, this government (on a lesser scale than its counterpart in Britain etc) actually undermines it?

As Marisa Micallef used to argue in the articles she wrote for this paper in the months before the election, there is also a correlation to be made between helping those in need and ‘persuading’ them to return to work. That is the right way in which social assistance has to be channeled.

The main issue is that of finding the right balance between helping those in need and ensuring that ‘help’ does not become permanent or so wide as to include everyone and his dog. And of helping people to get to do the work which is there for them to do (at least, so far we do not have any shortages so far for those who really want to work).

Of course, there is a wider perspective to all this – should mothers who stay at home and take care of small children get State help? Should the State interfere in the private business of how citizens want to live their lives? Or should it enforce marriage on one and all? These are wider issues which need to be tackled and discussed.

But even so, a State that becomes a soft touch is no State at all. Nor should a welfare state be turned into an encouragement of sloth and lazy lifestyles. The money the State spends on social assistance is our money, it is the money we fork out as taxes: we have every right to ensure that is money well spent and doing what it is supposed to do.