Tommy Birch is a Behavioural Scientist, Coach and Leadership Advisor at House of Birch, a local councillor and CPF Area Leader for Hertfordshire.
Governments have long turned to behavioural scientists when designing policy.
The most successful reforms of recent decades, rest on a simple insight: people rarely behave as spreadsheets predict, and how a system is built shapes the choices made within it. I do not know whether Kemi Badenoch consulted any behavioural scientists before her recent welfare announcement. As one, however, I want to offer my reading of it, because I believe its strongest justification is not economic but human.
Anyone who claims Universal Credit while out of work would get six months of full benefits to find a job; after that, the full rate would only be available to people who have contributed through their taxes for years. Those who have not would have their standard rate cut by a third, paid onto a “back to work” pre-payment card that blocks spending on cigarettes, alcohol, betting and cash withdrawals.
The reactions divided predictably: cruelty on one side, overdue toughness on the other. Both framings miss what I see when I look at a benefits system. It is not merely a transfer mechanism; it is a behavioural environment. Every rule teaches something about the relationship between effort and outcome, and people learn those lessons whether policymakers intend them to or not. Those lessons land on human minds, not rational calculators. Once you understand how people actually make decisions, Badenoch’s design stops looking harsh and starts to really make sense.
The pull of now
The human mind consistently overvalues the present and undervalues the future. Behavioural scientists call this present bias, and it explains why we delay the dentist, the tax return and the gym. The costs of acting are immediate and vivid; the rewards are distant and abstract.
Moving into work is a textbook case. The costs arrive at once: the early alarm, the unfamiliar workplace, the risk of failing. The rewards, including promotion, higher pay and a stronger sense of self, arrive months or years later. Faced with that trade-off, “not this week” feels more and more reasonable with every passing week. An open-ended benefit therefore does not merely allow delay; it invites it indefinitely.
The most reliable remedy for present bias is a deadline. Deadlines turn a vague future into a concrete choice. Six months of full support followed by a clear change is precisely that: generous at the start, and firm about the end. It does not punish people for being human, it’s a policy designed around the fact that they are.
Why losses loom larger
People feel losses roughly twice as strongly as equivalent gains. This loss aversion shapes the benefits decision profoundly. Under Labour, taking a job means giving up something certain, that requires no effort, a regular payment, for something uncertain: a new role that might not work out. Even when work pays more, the mind registers the potential loss more sharply than the likely gain.
Loss aversion also creates a powerful attachment to the status quo. Whatever position we currently hold becomes our reference point, and moving away from it feels risky. For someone on benefits, staying put feels like the safe default.
This is where Kemi’s idea really makes a difference. Her policy changes the reference point so that staying still is no longer the safe option, and in doing so changes the decision.
Giving up is the brain’s default
In the 1960s, Martin Seligman found that animals that received shocks they could not stop eventually gave up trying to escape, even when a way out was later opened. For years, scientists assumed they had learned to be helpless.
Later research reversed that conclusion. Giving up turned out to be what the brain does automatically when stress continues and no behavioural attempts to change it are made. What has to be learned is the opposite: the belief that my actions make a difference. Once that belief has been learned through real experience, it protects people against future setbacks.
The lesson for welfare is profound. Hope is not a personality trait that some people simply lack. It is built through repeated experiences of effort paying off. A system that asks nothing of people denies them those experiences. It does not protect them; it leaves them in the brain’s default state of giving up. Expectations, deadlines and early wins are not a burden on the unemployed, they are how agency and confidence are rebuilt.
We become what we do
We tend to assume that people act according to who they are. The reverse is also true: we work out who we are by watching what we do. Someone who gets up, turns up and is relied upon comes to see themselves as capable. Someone who spends months outside work begins, often without noticing, to see themselves as someone who does not work. Identity follows behaviour.
This is also why work gives what a benefit payment cannot. When the factory closed in the Austrian village of Marienthal in the 1930s, researchers found that the unemployed did not simply enjoy their free time as was assumed. Their days lost structure and their sense of purpose faded. People need to be needed.
Fairness sustains the safety net
People are deeply sensitive to fairness. Social psychologists ran experiments where groups contribute to a shared pot. What has been observed was that cooperation is strong at first, but it collapses when some take without contributing. Contributors withdraw, not from greed, but from a sense that the deal has been broken.
We see a similar pattern with wealth-creators leaving the UK since Labour took over. The welfare state is the largest shared pot we have. Badenoch’s contributory principle is not a swipe at claimants; it protects public consent for the safety net itself. A system seen as rewarding those who put in will be defended. A system seen as rewarding those who never do will eventually lose public support.
But Labour is not the only party preaching increases in welfare. promising the biggest cuts to the bill ever seen, but look past the headline and its commitments point the other way. It has pledged to keep the triple lock, and only last year it promised to restore winter fuel payments for every pensioner and scrap the two-child cap. The cuts are a promise; the handouts are guaranteed. Each of those payments goes out whatever anyone does, and once granted, loss aversion makes it almost impossible for any government to take it back. Reform’s plan would not shrink the welfare state. It would lock in a bigger one.
Honesty requires one caution. Measures that feel controlling can erode people’s motivation. If the back-to-work card feels like surveillance, it will breed resentment. If it feels like scaffolding, paired with real work coaching and a clear route back to the full rate, it will build confidence.
Every welfare system carries a theory of human nature. Labour’s assumes hardship is simply a shortage of money. Kemi’s is harder and more hopeful: that people respond to how systems are built, and are capable of more than the state has been asking of them.
The best welfare is a well-paid job. That is not a slogan. It is how human beings are wired.
Tommy Birch is a Behavioural Scientist, Coach and Leadership Advisor at House of Birch, a local councillor and CPF Area Leader for Hertfordshire.
Governments have long turned to behavioural scientists when designing policy.
The most successful reforms of recent decades, rest on a simple insight: people rarely behave as spreadsheets predict, and how a system is built shapes the choices made within it. I do not know whether Kemi Badenoch consulted any behavioural scientists before her recent welfare announcement. As one, however, I want to offer my reading of it, because I believe its strongest justification is not economic but human.
Anyone who claims Universal Credit while out of work would get six months of full benefits to find a job; after that, the full rate would only be available to people who have contributed through their taxes for years. Those who have not would have their standard rate cut by a third, paid onto a “back to work” pre-payment card that blocks spending on cigarettes, alcohol, betting and cash withdrawals.
The reactions divided predictably: cruelty on one side, overdue toughness on the other. Both framings miss what I see when I look at a benefits system. It is not merely a transfer mechanism; it is a behavioural environment. Every rule teaches something about the relationship between effort and outcome, and people learn those lessons whether policymakers intend them to or not. Those lessons land on human minds, not rational calculators. Once you understand how people actually make decisions, Badenoch’s design stops looking harsh and starts to really make sense.
The pull of now
The human mind consistently overvalues the present and undervalues the future. Behavioural scientists call this present bias, and it explains why we delay the dentist, the tax return and the gym. The costs of acting are immediate and vivid; the rewards are distant and abstract.
Moving into work is a textbook case. The costs arrive at once: the early alarm, the unfamiliar workplace, the risk of failing. The rewards, including promotion, higher pay and a stronger sense of self, arrive months or years later. Faced with that trade-off, “not this week” feels more and more reasonable with every passing week. An open-ended benefit therefore does not merely allow delay; it invites it indefinitely.
The most reliable remedy for present bias is a deadline. Deadlines turn a vague future into a concrete choice. Six months of full support followed by a clear change is precisely that: generous at the start, and firm about the end. It does not punish people for being human, it’s a policy designed around the fact that they are.
Why losses loom larger
People feel losses roughly twice as strongly as equivalent gains. This loss aversion shapes the benefits decision profoundly. Under Labour, taking a job means giving up something certain, that requires no effort, a regular payment, for something uncertain: a new role that might not work out. Even when work pays more, the mind registers the potential loss more sharply than the likely gain.
Loss aversion also creates a powerful attachment to the status quo. Whatever position we currently hold becomes our reference point, and moving away from it feels risky. For someone on benefits, staying put feels like the safe default.
This is where Kemi’s idea really makes a difference. Her policy changes the reference point so that staying still is no longer the safe option, and in doing so changes the decision.
Giving up is the brain’s default
In the 1960s, Martin Seligman found that animals that received shocks they could not stop eventually gave up trying to escape, even when a way out was later opened. For years, scientists assumed they had learned to be helpless.
Later research reversed that conclusion. Giving up turned out to be what the brain does automatically when stress continues and no behavioural attempts to change it are made. What has to be learned is the opposite: the belief that my actions make a difference. Once that belief has been learned through real experience, it protects people against future setbacks.
The lesson for welfare is profound. Hope is not a personality trait that some people simply lack. It is built through repeated experiences of effort paying off. A system that asks nothing of people denies them those experiences. It does not protect them; it leaves them in the brain’s default state of giving up. Expectations, deadlines and early wins are not a burden on the unemployed, they are how agency and confidence are rebuilt.
We become what we do
We tend to assume that people act according to who they are. The reverse is also true: we work out who we are by watching what we do. Someone who gets up, turns up and is relied upon comes to see themselves as capable. Someone who spends months outside work begins, often without noticing, to see themselves as someone who does not work. Identity follows behaviour.
This is also why work gives what a benefit payment cannot. When the factory closed in the Austrian village of Marienthal in the 1930s, researchers found that the unemployed did not simply enjoy their free time as was assumed. Their days lost structure and their sense of purpose faded. People need to be needed.
Fairness sustains the safety net
People are deeply sensitive to fairness. Social psychologists ran experiments where groups contribute to a shared pot. What has been observed was that cooperation is strong at first, but it collapses when some take without contributing. Contributors withdraw, not from greed, but from a sense that the deal has been broken.
We see a similar pattern with wealth-creators leaving the UK since Labour took over. The welfare state is the largest shared pot we have. Badenoch’s contributory principle is not a swipe at claimants; it protects public consent for the safety net itself. A system seen as rewarding those who put in will be defended. A system seen as rewarding those who never do will eventually lose public support.
But Labour is not the only party preaching increases in welfare. promising the biggest cuts to the bill ever seen, but look past the headline and its commitments point the other way. It has pledged to keep the triple lock, and only last year it promised to restore winter fuel payments for every pensioner and scrap the two-child cap. The cuts are a promise; the handouts are guaranteed. Each of those payments goes out whatever anyone does, and once granted, loss aversion makes it almost impossible for any government to take it back. Reform’s plan would not shrink the welfare state. It would lock in a bigger one.
Honesty requires one caution. Measures that feel controlling can erode people’s motivation. If the back-to-work card feels like surveillance, it will breed resentment. If it feels like scaffolding, paired with real work coaching and a clear route back to the full rate, it will build confidence.
Every welfare system carries a theory of human nature. Labour’s assumes hardship is simply a shortage of money. Kemi’s is harder and more hopeful: that people respond to how systems are built, and are capable of more than the state has been asking of them.
The best welfare is a well-paid job. That is not a slogan. It is how human beings are wired.