THE IDEA of a one-stop benefits system may not be original, but the notion of doing this and handing its running over to companies - possibly American ones - in the biggest privatisation yet certainly is radical.

And even though the government's brief on the shake-up of benefits included thinking the unthinkable, with this initiative, reported today to be Labour's key welfare reform proposal at the next election, it may be going beyond that - even in the view of many of its own supporters.

There is, however, little wrong in the core idea of the government having people make a single application for all the benefits they are claiming and receiving a single cheque in return.

The scope for savings in the £110 billion benefits bill is evident when the present system requires those claiming the job seekers' allowance to apply to the Employment Service, income support claimants to ask at the Benefits Agency and for council tax benefit seekers to apply at the town hall. If telescoping all these into one outlet cuts bureaucracy, duplication and the widespread benefits fraud that is assisted by the system's complexity, then the ensuing economies may be considerable.

But why relieve the public sector of the task?

Is it that a marriage of the existing benefits agencies is viewed as one that would be difficult and slow to bring about as the various parties struggle to retain their influence and numbers?

Or is it that the private sector would be an easier enabler of the new work contracts and wholesale job-shedding that this reform would inevitably entail for the thousands presently running the diversified system?

Certainly, they and their unions can be expected to look at the proposals from that viewpoint - and with alarm.

However, taxpayers and genuine claimants may only see the gains that this reform is deemed to offer.

But how much of an ace card the proposal may be at the next election is unsure - not when many voters may look beyond it and ask what unthinkable privatisation such a re-elected radical Labour government may think of next . . . the NHS?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.