ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, the history of social security one-off payments was briefly outlined. This showed that some recurring policy issues emerged during the 50-plus years following the introduction of the first national scheme introduced in 1934, issues such as the balance between discretion and entitlement, the role of appeals tribunals, boundary problems with other organisations' areas of competence, and, most of all, the need to control expenditure. By 1985, it was clear that the latest one-off payments scheme, the single payments scheme, was not free from these difficulties and in 1985, as part of a wider-ranging review of the social security system, the government of the day (the second led by Margaret Thatcher), began to formulate proposals for its reform.
