When the United Bermuda Party was in power some years ago, full-throated criticism of its handling of government was common. It was almost a rite of passage for bank managers, for example, to make a speech, or publish a letter to shareholders, that was belligerently critical of the Government for one reason or another. Recently, with the Progressive Labour Party in power, the bank-managing classes seem to have rediscovered caution. Others have done the same, and the result has been that criticism of this Government's policies is muted, careful and more hemmed in with qualification than was normally the case with the last Government.

The reason is obvious. The PLP has always been quick to see a racial dimension to criticism. Whites worry that any dissent they voice might be mistaken for racial ill will. Blacks worry that their dissent will be taken for a kind of treachery. Had there been any doubt about whether these fears were exaggerated, it has been resolved during the last few weeks. So perhaps it should not be a surprise that when the Government proposes some really bizarre scheme, such as the proposal to introduce unemployment insurance, the noise of criticism lifts barely a decibel above a politically correct murmur. What a shame!

For if ever full-throated criticism was called for, this is the time. What strikes me as particularly foolish about unemployment insurance is not so much, as others have claimed, that the number of people who are truly unemployed in our society is so small as not to justify the creation of a bureaucracy to handle their relief. It's hard to win an argument with that line. Two other factors seem much more important to me. First, the Government has not really proposed the unemployment insurance scheme as much as it has declared that it is going to be given effect. Unemployment insurance's place in our future is not an option, but a sure thing. What can be discussed, the Government says, is only the detail of its design.

Since the business community is going to be paying for a big chunk of the unemployment action, this seems an unusual way for a democracy to be doing business. Second, unemployment insurance, together with the bureaucracy to administer it, already exists. Financial Assistance and the Housing Allowance programme were both created, years ago, to relieve those who were unemployed, or to assist those whose employment did not provide a sufficient income to allow for a minimum standard of living. During the years of recession in the early 1990s, Financial Assistance, particularly, was an important tool in minimising the effects of unemployment in Bermuda.

The Department of Financial Assistance, which is part of the Ministry of Health and Family Services, is far from moribund. It has received increases of $1.2 million in its budget for two years in a row. This year, the Finance Minister, Eugene Cox, said the increase was to "fund increases in benefit rates and allowances for senior citizens." Last year, he said: "The Department of Financial Assistance will receive an additional $1.2 million to cover increases in benefit rates and allowances. The main beneficiaries of this increase will be senior citizens and persons who are temporarily unemployed."

In that Budget (which was used by the Government to announce its plan to create unemployment insurance), Mr. Cox also announced some fine-tuning of the Financial Assistance system. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "there is even a provision in the Financial Assistance budget for an Investigation Officer, to ensure that abuse of the system is minimised. We want to ensure that the benefits and assistance are provided for those with a genuine need, not for able-bodied persons who can obtain employment."

Will the new unemployment insurance scheme replace the old Financial Assistance scheme? Or will we have two schemes, both doing more or less the same job of work? Might the Government say Financial Assistance is really aimed at the permanently unemployed, while the new scheme is aimed at the temporarily unemployed? The trouble is, we don't know. we have been supplied with no clear idea of what problem it is the Government is trying to fix. Normally, governments that ask for public opinion on the design of legislation work this way:

First, they publish an information paper, outlining the problem and listing possible approaches to its solution. They ask for public comment. Having taken that comment into account, they publish another paper outlining the plan they have made and introduce legislation to give it effect. The aim of this exercise is twofold - to better educate the public about the problem, and to ensure that the public understands and approves of the Government's approach to it.

In this case, the Government has taken two steps. First, it announced that it was interested in establishing unemployment insurance. It passed legislation through Parliament creating an Unemployment Insurance Fund, into which it deposited $1 million, described as "seed money". Then it sent a memorandum to employers and unions, listing basic information about how similar schemes in England, the United States, Barbados and Canada are run. The document did not ask for an opinion on whether unemployment insurance scheme was justified, or whether it was correct that employers should pay a portion of the bill (although, in fairness, I must admit the questionnaire that accompanied this document did allow space for "Additional Comments").

The intent of the document was to elicit an answer to the question 'Which of these schemes should we model ours on?' The Government's approach gives the strong impression that it is asking employers for their opinions simply to be able to say it has done so. What is it the Government is trying to do that justifies strong-arming the community in this fashion? It is not fulfilling a promise made in its election platform.it gave no such undertaking. Is it trying to improve the delivery of assistance to the unemployed? Why not improve the existing scheme?

Is it simply trying to hand off some of the bill to the business community? Again, why not amend the existing scheme? The trick in setting up systems to deal with the unemployable and the temporarily unemployed is to avoid abuse by those who simply want to be given an income for nothing. Legislators who set up the Financial Assistance and the Housing Allowance programmes deliberately made them difficult to get into, in order to prevent abuse.

As a result, there have been complaints that Bermuda's programmes set the bar too high, in the sense that they require a great deal of highly personal information to be given assessors, and that they require applicants not only to have inadequate income, but to have pretty much drained any capital resources that might be used for survival. The procedure is time-consuming and difficult, and may not be well suited for dealing with people looking for help for a few weeks, between jobs.

Perhaps the Government has decided that this problem cannot be circumvented without the creation of a new scheme, a new set of rules and a new agency to administer them. So they have come up with a golden band-aid - it take less effort to set something new up than it does to retool something already in existence - and although it involves an increase in the size of the civil service, criticism can be deflected because the private sector is going to be paying some of the bill.

No matter what the thinking is behind this move, I believe it would be of benefit to Bermuda if, before haring off in one direction or another, the Government were to commission a study of something no one likes to talk about - the effect of Financial Assistance and the Housing Allowance on the families that receive it. Anecdotal evidence suggests that while these programmes might have solved one kind of problem, they have created another, perhaps more serious.

Those who want the Financial Assistance system to respond to their needs, but not destroy the capital assets of their families in the process, have learned to be aggressive and, in some cases, to be prepared to be dishonest. As a result, the programmes are encouraging an underclass in which dishonesty is a way of life.

The assistance system has acted so as to discourage extended families, as children manoeuvre elderly family members into the best position to maximise their welfare income, and minimise the drain their upkeep represents on the family's resources. This causes knock-on damage to the ability of families to play a part in education, in the prevention of crime and in the passage of life skills to younger generations. It is worth point out that these are, of course, families that can least afford this kind of damage.

Those who do dishonestly manipulate the system (I don't want to suggest that all families in receipt of assistance are dishonest, but there is no question that there are more now who are prepared to be dishonest than there used to be) must involve themselves in deceit that can sometimes have unforeseen results.

One hears of welfare recipients who put their assets in the names of other family members so as to maximise the amount they can get from the Government, only to discover that the family loyalty they thought existed - didn't. Surely this sort of thing need not happen. Isn't it time, if Bermuda's welfare system is being augmented, or altered, or whatever is going on, that we paused to think about how it might be done really creatively, so as to solve as many problems as are capable of solution?

Band-aids, even golden ones, just don't cut it, as they say.

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