Covid-19 has highlighted the inadequacy of UK social security but also the lack of consensus among progressive actors about what would be a better system. One way forward is to focus on the principles that should underpin social security. We present outcomes from a project in which principles were considered by a panel of Expert by Experience benefit claimants. We argue that while scholars often engage in descriptively identifying social security principles in existing policy, the bottom-up approach presented here offers a way of generating normative principles to guide an improved future system. We identify key contributions of this bottom-up approach relating to: the critical importance of principles as a guide to the fundamental purpose of social security, and policy making; the relationship between the treatment of claimants and benefit levels as co-dependent; and how a bottom-up process can produce results that engage with and contribute holistically to the debate.

中文翻译：

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社会保障政策指导原则：自下而上方法的成果

Covid-19 强调了英国社会保障的不足，但进步参与者之间对于什么是更好的系统缺乏共识。前进的一种方式是关注应成为社会保障基础的原则。我们展示了一个项目的结果，该项目的原则由经验福利索赔人专家小组考虑。我们认为，虽然学者们经常在现有政策中描述性地确定社会保障原则，但这里提出的自下而上的方法提供了一种生成规范原则以指导改进的未来系统的方法。我们确定了这种自下而上方法的主要贡献：原则作为社会保障基本目的指南的至关重要性，以及政策制定；索赔人的待遇与共同依赖的福利水平之间的关系；以及自下而上的过程如何产生参与辩论并为辩论做出整体贡献的结果。