Background
Simon Buckby was in 1999 appointed the Campaign Manager of "Britain in Europe" (BiE), an organisation dedicated to subsuming the U.K. in the European Union. As such, he bears direct responsibility for lies published by BiE. How did such a man come to be chosen for this post? A look as Mr. Buckby's own words, prior to his appointment, may provide an inkling as to why he was found 'selectable'. (For readers who would prefer to read the following 'in the original', the source can be found (as of this writing) at - click here -
Fabian Review-March,
1998.)
Reforming the Welfare State: A New Social Contract - Simon Buckby (Mar 98)
Tony Blair was right to launch a review of the welfare state. Not because taxpayers cannot afford the £93 billion a year cost of social security. Far from it, the UK is almost unique among western industrialised countries in enjoying a falling benefits bill as a share of national income. Since it peaked at 13.6 per cent of GDP in 1993, social security has dropped back to 12.4 per cent and is projected to shrink to 12.1 per cent by 2000. But 50 years after Beveridge any government should re-examine the efficacy of a welfare system which provides disincentives to work, trapping people in poverty, with poorly targeted benefits spread thinly across millions of people, leaving some of the very poorest with inadequate levels of support.
The starting point should be to re-define the balance between individual and collective responsibility, and so establish a new social contract. On one hand, this would identify those who can look after themselves by working or saving. And to enable them to work or save, the government would have a guide to consistent policy conclusions on complex issues ranging from in-work tax credits to compulsory second-tier pensions. Critically, it should also help government enact a measure of redistribution by persuading the public it has a responsibility to provide higher levels of benefit for the poor who are unable to look after themselves. There is no doubt Labour has successfully laid the ground for large numbers of people to begin taking responsibility for their own welfare.
After talking of 'pathways out of poverty' and imploring the work ethic, Gordon Brown is implementing a series of carrot and stick policies to deliver the goods. The stick, welfare-to-work and the New Deal, reorienting the long term unemployed back to the world of work, is now widely welcomed. The carrots, some of which were outlined in the Budget, are designed to end the disincentives to moving from benefits to work, by progressively making the low paid better off.
Some 600,000 people are caught in the poverty trap and 500,000 receive in-work benefits which they partly return in taxes. The full package will include reduced NICs for the low paid, a working families tax credit backed by affordable childcare and a national minimum wage and, later, a starting rate of tax of 10p. Although the tax and benefits system is a Rubik's Cube, requiring a full assessment of benefit withdrawal tapers to solve the puzzle, it is clear that Ministers are applying themselves to this task. However, the government has been far less confident in developing the other side of the social contract: explaining that the role of the state is to provide collective support for those who cannot work or save, such as poor pensioners. Instead, some Ministers have been side-tracked into musing about 'affluence tests'. And the runes of the Government's latest thinking, contained in Frank Field's Green Paper, are hard to read. Already long-delayed, it is very green indeed.
This timidity leaves open questions on a range of controversial issues. For instance: How to tackle pensioner poverty? How to prevent housing benefit fuelling the escalation in private sector rents? As long as Ministers do not highlight both sides of the social contract, the case for collective provision as well as the individuals' responsibility to work and save, the welfare review is bound to be seen simply as a pretext for financial cuts.
This will inevitably ferment hostility among frightened lobby groups, as it has disabled people. It also permits confusing policy outcomes, so a Labour Government finds itself cutting benefits to lone parents in November but scrambling around looking for ways to restore them in March. Most importantly, without advanced preparation the public may reject the likely outcome that to help people work and save, to make gains in the long run, the Government needs to spend more, not less, on welfare in the short term, as evidenced by the £3.5 billion investment in welfare-to-work. The fragmentation of the Beveridge system means welfare does need modernising and preparing for the twenty first century. Beneath that rhetoric, the government is sketching a new line of responsibility, between the duty to provide for yourself where possible and the need to support others where necessary.
However, this new social contract will only be honoured if both sides are widely understood and accepted.
Simon Buckby is the Social Affairs Correspondent of the Financial Times.
Thank you. You are visitor number since 18Mar00.
For comments on this page, please contact Briame Gerdan.
For further reading at this site, please return to Briame Gerdan's "Public" Home Page.