The Welfare State and its Citizens

Dr Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform on behalf of Leadership for Change

• How can we enable citizens to play an active role in their communities?

• What is the proper role of local government and public services in the future?

• What is our positive vision for the future for society and the welfare state?

What’s going wrong?

• Shrinking state hypothesis - we can no longer afford the welfare state - FALSE

• Paternalistic design hypothesis - we need to design a pro-citizenship welfare state - TRUE

There is no evidence that the welfare state is unaffordable. We have spent roughly the same amount of GDP on the welfare state for over 50 years.

What has changed is our commitment to equality and justice. Inequality has nearly doubled in a generation.

We now spend much less on redistribution but spend much more on services.

These trends seem particularly severe in the UK where we have pulled off the unenviable trick of being (a) the most unequal country in Europe (b) very hard working and (c) very unproductive.

[In economic terms it seems that our policy of shrinking wages and benefits has had the perverse impact of making labour cheap and so discouraging investments to increase efficiency.]

Since the banking crisis and 2010 election things have got even worse.

The Committee is seriously concerned about the disproportionate adverse impact that austerity measures, introduced since 2010, are having on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by disadvantaged and marginalised individuals and groups. The Committee is concerned that the State party has not undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the cumulative impact of such measures on the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights, in a way that is recognised by civil society and national independent monitoring mechanisms (art. 2, para. 1).

UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 24 June 2016

UN declares UK Government fails to respect human rights

• These problems are often associated with the ideologies of neoliberalism or eugenics - “Let the Devil take the hindmost!”

• This seems partially true, but these changes are not simply ideological.

• For change often involves meritocratic tinkering not actual cuts in spending.

• Benefits are distributed to groups with good advocacy or voter impact e.g. disabled people vs. pensioners

• Blame shifted to scapegoat groups e.g. immigrants vs. bankers

• Universal services protected e.g. social care vs. NHS

• Self-serving influence of commercial interests e.g. think tanks funding

• Some services are more powerfully defended e.g. BMA vs. LGA

• Hubris of politicians trying to make an impact e.g. every ‘reform’ of the NHS

• Attempts to buy the swing voter e.g real marginal tax rate

Other explanations include…

The power of the medianocracy

Where electionsare won or lost

The welfare state is a good thing, it’s just designed wrong…

…only legal and political institutions that are independent of the economic forces and automatism can control and check the inherently monstrous potentialities of this process. Such political controls seem to function best in the so-called welfare states whether they call themselves socialist or capitalist.

Hannah Arendt

• The welfare state emerged as a response to the crises that led to World War II and the Holocaust

• In the UK its designers were led by Fabians, reformist liberals and socialists, like Keynes, Beveridge, the Webbs and Bevan

• There was great confidence in the benign role of the state to balance the injustices of the free market

…three guiding principles may be laid down at the outset:

1. The first principle… A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.

2. The second principle is that organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

3. The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual….

Beveridge W (1942) Social Insurance and Allied Services.

• They believed the state would be rational and that democratic control would be sufficient to ensure the positive development of the welfare state.

• There was also a powerful assumptions that an intellectual elite could be trusted to solve social problems.

• “We have little faith in the 'average sensual man', we do not believe that he can do more than describe his grievances, we do not think he can prescribe the remedies.” [Beatrice Webb]

but there was an alternative vision

• The design of the welfare state reflected the spirit of the times and assumptions of dominant intellectuals, yet there were other strands of progressive thought.

• G K Chesterton and the Catholic church advocated distributism and subsidiarity - less centralised approaches to social justice.

• Archbishop Temple, who coined the term ‘welfare state’, advocated an approach which made love and human development central.

• Michael Young warned the Left of the dangers of ‘meritocracy’ and the advocated equality and creativity.

“Today we frankly recognise that democracy can be no more than an aspiration, and have rule not so much by the people as by the cleverest people; not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.” [1958]

Yesterday’s satire feels like today’s tragedy

and there are places where this alternative vision of welfare flickers into life

I. Citizenship is Key

• Prevention - e.g. Local Area Coordination

• Personal budgets and direct payments - e.g. Inclusion Glasgow

• Peer support - e.g. PFG Doncaster

• Family-focused work - e.g. WomenCentre

• Place-based approaches e.g. C2 Community Development

Peers with mental health problems leading community change

• Postnatal depression reduced by 77% • Unemployment dropped by 71% • Reduced fear of crime • Childhood accident rate dropped by 50%

Community led programme of neighbourhood renewal

II. Heading Upstream

• We need to move our attention upstream - beyond services, treatments and institutions

• Local government can play a critical leadership e.g changing governance in Barnsley

• This will require a change in our thinking about own roles - a need for humility

The Professional Reclassification of Youth in Arendt H (2007) The Jewish Writings. New York, Shocken. p.30

“But charity is not solidarity; it usually helps only isolated individuals, with no overall plan; and that is why, in the end, it is not productive. Charity divides a people into those who give and those who receive. The former, whether they like it or not, have a stake in the latter not jeopardising their positions where they live, and hence in keeping them at a distance - which amounts to a sort of philanthropic antisemitism.”

III. A New Vision

• Our challenge is to redesign the welfare state from within

• To make the case for constitutional change, and

• To reflect on our own roles within this process

The problems of life are insoluble on the surface… Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves us beginning to think about things in a new way… If we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the old garment. [Wittgenstein]

Lao Tzu

True leaders are hardly known to their followers.

Next after them are the leaders people know and admire;

after them, those they fear; after them, those they despise.

To give no trust is to get no trust.

When the work's done right, with no fuss or boasting,

ordinary people say, Oh, we did it.

FIND OUT MORE:

www.centreforwelfarereform.org

@CforWR @simonjduffy

https://www.facebook.com/centreforwelfarereform