Social Policy in a Time of Coalition

Jude England

Head of Social Sciences

The British Library

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Overview

Scope of Social Policy

Welfare State

Welfare to Work

The Big Society

21st Century Welfare

Equity and Excellence

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Social Reform and the Birth of the Welfare State

Poor Law, Friendly Societies and Families

Bismarck and Blackley

Evidence:

- Booth

- Barnett

- Rowntree

- Boer War

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Liberal Government Reforms 1908 - 1911

National Insurance Act:

- Part 1: health care for sick workers

- Part 2: help for unemployed workers

Pensions:

- Old Age Pension Act 1908

- 5s per week aged 70+

- 1925 extended to 65+

Councils given power to provide free

school meals

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The Beveridge Report

Origins:

- Coalition Government from 1940-1945

- Condition of conscripts and evacuees

- Desire to reward sacrifice and resolution

- Desire to create a more equal society

- 1944 Education Act

Content:

- Giant Evils: Squalor, Ignorance, Want, Idleness, Disease

- NI for all of working age and benefits paid for sickness, unemployment, retirement, widowed

- Minimum standard of living ‘below which no one should be allowed to fall’

Lord Beveridge

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‘Cradle to Grave’

Labour Government 1945 - 1951

- Implements Beveridge recommendations

- Introduces National Health Service 1948

- Introduces family allowance (now child benefit)

- Entitlement to free school meals (charged from 1949, means tested from 1980)

Post war consensus till 1980s

Attitudes to claiming and fraud

Work (dis)incentives

Equalisation of pension age

Implications of ageing population

Aneurin Bevan

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Welfare to Work

From 1970s, UK moves from safety net to work incentive philosophy

US programmes in 1980s and 1990s

New Labour 1997 explicit commitment to welfare to work reform

Evidence suggested unemployed and economically inactive wanted to work, as well as highlighting economic and social benefits of work

Barriers to work:

- individual skills, experience, social and psychological circumstances

- structural issues: changes in labour market; benefit system; wage levels

Redistribution by stealth: increasing benefits to poor families in work, paid through a system of tax credits

Blair wanted benefits recipients to pull their weight; rights and responsibilities approach

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Outcomes

Explosion in evaluation and research; evidence based policy making

DWP Framework Agreement: 60+ suppliers

Research output e.g. DWP 3.11.09 to 29.7.10, 78 reports:

- Pensions, retirement age

- Pathways to work

- Targeted initiatives: lone parents, drug users, newly unemployed, long term sick and disabled, parents, singe working age benefit

- Evaluation of Jobcentre Plus

- Employer surveys

- 2008 Families and Children Study, parents views on necessities for families with children

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2010 Election Highlights

Conservative Liberal Democrat Post-coalition budgetThe Big Society

Academies

Emergency budget

Pension Age to 66

Sure Start, Early Years

Increased patient power

Abolition of NHS targets

Voluntary insurance to pay for residential care

Abolition of Child Trust Fund

Create single Work Programme for unemployed

£10k tax free threshold

Single level minimum wage

Phase out of university tuition fees

Replace council tax with local income tax

Scrap compulsory retirement age

Cut size of DoH

Integrate health and social care: stay at home, cash for carers

Commission independent review of public sector pensions

£7,475 tax free threshold

VAT increase to 20%

Council tax freeze

Various welfare benefit changes to save £11bn by 2014/15

HB max limit

CB frozen for 3 years

Pension age review and 66

State pension linked to earnings

Public sector budget cuts except health and aid

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The Big Society

‘… create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will ‘take power away from politicians and give it to people’.’ Downing Street website

Big Issue classic Big Society idea:

‘… the Big Issue, which is a social enterprise…. Instead of the state stepping in, this is an organisation that gives (homeless) people something to do…’ David Cameron

Sceptical response:

‘… the sink or swim society is upon us and woe betide the poor, the frail, the old, the sick and the dependent’ Mary Riddell The Telegraph

‘.. It’s a brilliant idea in theory..’ The Spectator

‘We must tackle the scourge of obesity, or the ‘Big Society’ as it’s sometimes known.’ Boris Johnson

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Review on Poverty and Life Chances

Frank Field to chair

Terms of Reference:

- generate a broader debate about nature and extent of poverty in the UK

- examine the case for reforms to poverty measures, including non-financial elements

- explore how home environment affects child’s ability to take full advantage of their schooling

- recommend potential action by government and other institutions to reduce poverty and enhance life

chances for the least advantaged

- consistent with the Government’s fiscal strategy

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21st Century WelfareConsultative document published 30th July 2010

5 pathways to poverty:

Family breakdown, educational failure, addiction, debt, worklessness and economic dependency

Perceived culture of worklessness and dependency

Actively putting work at the centre of working-age support:

‘… We will expect them (the British people) to find work and make sure work pays when they do. They in return will be expected to seek work and take work when it is available. No longer will we leave people for years on long-term benefits without contact or support.’ Ian Duncan Smith

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21st Century Welfare: problems with the current system

Poor work incentives

Complexity of the system

Rising costs of state support: 63bn 1996/97 to 87bn in 2009/10

Multiple Agencies: DWP, HMRC, Local Authorities

Inaccurate payments and fraud

Intergenerational disadvantage and poverty

Behaviours generated by benefit system

Begin in poverty, more likely to stay in poverty

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21st Century Welfare: principles for reform

Ensure transparent reward for work outweighs risk

Incentivise move into work and amount of work

Increase fairness between groups of benefit recipients and between recipients and the taxpayer

Support those most in need and reduce numbers of workless households and children

Promote responsibility and positive behaviour, reward saving, strengthen the family, reinforce conditionality

Automate processes and maximise self service

Ensure benefits and Tax Credits system affordable in the short and longer term

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21st Century Welfare: options

Universal credit

A Single Unified Taper

Single Working Age Benefit

Mirlees Model

Single benefit/negative income tax model

Plus:

Conditionality

Localisation

Linkages with other forms of labour market and welfare support

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21st Century Welfare: responses

Consultative document references research (DWP, JRF, ONS, HMRC, Cabinet Office, Eurostat, Citizens Advice, CPS, IFS, IPPR)

General welcome to aim of simplifying the system and improving incentives to work

Oxfam: need to avoid cutting benefits and recognise difference

IoD: good to be able to access workforce willing to work less than 16 hours per week

Scope: take time to talk to disabled people and assess impact on people with very specific and individual needs

National Housing Federation: cap on HB payments ‘onslaught on the vulnerable’ and cost low paid average of £624 pa

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Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS White Paper published 12th July 2010

Commitment to free, national health service, spending to increase

By 2013:

- patients see and share health records

- easier to find out about services and effectiveness

- easier to communicate with health professionals

- more patient rating of care and services

- more choice: GP, treatment, hospital

- out of hours and closer to home

- HealthWatch established

- localisation, quality not quantity, cut waste and red tape

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Who said?

Want is only one of the five giants on the road of reconstruction, the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Four spectres haunt the Poor -- Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.

In future, welfare will be a hand-up, not a hand-out.

We are going to end the culture of worklessness and dependency that has done so much harm to individuals, families and whole communities. Our aim is to change forever a system that has too often undermined work and the aspiration that goes with it.

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

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In their own words……

William Henry Beveridge

British Council Tapes

Anselina

MMB (BBC Radio Leeds)

Making Ends Meet

The Century Speaks (BBC Radio Cleveland)

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Conclusion

Continuity of issues and lessons from history

Change from safety net, to welfare to work, to work incentives

Fraud vs stigma vs attitudes to claiming and working

Role of economic infrastructure: micro and macro

Complexity and cost of the system(s)

Contradiction between increased choice vs simplification?

Critical role of evidence and evaluation

Legacy in digital publication

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Contact

Jude England (0)20 7412 7670

Alt extn: 7487

Email: jude.england@bl.uk

Head-Social Science Collections & Research

The British Library

96 Euston Road

London NW1 2DB

Available at www.bl.uk

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