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Our social security system must guarantee real welfare
A very good article examining “welfare” and “social security” by Ruth Lister, emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University. Some interesting thoughts about ways to strengthen the contributory principle of the social security system at the end, in particular.
As the welfare reform bill heads for the House of Lords next month it is worth pausing to interrogate that word “welfare”. What does it conjure up for you? The state of faring well? The institutions of the welfare state, with its promise of security for all from cradle to grave? Or a narrow, rather miserable, form of social assistance for people in poverty?
The last is the meaning imported from the US, where it is the term used to describe means-tested financial support for people of working age. And with it came negative connotations of “dependency” – a state that marks the universal human condition but that turned into a label stuck only on benefit claimants. The assumption that welfare creates a “dependency culture” underpins the government’s reform agenda. From a common aspiration, welfare has been turned into a divisive notion that sets “the poor” apart from the rest of society.
This American import has not only besmirched the concept of welfare, but also displaced the term “social security”. Once upon a time, the current bill would have been called a social security bill. New Labour, in its wisdom, deleted social security from the policy lexicon. In its place it too adopted the language of welfare reform, and the Department for Work and Pensions replaced the Department of Social Security
Just come across an article (for Progress, the Labour pressure group) by Alison Garnham, CEO of Child Poverty Action Group, which touches on many similar aspects of social security and welfare. Ms Garnham also makes some very powerful points about benefit levels, child poverty, and ongoing welfare reforms including Universal Credit.
It is our inadequate policy response to lone-parenthood that results in child poverty. And we must not use the language of ‘responsibility’ to paint a false picture of benefit claimants refusing to work when the vast majority, 80-90 per cent, leaves JSA in six months (or at least they did before unemployment rose in the recession). You would be seriously hard-pressed to find the families oft referred to where no one has worked for generations – if they exist, they are a very tiny group.
The child poverty strategy published this year contains no indication of what progress is to be expected as a result of its measures. The Child Poverty Action Group thinks this is unlawful – where’s the noise? We now face £18 billion in benefit cuts with £5.6 billion of this down to linking benefits to CPI after 2013. The incomes of our poorest families will be sliding on a downwards escalator just as prices soar. The poorest 20 percent will be hit eight times harder than the richest and poverty is due to rise after 2013. The government response is that universal credit is the answer – but it is complex and unproven. We surely need a debate now more than ever to rehabilitate the idea of social security for all.
I’ve come across something recently, I can’t remember where, which said that Unemployment Benefit/JSA for a single person since the late 1970’s has declined as against earnings. If it had kept pace it would be over £100 in today’s value. I’m willing to bet that the personal allowances for couples and dependants additions have similarly suffered. Tax credits might have closed the gap some but that entire edifice is a shambles.
The Tories under Thatcher and Major maintained this policy as a way of keeping public spending down during recessions. Blair and Brown maintained it as a stick (I’m awfully sorry, did I say stick. I obviously meant incentive) to beat the unemployed back into work.
Either way, it shows governments’, from both sided of the house, lack of connection with the lives of substantial sections of the population and the complete lack of concern, unless the media just happen to be around. When senior politicians go on walkabout in deprived areas followed by the media hounds their mealy mouthed words are not aimed at the local residents in any meaningful sense but at their own party organizers and power brokers, albeit it filtered through the mouths of the media
Nevip
I think your source is the PCS pamphlet (page 8); http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/welfare-reform/index.cfm
Thanks Tony, that is precisely where I read it. A great report.
[A great report]
Absolutely - and good to see something supportive and positive rather than the desperate rethinking coming from the odd think tank
Tony
Thank goodness someone is talking about ‘social security’. The way that contributory benefits are being watered down is in my personal view a massive confidence trick. The government asserts it is keen to offer ‘choices’ and wants us to take responsibility for ourselves. Great! So can I have a choice of whom I pay my contributions to? Can I have a choice of social security package if I am sick or unemployed? Can I have a career break package and pay higher contributions during my younger years? Can I choose my state pension package? No, I can’t do any of these things because the government is the monopoly provider for the the vast majority of people. Like all monopolies it abuses its position. It can increase my compulsory contributions, decrease my benefits at will (OK there’s a debate in Parliament first), change my benefits to ‘allowances’ (a ridiculous term), waste billions annually through bureaucratic errors, replace experienced staff with telephone scripts and do whatever it likes whenever it likes.
The current system has changed little since the 1950s, yet the world has moved on and we need choices and flexibility in our working lives to enable us as a country to compete effectively on the global stage. My preference would be to remove government altogether from social security provision and place responsibility in the hands of mutual societies. Yes, there would be problems, yes there would be a need for safeguards and I suspect it would all be a challenge, but I’d love to see an independent economist come up with some modelling around such changes. Will it ever happen? I doubt it very much, for very many political reasons.