Social policy in a time of coalition A paper by Jude England, Head of Social Science Collections and Research, British Library

1. Social Policy in a Time of
Coalition
Jude England
Head of Social Sciences
The British Library

2. Overview
 Scope of Social Policy
 Welfare State
 Welfare to Work
 The Big Society
 21st Century Welfare
 Equity and Excellence
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3. 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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4. 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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5. 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
Lord Beveridge
- 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’ 5

6. ‘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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7. 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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8. 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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9. 2010 Election Highlights
Conservative Liberal Democrat Post-coalition budget
The Big Society £10k tax free threshold £7,475 tax free threshold
Academies Single level minimum wage VAT increase to 20%
Emergency budget Phase out of university Council tax freeze
tuition fees
Pension Age to 66 Various welfare benefit
Replace council tax with changes to save £11bn by
Sure Start, Early Years local income tax 2014/15
Increased patient power Scrap compulsory HB max limit
retirement age
Abolition of NHS targets CB frozen for 3 years
Cut size of DoH
Voluntary insurance to pay Pension age review and 66
for residential care Integrate health and social
care: stay at home, cash State pension linked to
Abolition of Child Trust for carers earnings
Fund
Commission independent Public sector budget cuts
Create single Work review of public sector except health and aid
Programme for unemployed pensions
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10. 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 10

11. 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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12. 21st Century Welfare
Consultative 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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13. 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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14. 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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15. 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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16. 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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17. Equity and Excellence: Liberating the
NHS White Paper published 12 July 2010
th
 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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18. 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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19. 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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20. 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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21. Contact
Jude England (0)20 7412 7670
Alt extn: 7487
Email: jude.england@bl.uk
Head-Social Science Collections & Research
The British Library
©British Library
96 Euston Road Website
London NW1 2DB
Available at www.bl.uk
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