The welfare state is fundamentally good but is currently designed in a way that disadvantages the poor and disabled. It has become corrupted through myths and an unjust targeting of benefits cuts towards vulnerable groups. A better system would decentralize power, support citizenship and strong local communities, provide basic securities as rights, and respect families and communities.

1. Barnsley & Welfare Reform
the case for restoring Northern social justice
Dr Simon Duffy ￭ The Centre for Welfare Reform ￭ November 2013 ￭
Presentation for Barnsley councillors of all parties

2. This is NOT a
party political
broadcast

3. As said by an employee of A4E at a think
tank in London:
!
“Barnsley couldn’t exist on its own.
Barnsley needs Chelsea .”

4. At the peak of its powers
Ancient Athens had a
population of less than
300,000 of whom 30,000
were voting citizens.
Barnsley today has a
population of over 230,000.

5. Q: What went wrong?
How did we lose faith
in our own capacities?
How did we lose power
to the foolish and the
greedy?

6. A: We fell asleep. We
forgot that the North
built the wealth of the
country. We forgot that
it built the welfare state.
We gave away control.

7. Argument
1. The welfare state is a good thing
2. But it’s designed wrong
3. Many of our beliefs about it are false
4. It is biased against the poor
5. The current crisis highlights deeper problems
6. Citizenship is the key to real reform
7. Essential to restore power to the local

8. 1
The welfare state is a good thing...
...and it is utterly essential.

9. After meeting with community groups in the
North of England a Finnish researcher asked:
!
What’s the problem with ‘welfare’? In Finnish it
just translates as ‘well being’

10. There are many reasons why all modern states have
developed welfare systems:
• Justice demands we create a fair society - to live
together as equals.
• Happiness demands we provide security and
freedom - to stimulate human development.
• Economics demands we use all our resources - to
enable the full and active contribution of all.
• Prudence demands we avoid fear & crisis - to avoid
victimisation, blame and strife.

11. Fear and insecurity breeds
scapegoating, terror, war and
revolution. Current rhetoric implies
we may now no longer need the
welfare state. But this false. Modern
society grows even more insecure it is more important than ever that
we secure our collective well-being.

12. Disabled people experienced the full
force of the hatred and prejudice
unleashed by economic
uncertainties and fear. They were the
first victims of eugenics and the
Holocaust.

13. 2
The welfare state is a good thing...
it’s just designed wrong.

14. The welfare state is NOT the problem. But our
thinking about the welfare state is.
!
Debates about the welfare state usually focus
on its size: spend more vs. spend less
!
But this is the wrong question.
!
The real question is: HOW should we spend
money?
!
How should the welfare state be designed?

15. The dominant intellectual tradition which framed the design of the
welfare state was Fabianism:
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
Other traditions were defeated in the debates that preceded World
War II:
Collectivism has put all their eggs in one basket. I do not think
that Mr Shaw believes, or that anybody, believes, that 12,000,000 men,
say, carry the basket, or look after the basket, or have any real distributed
control over the eggs in the basket. I believe that it is controlled from the
centre by a few people. They may be quite right or quite necessary. A
certain limit to that sort of control any sane man will recognise as
necessary: it is not the same thing as the Commons controlling the
means of production. It is a few oligarchs or a few officials who do in fact
control all the means of production. G K Chesterton

16. 1. The first principle is that any proposals for the future, while they should use
to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by
consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that
experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the
opportunity for using experience in a clear field. 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. The State should offer security for service
and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive,
opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave
room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide
more than that minimum for himself and his family. William Beveridge

17. The underlying design assumptions of Fabianism are powerful,
but ultimately damaging:
• Meritocracy - most people lack the capacity to make good
decisions for themselves, only the ‘clever’ can be trusted with
power.
• Centralisation - power and control needs to be centralised in
order to make rational decisions on behalf of the whole of
society.
• Standardisation - equity is more about ensuring procedural
uniformity (we all go through the same processes) than about
equalising resources or opportunities.
• Individualisation - the relationship between the individual
and the state is central (civil society - firms, communities,
Churches, friends and family can all be taken for granted.)

18. The price we have paid for the success of the Fabian tradition is
steep. Costs include:
• Power and resources are centralised in London (the UK is the
2nd most centralised welfare state after New Zealand!).
• Communities and families are undermined (e.g. the benefit
system penalises people for forming families).
• Inequality is growing - the UK is the third most unequal
developed country, yet has low levels of productivity.
• Our leaders blame the poor for poverty and encourage
stigma (e.g. growing hate crime for disabled people).
• We fund services, not people (e.g. £3 billion spent on 21,000
institutionalised in private ‘care services’).
• The UK has the greatest level of debt per person!

19. Beveridge set out to defeat five giants, but have we created Five
New Giants in their place?
1. Elitism - power and control is concentrated in the hands
of powerful private and public elites
2. Isolation - people are increasingly cut off from each other
and the means to rich and meaningful lives
3. Poverty - differences in income are growing, freedom for
leisure and personal development is diminishing
4. Stigma - some of us are increasingly marked out as less
worthy, less valuable or a threat to society
5. Despair - mental illness, hopelessness and a sense of
spiritual emptiness is growing

20. At the same time we are increasingly
aware that none of this is sustainable.
!
The state is good and necessary - but
its competence is limited.

21. Pruitt Igoe Urban Housing Project: 1952-1968

22. 3
The welfare state is a good thing...
...but our beliefs about it are false.

23. Much of what passes for common knowledge about
the welfare state turns out to be utterly false and
misleading. Here are 6 welfare myths:
1. The welfare state caused the current crisis
2. Benefits are expensive
3. Benefit fraud is significant
4. The poor are not tax payers
5. There are many people who just live on benefits
6. The South subsidises the North

24. Over 40 years public expenditure has varied little. The recent
modest increase was the result - not the cause of the economic
crisis.

25. Benefits are not strictly government expenditure - instead for
economists they are part of a system of income adjustment. When
we adjust for taxes real cost of benefits is very low.

26. Benefit fraud is only 6% of tax fraud, yet it is covered by the news
600% more. Government fraud - a benefit system so complex
many do not get what they are entitled to - is even greater.

27. The poorest 10% of families pay the highest share of their income
in taxes - about 45%.

29. The number of people who simply rely on benefits and who do
not make an efforts to find work is tiny.

30. So called ‘deprived’ communities do not even get their fair share
of public spending, and what they do get they can’t control.

31. These welfare myths are not random. They exist
for a purpose...

32. Overheard at a public policy conference in London:
!
The welfare state exists for the benefit of the poor.
!
This statement was made, without irony, by a senior academic
and made to a room full of public servants, politicians, thinktankers and others - all of whom are utterly dependent on the
patronage of the welfare state.
What other people get is a ‘hand out’, while what I receive is an
entitlement. We are blind to the entitlements of others; but all
too eager to expand our own sense of entitlement.
!
And this is a problem that starts at the top.

33. 4
The welfare state is a good thing...
...but it’s biased against the poor.

34. Paradoxically the welfare state serves least well
those who are used to justify its existence...
the poorest families, disabled people, asylum
seekers - the victims of injustice.

35. The welfare state is designed in ways which often
disadvantage the poorest:
• The poor not only pay the highest taxes, they pay
rates of marginal tax that can exceed 100%
• You must get poor and stay poor in order to get
means-tested services (e.g. social care).
• The poor get no choice about how they get
education, health or social care.
• The poor are very poor - e.g. the poorest 10% of
families live on £11.90 per day after tax.

36. The system is a vast poverty net:

37. 5
The welfare state is a good thing...
...but it can be corrupted.

38. Today ‘welfare reform’ is a central political project.
!
The current government - building on the work of the previous
government - is pursuing policies that are justified in strong
moral terms and which seek to increase employment, personal
responsibility and stronger communities.
!
However, as these goals are converted into practical policies
and media soundbites they often seem to reinforce bigotry,
ignorance and injustice.
[NB. The “Benefit Thieves”
Campaign was developed by
New Labour.]

40. The terms ‘austerity’ and ‘fairness’ are used to
justify cuts in public spending and welfare
reforms.
!
but these cuts target the very people that a fair
society should protect.

41. Most cuts are targeted in just two areas - benefits and local
government (60% of which is social care):

42. Child Benefit freeze
Abolition of Sure Start Maternity for second
and subsequent children
Change to CPI indexation of benefits
Reductions in support for carers
Replacing DLA with PIP
Child Benefit clawback from higher rate
taxpayers
Time-limiting of contributory ESA
Transfer of Social Fund to local government
Council Tax Benefit – 10% reduction and
localisation
Extension of JSA lone parents with a youngest
child aged 5-6
Housing Benefit cuts
Household Benefit cap
Abolition of the Independent Living Fund
Continued use of ATOS or others
Universal Credit
Reductions in ‘Access to Work’ funding
Closure of Remploy services
Abolition of the Child Trust Fund
Tax credit changes
Abolition of the Health in Pregnancy Grant
Abolition of the Child Trust Fund
Abolition of the ESA youth rules

43. The cuts in benefits and the cuts in social care
fall disproportionately on two overlapping
groups: people in poverty and disabled
people (including children and frail older
people).
!
They fall hardest of all on people with the
most severe disabilities, who rely on both
benefits and social care.

46. This report sets out a cumulative
impact assessment of the cuts on
people in poverty and disabled
people.

48. Harsh measures are justified in terms of the
current economic crisis.
!
But politicians try to avoid confronting the fact
that that this crisis was created by
!
over-borrowing by home owners and
over-lending by banks.

49. The extreme growth in house prices is primarily the result of a
bubble - an artificial price increase that offers easy benefits:

50. Current interest rates reflect a desperate effort by the government
to not let the bubble burst at great cost to home owners.

51. This artificially low interest rate is a hidden subsidy to the better
off even greater in size than the cuts to benefits and care.

52. ‘Welfare reform’ has become code for a redistribution of
resources away from the poorest and towards the better off.
!
In the competition for political power politicians are taking care
to ensure that they target benefits on swing voters: home
owners, families with two employed parents, middle-income
earners.
!
The median voter is far more important than any other. The
median voter determines who wins elections. We live in a
medianocracy.

53. 6
The welfare state is a good thing...
...and it should support citizenship.

54. The on-going corruption of the welfare system into
an increasingly unjust and damaging system was the
very opposite of what was intended by the thinkers
who inspired and designed it:
The aim of a Christian social order is the fullest
possible development of individual personality in the
widest and deepest possible fellowship. William Temple
The [new 1834] Poor Law treated the claims of the
poor, not as an integral part of the rights of the citizen,
but as an alternative to them - as claims which could be
met only if the claimants ceased to be citizens in any true
sense of the world. T H Marshall

55. A better system would support and encourage citizenship for all.
It would respect the capacities of communities and citizens and
create a fundamental framework of basic securities.

56. Services would be accountable to citizens: they are not gifts
from the government.

57. Other elements of a better system may include:
• Human rights at heart of
system
• Minimum universal securities
as rights
• A fair and integrated taxbenefit system
• Individual freedom for all
• Families and communities
respected and supported.

58. It’s time to explore a new settlement for the welfare state and
ensure its underpinnings are strong, constitutional and less liable
to corruption by politics.

59. 7
Citizenship will only thrive…
!
…in powerful local communities

60. A community like Barnsley has all
the resources it needs to thrive.

61. Barnsley
Population
Under 18s in ward
18-64 in ward
65+ in ward
Dwellings
People per dwellings
Activities limited alot
Activities limited a little
No disability
18-64 free from paid work
18-64 ¾ free from paid work
18-64 ½ free from paid work
18-64 ¾ free from paid work
18-64 lost to paid work
Over 65 but active
Unpaid care for less than 20
hours care for 20-49 hours
Unpaid
Unpaid care for 50+ hours
Very good health
Good health
Fair health
Bad health
Very bad health
231,900
48690
142521
40010
104,926
2
29,147
26,121
175,953
38,942
8,086
22,357
61,102
12,034
20,588
15,473
4,075
7,619
96,194
77,649
37,956
15,278
4,144
Per Ward
(n=21)
11,043
Ratio
2,319
6,787
1,905
4,996
56
12
34
10
25
1,388
1,244
8,379
1,854
385
1,065
2,910
573
980
737
194
363
4,581
3,698
1,807
728
197
7
6
42
9
2
5
15
3
5
4
1
2
23
19
9
4
1
Capacity
16
Per Ward
3,090
Barnsley
64,882

62. Powerful and efficient models for tackling
problems and releasing social capital exist.
!
Many of them are Northern:
!
•
•
•
self-directed support - Barnsley are leaders
Womencentre - based in Halifax
PFG - developed in Doncaster

63. How women in Halifax tackle the
most vicious social problems together - and far more efficiently
and effectively than public services
on their own.

64. How people with mental health
problems in Doncaster took back
control and showed how to reform
mental health services.

65. The choice before us:
!
complicity with injustice
!
or
!
resistance, innovation
and a new settlement

67. •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
New constitutional settlement with local
government’s role enhanced and protected
Foundations in human rights
Resources returned to local control
Integration of health and social care
Radical rethink on education
The end of era of privatisation
A return to local community innovation
Local government organised to protect its
interests and the interests of citizens.

68. Justice lives in poverty.
She survives. She measures
What is necessary.
She honours what ought to be honoured.
She seeks out clean hearts, clean hands.
She knows what wealth and power
Grind to dust between them. She knows
Goodness and the laws of heaven.
!
Aeschylus

69. Further reading:

70. For more information:
!
Web: www.centreforwelfarereform.org
!
Twitter: @CforWR and @simonjduffy
!
Blog: www.simonduffy.info
!
Facebook: centreforwelfarereform
!
Campaign: www.campaignforafairsociety.org
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