By Guest
David Coats is Associate Director of Policy at the Work Foundation, and this post has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Open Left blog. In addressing how the Left should renew its fight against poverty, he cites the problem of the current rhetoric around welfare reform, promoted by politicians and picked up by the media.
Tim Horton is right to point to the need for more aggressive redistribution. Unless the centre-Left wins this argument the gap between rich and poor is likely to widen. Declining support for such policies could be seen as an insurmountable barrier and therefore cause for political pessimism.
I remain more optimistic.
First, declining support for welfare may simply be a consequence of full employment. In the pre-crisis period jobs were plentiful and vacancies consistently exceeded the number of jobless. Without a countervailing political narrative it was almost inevitable that those in work would blame the unemployed for their plight – and the media focus on supposed abuses was designed to confirm popular prejudices.
Second, the rhetoric of welfare reform exacerbated the problem – Tim is right about this too. In part this was a consequence of coercive language, stigmatising claimants as lazy, feckless and more deserving of a stick than a carrot. And in part this was a consequence of the continuing ministerial demand for reform. This is a critical point. “Reform” is normally demanded because there are abuses to be rooted out, unacceptable behaviours to be halted or failing institutions demanding reconstruction. New Labour failed to find a language that engaged public enthusiasm for what, in practice, has been a progressive set of policies.
Countries that have achieved better social outcomes than the UK are perfectly comfortable with the notion of mutuality, “something for something” or, in Tim’s words, participatory welfare. In the Nordic countries in particular, high benefits are dependent on an acceptance of the obligation to work and the acquisition of skills that make an individual employable. There is much that the UK can learn from this experience.
We also need to be clear about the nature of the problems confronting the country today. Before the crisis it was perfectly reasonable to argue that work was the best form of welfare – the evidence that having a job is better than unemployment is irrefutable. But the argument cannot be that any job will do. The research tells us that continued labour market participation depends on access to quality employment. A strategy of explicit redistribution must be matched by a programme to tackle low pay and increase wages at the bottom end of the labour market. Government needs a menu of policies to encourage employers to abandon reliance on “low road” business models, including a minimum wage that retains its value in the labour market, better enforcement of all regulations (employment law, health and safety, tax and national insurance) as well as a reorientation of business support services to tackle underperformance and bad management in small businesses.
[...] own enterprise myth. Politicians and their language have a powerful influence, both in promoting negative stereotypes, and reacting to them. Indeed, it could be argued that government have thwarted their [...]