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This placed the Liberal Democrats generally, and myself as European spokesman in particular, in a position of acute difficulty. I felt the paving motion was no more than a device to cloak the real issue, and described it as such in my weekly Scotsman newspaper column. This was seized upon by my Labour opposite number, George Robertson, and by the SNP Leader, Alex Salmond. However, we were determined to act out of principle and support the spirit of Maastricht.
The more the Tories worried over being able to carry the vote, the more they had to stress the ‘confidence-in-John-Major’ angle, as a means of reining in their Eurosceptic recalcitrants. But the more they stressed this, the more difficult it became for Liberal Democrats to vote for it. We wanted Maastricht but, needless to say, we didn’t want a Tory government, so it stuck in the craw to be portrayed as saying, effectively, that we had confidence in it.
It was a tense and unhappy time, made worse by the fact that pro-Europeans in all three parties were finding themselves artificially divided as a result of Conservative maladroitness and Labour skullduggery. I defended our pitch along the media trail, but became increasingly unhappy that our consistent and principled approach was being sullied by association.
The Mirror’s excited Political Editor, one Alastair Campbell, used a radio discussion with me to put forward the patently absurd notion that somehow a defeat on the paving motion could unleash forces that might precipitate a general election. This was sheer wishful thinking and I wasted no time in debunking the idea. The worst thing was that, while the other parties hijacked the issue for their own ends, the public completely lost sight of the issue that had sparked the whole affair. The principles of Maastricht – of greater European unity – became completely obscured. I was bombarded with letters begging me not to vote with the Tories.
With a bad taste in our mouths, our votes were cast with the government and secured them a tight majority on the night. There was great bitterness at the outcome, particularly from the Labour camp. Some Labour MPs behaved shamefully on the floor of the House, delivering highly personalized abuse in our direction, while one, a long-standing, normally friendly acquaintance, refused even to acknowledge me as we passed each other in the Central Lobby. This was jaundiced politics at its worst.
So it was, under these distinctly inauspicious circumstances, that the tortuous process of activating the Maastricht Treaty began. It was an experience that taught me some hard lessons about politics in general, and Westminster-style politics in particular. Because the government had a majority of only twenty, and could not rely on its backbench rebels – some of whom seemed to make a career out of dissenting – they depended on our support to secure majorities in key divisions. So we were key players, and at the time, particularly at 3 in the morning, that was far from easy. As with most hard times, the benefits have only become visible in retrospect. The Liberal Democrats entered, and ultimately emerged from, this sequence of events with their integrity intact and, I believe, their reputation enhanced. This was due, in no small way, to the political acumen of our leader, Paddy Ashdown.
Paddy got a central judgement absolutely correct from the outset: we would give our support on key votes based on the issue at stake – and not in return for favours in other areas. But we will never forget the widespread apprehension and distaste with which we found ourselves presented as propping up a deeply unpopular government on a near-nightly basis, for months on end. We gained from that experience, and the fact that the party remained unified was down to strong leadership from the top. As a result, the image of the party gained coherence and credibility. A useful by-product was that it put us in the news, and kept us there.
There were considerable behind-the-scenes dealings with the Tory government throughout this period. Archy Kirkwood, our Chief Whip, Russell Johnston and myself were in constant touch with Richard Ryder, then Conservative Chief Whip, about likely voting intentions. On particularly key issues, Paddy Ashdown and Douglas Hurd became involved, but procedural glitches meant that nonetheless the bulk of the Maastricht business ended up being debated on the floor of the House, rather than dealt with swiftly in the Committee Rooms, which meant very late nights and frayed tempers.
What disappointed me then, and continues to do so to this day, was the damage that the Maastricht affair did to the popular conception of European unity, and the wider public image of politics. At first, the risk was that the public would respond to the scaremongering, and view Maastricht as some scourge from abroad that threatened the Union Jack and could potentially topple the government. The letters in my postbag demonstrated the extent to which people understood the debate in precisely those terms.
Then, as the debate dragged on – and drag it did, from May 1992 to July 1993 – people stopped viewing Maastricht as a demon and simply lost interest in the many good things that it offered the nation. It was a classic example of the way adversarial politics and intra-party chicanery serve to increase public uninterest in the political process.
This increased – albeit limited – exposure to the workings of a government proved very instructive for me. It certainly confirmed in my opinion the importance of cross-party co-operation, even though, self-evidently, after such a prolonged period of untrammelled power, the Conservatives were unprepared for such a close relationship. I think they found having to deal with the Liberal Democrats a vaguely demeaning experience. We, on the other hand, learned to take an entirely pragmatic approach. If it was something we wanted, like Maastricht, then we could and would co-operate to get it. This was a vital lesson for us.
But while Liberal Democrats learnt lessons, democracy suffered. The Conservative attitude at that time was rather akin to the Labour attitude over the Welsh Assembly in the early months of 2000, when Labour in London was determined to keep Alun Michael in charge. Co-operation sometimes seems to be a dirty word in British politics, which often resembles a game of rugby: opposing teams fighting to be the single victor. This is apparent in the half-hearted response I have received each time I have called upon Tony Blair and William Hague to join me in establishing a tripartite approach to drugs and pensions. Until and unless the Conservative Party comes to terms with a more pluralistic conduct of politics, it will wait a long time before being readmitted to the mainstream. Until Labour does so less half-heartedly, it will miss opportunities. Unless British politics can accommodate itself to inter-party co-operation, the public will continue to view issues in the way they came to view Maastricht.
I have gained something of a reputation for myself over the years as a radio broadcaster, perhaps most noticeably in my Today programme broadcasts with Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP and the Conservative, Julian Critchley. The ‘Mitch, Critch and Titch’ trio may have been popular with the listeners, but I found that, even within my own party, it attracted some hostility, largely because people disapproved of the idea that MPs of different leanings could get on and have a laugh, even allowing their own parties to be mocked by the others. But have a laugh we do; whenever I am in Yorkshire or Shropshire, I visit Austin and Julian, and think nothing of it. Many people seem to feel that any suggestion of amity trivializes politics, but I feel quite the opposite, preferring to recount the words of Winston Churchill, who upon returning to office in 1951 said: ‘Now perhaps there may be a lull in our party strife which will enable us to understand more what is good in our opponents.’ All the while politics is conducted in hushed, reverential tones, all the while it takes itself so seriously, and perpetuates intense and entrenched rivalry, then the nation will find it trivial.
The tribal model of politics does not even reflect the way people vote. In the eighties, my party had an unchallenged record for coming second in elections across the board: local, national and European. We did so because there was always a bloc of voters who would support the Labour or Conservative candidate regardless of the issues under discussion, but breakdowns of modern voting patterns show that people vote for a range of candidates and parties at different electoral levels. The old sectarian loyalties are breaking down and being replaced by a concern for issues. That is one reason why Ken Livingstone drew such wide and varied support when he stood independently of his party in the elections for London Mayor. A 1999 survey found that nearly two thirds of people polled had ‘not very much’ or ‘no interest at all’ in local politics and over one third felt the same about politics in general. Only 3 per cent of the country were members of a political party – lower than the figure for membership of the National Trust or the RSPB!
The voting public may be more discerning – and I welcome that – but it is becoming an increasingly rare breed. Disenchantment with politics is a national characteristic, but it affects certain groups more severely than others. It is particularly a problem among young people. A 1998 MORI survey of eighteen-year-olds revealed that four in ten young people are not registered to vote – five times as many as in the general population. The reported turnout of eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds in the 1997 general election was some 13 per cent lower than that for the electorate as a whole. It was also lower than in the 1972 election, so the trend is worsening. According to Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, only 12 per cent of eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds say that they will consistently vote in local elections, and 52 per cent say they will never do so.
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The low level of enthusiasm for voting is a reflection of the critically low interest in political matters as a whole. Half of eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds surveyed by MORI in 1999 reported that they were not interested in politics. Over 80 per cent claimed to know little or nothing about Parliament, and 30 per cent said they had never heard of proportional representation! As someone who has visited many schools and colleges across the country, I can say without reservation that today’s young people are just as energetic and curious as my own generation, if not more so, but the truth is that their interests are focused increasingly away from politics and onto other things. We politicians have clearly played a part in that process.
As someone who has attended nearly every Brit Award ceremony since entering Westminster, I find it telling that politicians are hardly ever invited any more to present one of the awards. It used to be a common occurrence, but they simply do not have that sort of status among the young nowadays. If MPs stand too close to a pop star, they are more likely to get a bucket of water thrown over them, as happened to John Prescott a couple of years back. I felt a great deal of sympathy for John on that occasion, but I thought the episode was a telling symbol of popular disenchantment.
Given that young people nowadays are less likely than before to be interested in politics, to be knowledgeable about the political system, or to have formed an attachment to a particular party, what does this say about their attitudes towards the whole democratic process? Surely their low levels of political interest and knowledge translate into mistrust, cynicism and apathy?
The figures support this contention. A MORI survey of sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds ranked politicians and journalists bottom on the list of people they could trust. The same survey asked youngsters whether they thought various schemes (such as polling booths in shopping centres and Internet voting) might encourage them to vote. The answer was an overwhelming no. Such is the level of disillusionment among the young – they are not abstaining because voting is inconvenient. They are abstaining because they quite plainly cannot see the point.
This attitude translates into a wider sense of alienation from nation and community as a whole. Over one third of those polled said they did not feel strongly attached to their community; a fifth said they felt the same about their country; and two thirds reported feeling little or no attachment to Europe. Over a third said they knew little or nothing about their responsibilities as a citizen. Politicians should be frightened by what these figures are saying: there is a whole stratum of young people who don’t vote, know nothing about politics and don’t feel that they belong anywhere.
Disillusionment is not solely a feature of adolescence, at least not in terms of politics. Youths who can’t see the point in voting grow into non-voting adults. As a result, Britain’s turnout record leaves a lot to be desired. The public seems to have least interest in European elections. For example, in 1979, 1984 and 1989, around one third of the electorate voted. In 1999 it was even worse – less than a quarter, making Britons the most reluctant voters in the EU.
Analysts have not undertaken any serious study of non-voting in European elections. It is generally assumed that the remoteness of the European Parliament and antipathy towards the EC/EU accounts for the low levels of participation. The unwieldy size of European constituencies also makes it very difficult for the parties – who are used to campaigning in Westminster constituencies – to work effectively on the ground in order to get voters out of their front doors and down to the polling booths.
Far more worrying is the body of statistics which shows that there is similar public apathy when it comes to electing our own governments. Turnout for the 1997 general election was 71.4 per cent, the lowest figure since 1945. Despite the unpopularity of John Major’s government, over one quarter of voters stayed at home. We are not the most apathetic country in Europe, but our turnout figures compare unfavourably with those of Spain, Sweden, Greece and Italy. If we add New Zealand, Australia and the USA to the equation, then Britain has the fourteenth poorest voting figures out of twenty nations.
This is a nationwide problem. The electoral roll doesn’t help, as there is a time lag in setting up the electoral register, which makes voting difficult for people who move around. The situation was also exacerbated by the hugely unpopular Poll Tax in the eighties, as large numbers of people took themselves off the electoral register in order to avoid paying the tax, but this predates the Poll Tax: the trend of turnouts in general elections has been downwards since a post-war high of 84 per cent in 1950.
Some elements of British society seem to be more disengaged than others. We have already seen that the young vote in disproportionately small numbers. There is also a huge variation in turnout figures when we compare different constituencies, which often ties in with levels of social deprivation, particularly with levels of unemployment. In 1997, turnout ranged from 81.1 per cent (Wirral South) to 51.6 per cent (Liverpool Riverside). In May 1997, the unemployment rate in Wirral South was 5.1 per cent, while Liverpool Riverside had a rate of 19 per cent unemployment, the third worst figure in England. In short, the poorest sections of society, those with, arguably, the most pressing reasons to make their voices heard and bring about change, are the most disillusioned with the political process and the least likely to vote.
Some of these concerns are far from new. I recently came across a fascinating book on the Chicago Mayoral election of 1923. Then, out of an electorate of 1.4 million, only 723,000 voted – a turnout of slightly under 52 per cent. Non-Voting: Causes and Methods of Control,
(#litres_trial_promo) looks at some familiar problems, including the public views that ‘voting changes little’ and that ‘politicians can’t be trusted’. In the twenties, though, much of the blame for poor turnout seemed to be blamed on the cowardice, laziness, ignorance or stupidity of voters.
Today, we are far more likely to look at the failings of politicians rather than voters. This is, in my view, entirely correct. We created the disillusionment, and we have to find a way to solve it. I don’t pretend it is an easy job. As the book on the Chicago 1923 election said, ‘The disillusioned voter, who believes that one vote counts for nothing, presents a difficult problem of political control. The ignorant citizen can be informed, the indifferent citizen can be stirred out of his lethargy, but the sophisticated cynic of democracy cannot be moved so easily.’
So, where do we start? Is it enough to target the young and the poor, or do we need a broader, nationwide approach to restore people’s faith in the political process? One thing is certain – until we have won people’s trust back there is no way we can claim to live in a democracy. Democracy isn’t just about everyone having the potential to change the way society works. Democracy is about a state where precisely that happens, because people are confident that their opinions matter and that they can make a difference. In a country where over a quarter of citizens don’t exercise their right to choose the new government, and where the poorest have the least inclination to improve their lot, there can be little progress, only marginal improvement.
Politicians, for the most part, are not stupid. They have long been wise to the issue of public disaffection. What has baffled them is the solution. Previously, the tactic of all politicians across Parliament, has simply been to ‘try harder’. Knock on every door, so the logic goes, appear in every newspaper and on every television programme, telling people how important it is for them to get out and vote, and you can make a change.
In this age of all-pervasive media, it is clear that this tactic is not working. It is not because people aren’t aware of the key political issues of the day, or that they are ignorant about who the key politicians are, or what they stand for.
The problem is that we are working the wrong way round. This is the crisis facing politics: people aren’t interested in voting, because they see it as a lip-service to true democracy. Individuals, families, communities, villages, towns and regions still have scant authority, and while so much power is disproportionately centred around a distant government and a single capital, it is no surprise if people are unconvinced that their vote matters. People won’t turn out to vote for a new Prime Minister until they also have a chance to wield real power in their own backyards. Respect for government will only come about once people govern themselves.
And that’s where the solution must lie. The challenge is to build a truly civic Britain, where power has been devolved to the local and regional level, and where we are playing a full role in Europe. Where people no longer expect change to come slowly and inefficiently from Westminster, but have power within their own communities and exercise it themselves. Where the can-do culture tears down the walls built by decades of disillusionment and cynicism. Until politicians stop governing on behalf of the nation and start to govern with it, politics in Britain will remain what it is today – a sheer irrelevance for larger and larger numbers of people – and the consequences for the nation will be disastrous. It will be, in a sense, a final victory for Thatcherism. We will be a nation that prefers to lock the doors, rather than see what’s happening in the street outside.
It may seem inappropriate to speak of Thatcherism ten years after the end of the Iron Lady’s reign, but eighteen years of Tory rule wrought lasting damage upon the fabric of our society, and rather than repair it, Labour has sometimes been too willing to appease the middle classes at the expense of the poor. This is not new in politics – for forty years, J. K. Galbraith has been warning of the political dangers of the affluent disregarding the poor. Without doubt, the current government is a vast improvement on the previous one, but it is dangerous that Labour has not done more to create an environment that is sympathetic to the poor. In political life it means that we face nothing short of an emergency, but to those who already feel disheartened enough to stop reading, I want to point out that crises merely provide us with an opportunity to take action. The remedy is in our hands.
We can only make the most of the future if we are clear about what we want to achieve. My aim in politics is to advance and protect the liberty of the individual, because I believe that this is the only way to achieve true democracy. That, in turn, means ensuring that all people have the maximum life chances and the maximum opportunities to make the most of their natural abilities, whatever their circumstances. How can we speak of ‘democracy’ otherwise? Rule by the people (which is the precise definition of the word) does not mean that small privileged elites exercise their power over the rest. It means that everyone has an equal capacity to exercise power, and equal liberty to govern themselves.
In this book, I shall be using the word ‘liberty’ a great deal, along with its more popular counterpart, ‘freedom’. For me, politics is the machinery by which freedom is made possible. Freedom to breathe, in a safe and clean environment. Freedom from government, by devolving power to the communities, nations and regions of Britain. Freedom to innovate, and to trade with other nations. Freedom to develop one’s talents to the full, and to raise a family in security. None of these freedoms have any validity if the people enjoying them are not also free from poverty. This, and government’s responsibility to bring it about, is my starting point.
Chapter One (#ulink_2a6b4fa2-856f-51b3-8e61-873b99ccf7d8)
FREEDOM FROM POVERTY: THE FORGOTTEN NATION (#ulink_2a6b4fa2-856f-51b3-8e61-873b99ccf7d8)
‘True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.’
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, 1944
In my eighteen years as an MP, I have come to learn that the most effective politicians are those acting out of a very personal sense of injustice. I am often accused of being too rational, too reasonable, of rarely showing temper. This might be the case, but that does not mean I am not motivated by very clear and firmly held convictions, beliefs I have held since I entered the House at the age of twenty-three.
By then, I had witnessed the turmoil of the three-day week and the power cuts, and I was determined that people and government should never again be held to ransom in this way. I had also seen the disparity in incomes between some of the poorer families of my home town and the better-off workers who had migrated from the central belt of Scotland to work in the Corpach pulp and paper mill, which gave me a heightened awareness of inequality and its negative effects.
This crystallized when, as a teenager, I participated in the finals of the Scottish Schools Debating Tournament. For the first time, I came across people who were of my own age but from vastly different backgrounds. The disparity in outlook and aspiration between pupils from tough inner-city Glasgow comprehensives and those from fee-paying schools in Dundee and Edinburgh seemed remarkable to me. The wealthier participants were visibly more confident and outspoken, and carried themselves with self-assurance. I did not come from an impoverished background, but this was nevertheless the first time I had ever stayed in an hotel. I was awed by the experience, and this set me apart from other youngsters who treated the place as if it were an extension of their homes.
There was no difference in intelligence or eloquence – we were all gathered there because of our debating skills. But when you asked these teenagers what they wanted to do in later life, it became clear that those from poorer backgrounds expected less, and received it. They talked about ‘a job’, ‘a house’, whereas their more affluent counterparts had a very clear sense of what ‘profession’ they wanted and where they were going to live.
The experience was an eye-opener. It was, if you like, the beginnings of my sense of injustice. It gave me a determination to tackle the deep divisions within our society, which remains unabated to this day. Labour was once regarded as the party of social justice. The party believed in providing for the poorest, and that unarguable viewpoint was the party’s keynote, for many decades. It is safe to say that prior to the 1997 general election, few voters or even card-carrying members could have told you much about Labour’s foreign policy, or its attitude to European trade. They voted Labour and they contributed to its coffers because of its stand on social issues.
This does not mean that Britain should return to Old Labour policies. The dogma of class war, nationalization and tax-and-spend for the sake of it made a major contribution to many of the problems that Britain faces today. I want no part of any New Old Labour plan, yet in throwing out the worst of its past, New Labour has forgotten many of the people it should still be serving. As Mr Blair’s close ally, John Monks put it recently, New Labour seems to be treating some of its most loyal voters like ‘embarrassing elderly relatives’ at a family party.
(#litres_trial_promo) It was poignant that, on the night of the first vote to cut benefits in the new 1997 Parliament, Labour ministers supped champagne at Number 10 with a host of celebrities. Of course, had the politicians in question opted for tomato juice and an early night, the problems of Britain’s poor and dispossessed would not have vanished, but as a symbol of New Labour’s concerns, the juxtaposition was as symbolic as it was crass.
In an age where favourable media coverage and a carefully managed public image are lamentably as vital to a government as its policies, it was inevitable that we would see the Blairs hobnobbing with the Gallagher brothers and playing host to the stars of Cool Britannia. They can scarcely be reproached for that. Far more insidious is the growing body of evidence that suggests New Labour’s chief concern lies in courting the approval, and the votes, of Middle England, and that, simultaneously, it has lost interest in the poorest sections of society.
Take the slogan ‘education, education, education’: Tony Blair claims that equal access to a free and high quality education is paramount in dismantling the boundaries between rich and poor. I do not disagree, but if we assume the role of auditor for a moment, and look at two very different regions of England, we immediately see significant disparities. In Cornwall, 14.9 per cent of pupils are eligible for school meals, yet since May 1997 its schools have received only £308 per pupil through the system of competitive bidding, under which Local Education Authorities and schools have to apply to central government for funds. Rutland, by contrast, is one of Britain’s richest counties, with only 6.4 per cent of pupils eligible for school meals, yet it receives £1,006 per pupil. These figures suggest that the more disadvantaged areas of the UK are doing relatively badly when it comes to education funding, while the more comfortable, vocal and consequently more powerful regions grow even stronger. When the young people of Cornwall and Rutland compete in tomorrow’s job market such disparities will inevitably have knock-on effects.
A similar trend seems to be at work when we look at unemployment figures. Since Labour came into power, the biggest drops in unemployment have been felt by the most affluent constituencies. Conversely, between the years 1996 and 1999, the constituencies where unemployment fell the least were among the poorest. Constituency unemployment figures are not the most representative way of examining poverty as a whole, but these figures suggest that affluent communities have benefited more than poorer ones under New Labour. The two constituencies with the biggest improvement were in the most affluent region of the UK, the south-east, and the two seeing the least improvement were in Lancashire, in the second poorest region.
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The government has over-trumpeted its successes in reducing unemployment. The National Institute of Social and Economic Research has concluded that of the 191,000 young people who have passed into jobs under the auspices of the New Deal since its launch in April 1998, 115,000 would probably have found work anyway, due to the strength and growth of the economy. The New Deal was Labour’s attack on unemployment, giving eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds who had been jobless for more than six months the opportunity to receive ‘in-job’ training, and offering employers incentives to give such people temporary work and training. After a four-month gateway period in which work is sought, there are various further options, including subsidized employment on short-time education and training. It marked a bold attempt to undermine the benefits culture and replace it with a work culture, but there is no point doing that when there is not enough work to go around.
In practice, the New Deal has turned out to be nothing more than a repackaging of the old Youth Training Scheme. Employers have benefited from a cheap source of temporary labour and cash sweeteners for using it, but in more than a fifth of cases, there were no real jobs for trainees to go to after the period had ended. Sixty per cent of the starters to the full-time education and training option had left by September 1999. Of the 191,000 ‘placed’ in work, at least 50,000 were back on benefits within three months of completing the scheme. The National Centre for Social Research has shown that only a quarter of New Deal leavers were continuously in employment for six months after completion of the scheme. Such figures indicate that little is being done to erode the benefits culture.
As with the boom in the eighties, there are plenty of social groups who have not benefited at all from the recent economic upturn. An estimated 1 million children live with parents who are both out of work. Labour’s policy has been to provide incentives for parents to take work, even if it is low-paid, but it is facing an uphill struggle. The British Household Panel Survey showed that between 1991 and 1997 only a quarter of couples with children who were out of work in any given year were able to find work a year later. The figure for lone parents was even more depressing – one in ten.
But there are large numbers of parents who do mini-jobs – that is, they work fewer than sixteen hours a week, which is the limit beyond which people cannot claim Income Support. The Institute for Social and Economic Research found that the more hours people put into these jobs, the more likely they were to secure a job offering more than sixteen hours work a week in the following year. It follows that government ought to be encouraging these small part-time jobs as a route into more full-time employment and out of poverty, but we still have a punitive benefits system, the principles of which have not altered for decades. People have to declare every change in their part-time earnings – even though many such jobs are ad hoc. People can also only earn between £5 and £15, depending on their circumstances, before money is deducted from their benefit. All this discourages people from taking any job that is less than full time, regardless of the opportunities it may lead to later.
In its failure to think flexibly it is no worse than previous governments, but no better either. Labour appears prepared to understand work only in terms of the traditional model of nine to five, five days a week, and benefits in terms of a weekly sum of money. And because it has stuck by this rigid perspective, people are losing out. For example, under the present system, unemployed people receive a weekly sum of money and, on top of that, a few entitlements, such as free eye check-ups and prescriptions. As soon as they stop receiving weekly benefit, the other benefits cease as well, meaning that even though they are working, they may be worse off than when they were entirely dependent upon benefits. Instead, people working a few hours a week, and all people on low incomes, should retain a range of entitlements, such as subsidized transport, free prescriptions and milk, so that they have incentives to enter and then remain within the world of work.
In 1996, Tony Blair said, ‘If the Labour government has not raised the standards of the poorest by the end of its time in office, it will have failed.’ Mr Blair made the pursuit of equality a key feature of his agenda – I do not argue with the depth and sincerity of his conviction – but the fact remains that, back in 1996, this was a subject of immediate contemporary concern. New Labour were characteristically astute in capturing the mood of the nation. It is still an important issue in the nation’s eyes, but it would be even more so if the government made a crusade of the issue.
It is easy to see why it was such a public preoccupation. In 1992, an estimated 13.7 million people were living on breadline benefit or on half the average wage. This amounted to one quarter of the population of Britain. UNICEF warned that Britain’s children were the worst off in Europe. By 1994, 4.2 million – roughly one third – of the children in Britain belonged to families living below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor had widened. By 1994, the wealthiest 5.5 million people in GB (i.e. the richest 10 per cent) were an average £650 better off for every thousand pounds they had earned in 1979. But the poorest ten per cent were worse off. For every £1,000 they had had in 1979, they now had £860.
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Unfortunately, it takes more than three budgets and a New Deal to reverse major trends like these, and undo the damage already caused – benefit cuts were almost the hunting cry of the Tory party in the 1980s. The most vulnerable sections of the nation are still suffering them under Labour. Anyone who receives invalidity benefit and has a modest private pension (£85 a week or more) will lose benefit at a rate of 50p in the pound. Severe disablement allowance has also been abolished, placing many severely handicapped people below the poverty line. The state pension was 20 per cent of the average income in the early eighties. It has now fallen to 15 per cent and is still falling. The government’s answer was to make a derisory change which amounts to 75p a week for the average single pensioner. Meanwhile, a study by the University of Kent has shown that half those over eighty are surviving on less than £80 a week. Pensioners, distressed at their treatment under the present government, are among the most regular and vocal contributors to my daily postbag.
We can also see how little things have improved for the poor when we examine public health. Areas such as Glasgow, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Liverpool have premature death rates more than twice those in affluent southern counties like Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Within London, poor boroughs such as Woolwich have premature death rates twice as high as wealthy boroughs like Kensington and Chelsea, as well as disproportionately high rates of asthma, eczema, heart disease and depression.
The urban poor face unique sets of problems which Labour is doing little to address or even understand. A 1999 University of Glasgow study pointed out that Britain’s twenty major cities have been hardest hit by unemployment. The decline of manufacturing industries has led to huge numbers of male manual workers being put out of their traditional employment. The report indicated that the cities had lost nearly a quarter of their 1981 stock of full-time male jobs by 1996 – equivalent to over 500,000 jobs – and these people are not going on to find work elsewhere. The service industry, it is often said, is expanding, but it is, according to the study, doing so least in our cities. The decline in skilled manual jobs has, on the whole, resulted in downward movement for most urban men into unskilled, lower-paid jobs, or into unemployment, casual work and the black economy.
(#litres_trial_promo) The upshot is that there is a massive jobs gap in our cities – that is, large numbers of men able to work, and no jobs for them to go to.
Labour’s current policies are directed towards equipping the urban unemployed with more skills and motivating them to find work. All this is totally missing the point. In the words of the study’s authors: ‘national economic and social policies need to give greater emphasis to expanding labour demand in the cities’. Of course, training and motivation are vital – but they are pointless when there are no jobs for people to go into.
We must also not overlook the very real problem of rural poverty. It’s not just farmers who are angry about the present government. The Rowntree Foundation interviewed sixty young people from rural backgrounds, and found that only two of them had secure accommodation and financial independence, and all felt that the only long-term solution to their housing and employment difficulties was to leave the countryside. Poor transport, lack of affordable housing and decline in the traditional sources of rural income are creating poverty blackspots in areas many urbanites still think of as idyllic. The problems of the countryside are likely to be exacerbated by the government’s decision to make benefits payable by Automatic Cash Transfer rather than over the counter at Post Offices. This means that many rural sub-post offices will become economically unviable and be forced to close, and since these are usually twinned with village shops, rural Britain risks losing a vital hub of community life.
On a recent visit to the West Country, a farmer asked me why Labour had seemingly abandoned them, even though it held more rural seats than ever before. I knew the answer, and it becomes clearer every day. The present government has more rural constituencies, certainly, but among them plenty that it neither needs nor wants. The bulk of its ministers are from an urban background, and its outlook is consequently not particularly sensitive to the needs of the rural population. Many of Labour’s rural seats are expendable – it doesn’t need them to stay in power – that’s why they can happily tell farmers to stop whingeing and diversify.
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Wherever it occurs, poverty breeds poverty and further exclusion. In our nation, significant numbers of people are growing up with limited access to the sort of services that are normally considered essential for full participation in society. A recent study by the University of Newcastle looked at people’s access to energy, food, telephones, banking and food retailing in two poor neighbourhoods. It was clear that service providers, like phone and other utility companies, as well as the discount supermarkets, were physically withdrawing from low-income areas. The more limited the access to a service became, the more it cost the people who could least afford it: for example, prepayment electricity meters, small food shops, public telephones and loan sharks all cost the user significantly more. This is the Tory legacy of ‘market forces’ and ‘no such thing as society’. It is the ultimate proof that the market is not the guarantor of freedom. To escape the cycle, people need to find jobs, but when they have to spend their benefits travelling into town to charge up the electricity meter, there is understandably less spare cash for making phone calls. So the cycle repeats itself – across Britain, in our cities and villages, there is an underclass, with significantly lower life expectancy, lower levels of health and fitness, and with compromised access to good education, to transport, to society itself. How can we talk about democracy when large numbers of our people are disenfranchised in this way?
The real question is whether New Labour has either the attitude or the ability to reverse these worrying trends. I started to worry when I heard Tony Blair calling the public sector ‘inflexible’. Certainly, there are areas that need reforming, and there is still too much Old Labour sentiment in some small yet influential areas of the union movement. But is it really inflexibility that leaves patients on trolleys in hospital corridors and forces pensioners awaiting cataract operations to fly to India to bypass eighteen-month waiting lists? That compels the NHS, in the grip of a flu crisis (the idea of which was in any case exaggerated to cover up Labour’s health failures), to send patients to France because our hospitals have reached critical mass? Or that leaves children in schools with woefully inadequate books and equipment?
Arguably, in some areas of the public sector, there is a little too much flexibility. In Britain’s universities, there is a profound sense of unease over the working conditions of academics. Increasingly, universities are being forced to hire people on short-term contracts, often for a term or a year, and often on a part-time basis. Academics, particularly young academics seeking to make a mark, are forced to publish at such a rate of knots that their work does not meet the quality that would have been expected only a few years ago. In the university environment, where we need people to think in a considered and long-term manner, that is far from ideal. Yet that is what flexibility breeds, and in the university context, it is self-defeating.
The real problem is not inflexibility. It is a deliberate reluctance on the part of New Labour radically to address poverty and the countless other injustices blighting our society. A reluctance born of the fact that New Labour dare not be honest about the money it needs to spend to put these things right, for fear of losing the support of the wealthiest sections of society, who have benefited from New Labour’s concessionary attitude to tax.
I am not delivering a blanket criticism of the Labour government. A recent University of Cambridge study suggested that the incomes of the poorest tenth of the population have risen over the last three budgets, while the richest tenth have, on average, not become any richer. The study said that the poorest families with children have seen their income rise by 16 per cent. At the same time, Labour’s welfare programme was met with howls of discontent from the start. Witness the furore when Harriet Harman announced in autumn 1997 that she was going ahead with the Conservative plans to phase out additional benefits for single mothers, and the similar uproar when the government cut disability benefits, and introduced tuition fees for students in 1999.
In contrast to the Cambridge study we also have to consider the figures released by the Office of National Statistics in April 2000, which indicated that the gap between the earnings of the richest and the earnings of the poorest has widened to its highest level since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. The government was visibly embarrassed by these findings, which overshadowed John Prescott’s plans for a ten-year drive against poverty in the inner cities, launched only days before. They argued, in response, that the figures were unrepresentative, because measures such as the New Deal and the Working Families Tax Credit had simply not had time to take effect.
We cannot deny that Labour is spending money – but its record of benefit cuts indicate that it is doing so very selectively. There have been no universal increases in cash benefits – though academics have argued that this was what was desperately needed for a country where nearly 14 million received below half the average income.
(#litres_trial_promo) They have also not funded these increases from income tax.
In fact, they are still adamant about cutting income tax, because Labour believes this is the right way to win middle-income voters back from the Tories. This in turn means that, whatever Labour does for the most disadvantaged, it cannot do nearly enough to address the problems facing them. In 1997, journalist Nick Davies wrote:
Labour thinking seems to take no account of the damage which has been inflicted on the poor in the past twenty years … that by flicking the switches of the benefits machine … people can be manipulated into families or into work or out of crime, as though they were carefully calculating their rational self-interest, as though their lives and sometimes their personalities had not been scrambled by the experience of the last twenty years.
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His words are just as true now. And the solution is not simply to raise taxes and throw more money at the poorest sections of society. The solution requires as much of a revolution in thought as in deeds.
The Alternative
I have repeatedly stated that Liberal Democrats do not and will not inherit the vacant lot to the left of New Labour. Such a strategy would be tantamount to our party embarking on the search for a political cul-de-sac, but, at the same time, I believe that our party is the only party truly concerned with social justice, and we will fight the next election on that basis.
This is not a new stance for the party. Nor is it something I have chosen because it is fashionable – or unfashionable, for that matter. Far from it: Liberals and Social Democrats have a long tradition of fighting the war against social inequality. Some of the key thinkers of twentieth-century politics, who had a decisive impact on the shape of millions of people’s lives, were Liberals. William Beveridge produced the proposals for social security that became the bedrock of the post-war welfare state, and John Maynard Keynes was the economic guru of much of the post-war economic settlement. Before them, turn-of-the-century New Liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson were among the first people in Britain to make a persuasive case for a government role in fighting poverty. We are and must always be the definitive political movement of conscience and reform.
Hobhouse’s view that ‘the struggle for liberty is … a struggle for equality’, is the basis of liberal attitudes to social justice. For all to be free, argued Hobhouse, there had to be equal access to opportunities for education and employment, and only individuals together, acting through government, could ensure that happened. Progressive social reform has deep philosophical roots within the Liberal Democrats.
It also has deep roots in Labour history, but the current leadership seems to have forgotten this. As a result, active public enthusiasm for New Labour (as opposed to national opinion polls) is at an all-time low. The desultory turnout for the 1999 European elections clearly indicated the nation’s deep cynicism towards the political process. At a time when war in Kosovo had been raging for seventy days, less than a quarter of the population found European politics sufficiently relevant to leave their houses and vote.
People only pay attention to politicians when they are dealing with issues that immediately concern them. From my travels across the country, I know that inequality is an issue of great contemporary concern, but the present government has all but stopped trying to redress it. It feels it is doing enough, because it can always churn out figures that prove it is. When one of its own ministers, Peter Kilfoyle, resigned from office because he felt that Labour was not doing enough for the poor in his own Liverpool constituency, the response from the leadership was an embarrassed silence. There was much talk about regretting his departure, not so much about regretting what he said – or whether it was true.
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One practical measure in particular would make a radical and immediate improvement, and put issues of inequality at the centre of political debate. Just as the Budget dominates the national news once a year, so we need an annual Social Justice Audit of similar importance, which would examine the impact of all government policies that have any link with social inequalities. It would be published in full in the newspapers and be publicized to the hilt, and every year the government would be expected to show whether they had met the targets of the previous year. This would, combined with an audit of their environmental performance, and the traditional Budget, establish a ‘triple bottom line’. The government is already encouraging ethical companies to report upon these aspects of their yearly performance; maybe it should learn the lesson itself.
Such an audit would have to be genuinely independent of government, and carry significant weight behind its conclusions. A variety of bodies would be consulted in its creation, and a panel of respected independent figures would be established. It would include representatives of, for example, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Bank of England, the CBI, the BMA, the National Audit Office and the Audit Commission. Not all of these bodies are primarily associated with the cause of social justice, and so they would not be seen as having axes to grind, but they could all provide significant expertise at evaluating evidence produced by government departments. In addition, they would be supported by a permanent team of researchers, independent of any government department, whose job would be to examine the figures produced by government. With such support, finding any inaccuracies in government figures would not be difficult – as Liberal Democrat researchers regularly prove even without such support. This would be an enormous improvement upon the government’s present self-congratulatory Annual Report, an exercise which ranges from the anodyne to a brazen attempt at political propaganda at the taxpayers’ expense. Mercifully, nobody appears to pay much attention to it.
What would this audit look like in practice? It would begin with the announcement of Bills in Parliament. Take some of those put forward by the government in the final Queen’s Speech of the last century, November 1999. The audit would apply two key questions to them. First, how would different parts of the country, and the inequalities between them, be affected? Second, how would the inequalities between social groups be affected?
Measures such as the Care Standards Bill, intended to promote better care for the elderly, would have to include information on how those measures would affect people with different incomes and savings. If the Bill increased the access of people on low incomes to high quality care, then it would pass the Social Justice Audit. As the Bill presently stands, it would not pass, and nor would the Electronic Communications Bill, which does not consider how disadvantaged groups can take advantage of new technologies, nor how government can encourage them to participate.
The Social Justice Audit would be similarly scathing of government transport policy, which has not met its targets for traffic reduction, and has decreased spending on public transport. This is a social justice issue just as much as it is one of the environment, for car ownership is only possible for people above a certain level of income, and those below it have to rely on public transport. We need to subject every government policy to intense scrutiny if we are to have a more informed debate on the inequalities in Britain, which goes beyond mere questions of tax and benefits.
I do not pretend for one moment that a Social Justice Audit would solve all of Britain’s social problems, but, given sufficient priority by government, it could change the nature of our political discourse, so that politicians would be forced to be clear about how they will tackle definite inequalities, and be held accountable when they don’t deliver. If a Bill is judged to have failed, it might be automatically rescheduled for reworking in Parliament. The Audit would also highlight the extent to which social justice is affected by a wide range of policies – a fact often overlooked. For example, in terms of the environment, poorer areas suffer most from pollution.
Refocusing politics and reshaping our political language, so that politicians reconnect with the real concerns of millions of ordinary people, will have a tremendously positive impact on the quality of our democracy. It will give genuine meaning to politics, for people who at present feel that it has little to offer them. Otherwise we face a future in which 25 per cent election turnouts are seen as the norm, rather than a cause for concern. And we will continue to live in a Britain in which privilege, rather than ability, determines the achievements and the resultant quality of life.
Tax for Freedom
New Labour is reluctant to mention the word taxation, except, of course, to claim that it is coming down, but if we accept that every citizen of our nation has a right to first-class education, to comprehensive health care and a welfare safety net, then we also have to accept that we all have a responsibility to make those priorities possible. They cannot be achieved without radical changes in the way our taxes are applied and collected. To pretend otherwise is simply to con the voters.
I am not arguing for a simplistic ‘high taxes, high public spending’ model. I believe that the main increase should be in terms of efficiency. Increased efficiency in the way taxes are imposed, gathered and, most importantly, spent. Four guiding principles should govern all socially responsible policies on taxation.
The first is adequacy: taking exactly and only what is needed, from precisely those who can give. Penalizing the successful only deprives the nation of entrepreneurial talent. Bleeding the rich dry as a policy has more to do with old-fashioned antipathy – what Winston Churchill called ‘cool-blooded class hatred’ – than the search for social equality. At the same time, government cannot be starved of the money it needs to pay for good schools and teachers, quality health care, adequate pensions and people in need. That is why I urged the present government to spend its 1999–2000 budget surplus on the public sector, instead of sweetening the least needy sections of society with tax cuts and patching up the shortfall with the surplus cash.
That is also why I greeted Gordon Brown’s 2000 Budget with scepticism: £1 billion goes into education, but £2.6 billion is devoted to a further cut in the basic rate of income tax – a clear indication of Labour’s priorities. The Budget will do nothing to provide nursery education for all three year olds, and little to reduce class sizes in our secondary schools, or to address the backlog of repairs. Nor will it do anything towards abolishing or reducing tuition fees for higher education, or addressing the massive gap between the needs of business and the training on offer.
Physics tells us that matter can never be destroyed – it simply converts into other forms. Similarly, in politics you can never cut taxes unless somebody else pays. In the case of New Labour policy, much of the tax burden has shifted away from income tax and on to council tax, which has risen by a third in four years. Much of the pain will also be felt by the young and the old, as education loses out, and as do the pensioners, who received the staggeringly generous sum of an extra 75p a week. The only provision of extra money for pensioners was in a small increase (£50 – less than £1 per week) on the one-off winter fuel payment, when it is clear that what is required is an increase on weekly income across the board. That would be far more empowering than handouts on fuel. Perhaps the only consolation we could take from the Budget was that things would have been far worse under the Tories, but still, current Labour taxation policy does not satisfy the criteria for adequacy.
