Unit 4: Political issues by Dr Claire Annesley The Lecturer in European Politics at the GIPP, School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester writes for BBC Parliament

The issue of benefits has created common ground between left and right

Party policies towards the welfare state have changed in a similar way to economic policy. During the post war economic boom, both parties were in favour of the creation of a welfare state.

It was agreed that to civic and political rights - that is, the right to own property and the right to vote - social rights should be added.

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For example, in the UK social rights such as the National Health Service (NHS) and cash benefits for the unemployed, pensioners and children were introduced and extended.

The consensus on welfare changed in the 1970s when the economic growth required to fund welfare spending could no longer be taken for granted.

Stalling economic performance, rising levels of unemployment and weak public finances meant that high levels of public spending for welfare were no longer sustainable.

The Labour Party, which traditionally prioritises social justice, retained its commitment to unconditional social rights and high levels of welfare spending for a long time.

Conservative governments sought to radically alter the British welfare state and to prioritise economic efficiency.

Thatcher's cushion

Thatcher believed that Britain's poor economic performance and high levels of unemployment were caused by the cushion of the welfare state.

If social rights were removed, or made less generous, then there would be a greater incentive for unemployed people to enter the labour market and a higher likelihood that the economy would perform.

Successive Conservative governments from 1979 onwards sought to dismantle the welfare state and to promote individual rather than state responsibility for welfare. This was done in a number of ways.

The level of social security for the unemployed was cut and a requirement was introduced that only those claimants who could demonstrate that they were actively seeking employment were entitled to benefits.

In other words, social rights became more contingent upon the claimant meeting certain individual responsibilities. Conservative governments reduced spending on social provisions such as social housing.

Marketising

They ceased to invest in council housing and tried instead to encourage individual home ownership by selling off council houses at a cheap rate to tenants. They also sought to marketise many areas of the welfare state.

For example, an internal market was set up in the NHS and some of its services were contracted out to private firms.

What should be noted, however, is that despite Conservative governments' attempts to retrench the welfare state, welfare spending actually rose during their 18 years in office.

This can be explained by both the rising demand for welfare services such as health care and the need to mitigate rising levels of poverty.

New Labour

The Labour Party remained committed to the welfare state and high levels of public spending up until the late 1980s. Then a series of electoral defeats and policy reviews led the party to alter its approach.

Rather than advocating high levels of spending and redistribution to compensate the inequality caused by economic failure, it planned to promote education and training and transform the welfare state from a passive safety net to an active 'springboard' of opportunity (Annesley, 2001, 204).

By the time the Labour came to power in 1997, many commentators claimed that the party had abandoned its traditional concerns for working people and the poor and had adopted instead the Thatcherite priorities of limited welfare spending and individual responsibility.

New Labour, for example, committed itself to sticking to the Conservatives' rigid spending plans for the first two years in government and to a welfare-to-work policy - the New Deal - which obliged certain groups of the unemployed to take subsidised work or training in return for their benefits.

On the face of it then, it seems that there has been a convergence of the Conservatives' and Labour's welfare policies. This is just superficial convergence, however, for it masks the fact that the parties have quite discrete positions on questions of social rights and equality.

Although the Labour Party is now committed to low level of taxation and welfare spending, it has since 1997 nevertheless used fiscal policy to halt and even slightly reverse the growing inequality that characterised the 18 years of Conservative Government.

Moreover, new kinds of welfare benefit and financial reward such as the Working Families Tax Credit and the Minimum Wage are improving the incentives to entering the labour market and are making the poorest employees better off.

The balance between social rights and individual responsibility appears to be more fairly balanced In New Labour social policy than it does with the Conservatives.

� Dr Claire Annesley 2004
Department of Government
University of Manchester
email: [email protected]