Always an unwieldy folly

Robin Harris

THE FIVE GIANTS: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE WELFARE STATE by Nicholas Timmins

HarperCollins, £25, pp. 606

Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor of the Independent, tells the reader that one of the motivations to write this 'biography' of the welfare state was 'anger that it is impossible now to travel on the London underground or walk the streets of our big cities without finding beggars'. He speaks of his

bemusement at how the Portillos, Redwoods and the other younger Thatcherites . . . could have such heartfelt hostility to an idea for which [Mr Timmins] had an instinctive sym- pathy.

Mr Timmins' asides almost endearingly belie his ideological assumptions.

On the conditions of pre-welfare-state Britain:

As if to underline that not all social progress halted in the 1930s, the school-leaving age had been due to rise from 14 to 15 on 1 September 1939.

The survival of private education under Rab Butler's 1944 Education Act: All this helps to explain the loss of the opportunity to integrate public schools into the state education system. There would never again be a moment when that would be feasible, and given the damage done by the public/private divide to education since, it is tempting to argue that Butler solved the wrong issue.

And note the author's astonishment that Mrs Thatcher's Government did not carry out her (assumed) intention of razing the welfare state to the ground: At the end of the Thatcher era a remarkable paradox was apparent. A woman whose instincts were to unscramble the NHS and to increase charges, to roll back social security and social services, and to return schools to selection and fee paying, had instead headed a government which found itself promoting reforms that, however controversial, were plainly intended to improve existing health, education and social services.

In short, this book begins and ends with the kind of self-righteous left-wing prejudice which may comfort the diminish- ing number of Independent readers but which makes for bad history. It is also something of a muddle. Chapters and sub- sections of chapters commence with lists of unrelated and irrelevant quotations. The underlying theme of Beveridge's concep- tion and its development and distortion in the post-war years becomes lost in attempts to follow political debate about health, social security, housing and education. And it does not help that an over-chronological approach, presumably intended to highlight the (in fact rather doubtful) distinction between policies of Labour and Conserva- tive governments, makes it difficult to follow through the arguments. Part of the problem, which the author himself recog- nises, is that the term 'welfare state' in the broad sense simply covers too wide a territory — and yet fails on occasion to stretch far enough. For example, is it right in such a study to include the whole state of education but almost entirely omit discussion of the effects of welfare dependency upon crime and other social deviancy?

Mr Timmins had useful interviews with a number of those who advised the Thatcher government on its modest but important reforms in health and education; and this makes the last few chapters more illuminat- ing. But too many of the fundamental questions go undiscussed. Not the least of these is whether the welfare state itself represented progress, as this book assumes rather than argues.

It is, of course, possible to regard the creation of the welfare state under the war- time coalition and first post-war Labour governments as a vast national achieve- ment. Even Conservative politicians often feel compelled to speak about our 'great public services' and expatiate on the country's affection for the National Health Service. Yet Mr Timmins unwittingly reminds us that this huge structure was even in its origins an unwieldy folly. The suggestion is still made that it is by getting `back to Beveridge' — meaning back to the principles of social insurance set out in the latter's 1942 Report — that social security can be reformed so as to limit its growth It's not bad. I'm getting my five servings of fruit and vegetables per day.' and the irresponsibility it engenders in many who come to rely on it.

Certainly, Beveridge was prone to speak of the importance of thrift, effort, volun- tary endeavour and a host of other Thatcherite virtues. But his was in fact that classically dangerous endeavour — what the late great Michael Oakeshott con- demned as 'rationalism' — which seeks to sketch out all-embracing systems on clean sheets of paper. The time has come', mused Beveridge, to consider social insurance as a whole, as a contribution to a better new would after the war. How would one plan social insurance now if one had a clear field?

And so he concluded that only if the coun- try had a new national health service, child allowances and full employment (which he assumed government could guarantee) would his social security proposals work.

His successors were just as cavalier. Aneurin Bevan decided that there was no role for municipal and voluntary hospitals and so nationalised them and largely squeezed out private medicine. Rab Butler swallowed the fashionable concept of education as social engineering, made comprehensivisation the prevailing doc- trine and would even apparently have liked to abolish direct grant schools — positions which his socialist successors over the next 30 years would act upon with a vengeance. In housing, a combination of rent controls, council-house building and municipalisa- tion, pursued for reasons of ideology rather than need, let alone popular preference, turned the state into a quasi-monopoly landlord. And it used that monopoly to pursue still more catastrophic social engi- neering in the erection of ready-made tower-block ghettos.

It is, of course, possible to point to advances in living conditions over the years of welfare state Britain. But who can say what private, commercial or voluntary alternatives would have arisen if they had not been crushed by controls, taxes and official approval? At least it is worth bear- ing in mind those principles which the architects of the system largely ignored.

First, the presumption should be that non-governmental action is the best answer to even the most intractable social prob- lem. Second, even when the state does pro- vide, it must never extinguish private competition and choice. Third, the recipi- ents of public services must pay a sufficient share of costs — either before receiving such services (insurance) or when receiving them (charges) — to limit the demands on the public purse. A good starting-point for such consideration might be provided by Mr Timmins' book, with the proviso that all that enthuses him should alarm us.

Robin Harris was Director of the Conserva- tive Research Department (1985-89) and a member of the Prime Minister's Downing Street Policy Unit (1989-90).