POLITICS

Why Welfare does not want a man of vision

CHARLES MOORE

0 ne keeps being told that Mr Norman Fowler, the Social Services Secretary, has 'grown in the job'; there was a lot of

growing to be done, people tend to add. Certainly, of all the many people called

Norman associated with this Government, Mr Fowler has consistently seemed to be the least thrilling. His difficulty — apart from his voice, appearance and demeanour — has been that no one has been able to find any adjective to describe him. He is not genial, witty, eloquent, or 'quite out- standingly able'; nor is he scheming, de- vious, incompetent, or lazy. He is not even boring in any powerful or offensive way. He is just a politician with spectacles and a suit and a brief. But certainly, too, Mr Fowler now gives a strong impression of understanding his subject, and of being able, as he did in Parliament last week, to rout the rather babyish attacks made on his policies.

It may be that Mr Fowler is just the man for the Government's review of the Wel- fare State, the 'second Beveridge' which he is about to announce. For it is a subject which would surely defeat greater and lesser men. It is complicated enough to require the application of a sharp mind, but far too petty and frustrating in its details to appeal to the man of vision.

The man of vision tends to be so deeply offended by failure and inconsistency that he is only happy proposing something completely different. The men of vision at the end of the first world world war saw the destruction, vowed 'never again', and gave birth to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, with results which President Reagan is commemorating this week. A generation of visionaries, horri- fied by the unemployment and social in- equality of the 1930s, created the bureau- cratised, inflationary society of the present. The sort of man of vision likely to be charged today with the reform of the Welfare State would, given the political conditions, be a 'Thatcherite. As he approached his task, he would find his prejudices confirmed. He would discover mountainous waste and confusion, a class of people without incentive to work or in any way improve themselves, dependent on a class of petty administrators operating a system which they cannot understand. He would be repelled, and he would be bound to propose something erected on quite different principles.

One would not necessarily want to sug- gest that he would be wrong. Looked at

socially, morally, politically, aesthetically, the Welfare State is shabby or worse. But there are two reasons why vision might not improve it. The first is that, since we are discussing questions which affect everyone, some political caution is needed. The second is that it isn't really an 'it'. Different principles support different aspects of wel- farism, and although they are in a state of conflict rather than peaceful co-existence, none seems likely to win an easy victory over the others.

There is a charitable principle, a con- tributory principle and a principle of social engineering. We think it wrong that others should starve, and we think that the government should help people 'in real need'. We also agree that most people should pay something towards schemes to support their eventual or possible wants — at its most basic this means that people should pay tax; it also means that people should have some of their benefits, such as pensions or unemployment benefit, related to work they have done and national insurance which they have paid. The prin- ciple of social engineering is that govern- ments should use their system of welfare payments and allowances to produce 'de- sirable' results — that people should have more children, fewer children, live in houses, live in flats, live in towns, live in the country, and so on.

The unvisionary Mr Fowler clearly does not intend to do away with any of these principles. Although social engineering conflicts with the fiscal neutrality and libertarianism which this Government sporadically proclaims, Mrs Thatcher be- lieves that it is essential for securing her third term. She has made mortgage tax relief sacred, made Mr Lawson make pension tax relief ditto, and committed herself to child benefit for all. The most that she wants is that there should be 'Who wants an earnings-related pension anyway?' rather fewer, more efficient social en- gineers and that they should be trained to grow an 'enterprise culture' rather then dig the 'poverty trap'.

As for contributions and charity, it is a question of altering the balance. Charity has gone rather far when eight million people collect supplementary benefit and only 18 per cent of Scotland's domestic 'ratepayers' pay their rates unassisted. Contributions have become rather vague when national insurance is no more than another word for a general tax. Mr Fowler wants to restore some meaning and some limits to these concepts.

The best way to restore the contributory principle is to take government out of it wherever possible. Any form of revenue raised by government is certain to be diverted into the general purposes of gov- ernment: any payment contributed by an individual for his own benefit will not get lost in this way. This is why Mr Fowler (and Mrs Thatcher and Mr Lawson, for on the principle they all agree) want to get rid of the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme (Serps), the device invented in the 1970s by which, in 20 years or so, the Government will be providing billions of pounds to pay people pensions which reflect the level of their earnings and which they could easily pay for themselves.

As for charity, Mr Fowler seeks to confine it. He thinks that benefits, such as housing benefit, which exempt claimants from 100 per cent of certain liabilities, do not assist personal prudence (nor political accountability). He finds it absurd that there are so many different sorts of benefit to be had. He thinks it wrong that the benefit system should be built in such a way that the father of a family gains nothing by taking a job at a low wage instead of staying on the dole.

Will these thoughts produce the 'fun- damental reform' which Mrs Thatcher de- fiantly promised Mr Kinnock in the House

of Commons on Tuesday? Hardly. But it is

unique. It is the first time in 40 years that a government has tried to do something with the welfare system other than merely add to it. For that reason, one cannot expect the Government to get many thanks for what it wants to do, which makes it all the more to his credit that Mr Fowler still wants to do it. Knowing his colleagues' rather weaker sense of duty, one is not surprised to learn that it will probably take more than one meeting of the Cabinet to get them to agree with him.