Public ends and private means
Sir: If John Ashe feels- that Tories are disposed towards selectivity in that they oppose the waste of public resources, excessive taxation and the erosion of the instinct to provide for one's self and one's gamily, then I would agree; but he will never convince me that they want selectivity in the welfare services if it involve creating an army of officials to impose means tests; snooping on people breaking earnings rules; splitting the nation into two—the subsidising and the sub- sidised; destroying the incentive to work and save for a large part of the population; forcing old people left behind by inflation on to their knees for state charity; or even—to lower the tone of the argument—taxing the sections of the popula- tion that mainly support the Tories in order to give more money to people who habitually vote Labour.
The universalist-selectivist argument can only be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned by a workable compromise, and this in turn can only be found, I am more and more convinced, by revising the concept of national insurance and making the fund financially viable. Insurance is universalist in that it gives everybody equal rights, but in practice it is selective in that it disperses its funds only to those who fall within the scope of the contract. The national insurance fund can only be made to pay and remain credible if the leap is taken from flat-rate to graduated contribu- tions—which is precisely what I have recom- mended in The New Social Contract: if the social insurance and income tax systems are amal- gamated, income tax payments and insurance con- tributions become one and the same thing. I do not think John Ashe and I are in basic disagree- ment, but those 'Irish marauders' disguised as zombies of Mr Gladstone, with their weird cries of `Self help' and 'Devil take the hindmost,' do give me some uneasiness. They could even lose the party the next election.
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