The Welfare State: causes and cures
Thecon title of the glomeration of services, personal and financial which we comprehend under the Welfare State has a long history. It was Elizabeth 1 who introduced the idea of e relief of the poor as a responsibility of the state; and during the nineteenth century numerable Conservative governments accepted wider and wider responsibilities for the relief of suffering and the Protection of the working population from the more severe sufferings which the industrialisation of the nation brought in its train. However, not even en the whole of this long history — and early-twentieth-century Conservative and Liberal measures to provide, in particular, health care, monetary relief from unemployment and pensions in particular — can measure up in revolutionary character to the great complex of schemes planned by Churchill's War Cabinet and subsequently — though often very changed in form — introduced by the Attlee government under the 1ruence of Beveridge. However endangered the whole structure may now be — partly through an unbelievable combination of ministerial malignity and incompetence from Mrs Castle; largely through a combination of shortage of money and excessive dependence on the state to provide an impossible number of services — we would do well to remember the long and honourable history of attempts made to relieve suffering and hardship. And we would be ill-advised, because things are now so bad and threaten to come so much worse, to imagine that the whole heritage has failed.
When a financial crisis comes upon a nation all services must, of course, suffer; and the only way in which a steady uhprovement in the condition of the People can be achieved — though it may never, at any one stage, appear sufficiently dramatic for modern politicians and critics is by steady and prudent administration a the economy. Nonetheless, above and beyond that sine qua non, it is perfectly Clear that there have been serious errors of Principle in our understanding of the Welfare services and what they achieve. In the early post-war years it was easy to Make mistakes, to fail to predict the utter IMPossibility of satisfying the dreams and hopes of a people ravaged by war.
There was less excuse for the politicians and administrators of the 'fifties and sixties in their failure to understand that it Was quite simply impossible, financially, morally or materially, to meet needs as they arose through the intervention of the state. It was, of course, sometimes possible, but not always. It is still possible, for example, to put into effect the better part of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act — which largely depends on a re-orientation of services — though governments of neither party have acted as forcefully as they might in this field. It is utterly impossible to administer humanely a universal basis of satisfaction the Provisions for supplementary benefit contained in that most well:intention piece of legislation, the 1966 Social Services Act, for its crucial provisions commit the state to an indefinitely elastic expenditure.
That general point of criticism of all Politicians made, however, there is a Particularly strong rebuke for Labour Politicians and the more extreme forms of Socialism. From its inception the Welfare State — and we would take its beginnings back at least to the Lloyd George pension scheme — has depended on a combination of private and state effort. The balance between the two is a matter for argument in each generation, and the most original minds at work in the field in recent years have arisen to propagate the idea of a consumer choice principle, in which the citizen receives cash rather than services, and may employ the cash as he will. But Labour politicians have not merely sought to extend the provisions of the Welfare State to provide for hitherto unrecognised or unsuccoured needs: they have struggled might and main to destroy not merely individual effort — to provide, say, for oneself or one's family — but also the ability of the individual, however poor or downtrodden, to choose between services available, or even to criticise those on offer.
All responsible politicians have for years realised the inadequacy of financial provision for the poor — Mrs Judith Hart, when a minister, once confessed to the House of Commons that no way could be found within a state-dominated system finally to end child poverty. But the Labour Party refused utterly even to consider the Conservative-favoured scheme for a Negative Income Tax, which, though no doubt it had, and has, its faults offered some prospect of destroying the ghettos of modern Britain. Likewise, the Conservative-enacted pensions scheme, which sought to shift a greater financial burden on to occupational pension schemes and thus release state funds for other social needs, was immediately repudiated by Labour on its entry into office in 1974. Currently, for reasons that nobody but a Socialist can see, the Labour Government is bent on eliminating private practice in the NHS: nobody pretends that such elimination will greatly improve a service already tottering to destruction; but the Socialist mind insists on uniformity, and even damage to the co-operative structure of the NHS is tolerable if uniformity is imposed by the exclusion of private practice.
While the Conservative social welfare record has been better in the last decade it has still not been remarkable. Save with his pensions scheme Sir Keith Joseph managed to achieve no more than amelioration within the system he inherited, principally by providing incomes for some disabled people. The Conservatives certainly spent too much effort on administrative reform, and too little on principle: indeed, it may well be the case that the amalgamation of all welfare ministries within one giant department, a scheme first mooted by the Conservatives and carried into effect by Labour, was — like the Seebohm reforms which similarly amalgamated local authority social work departments — mistaken, whatever the changes within the various professional areas which seemed to encourage it. If the Conservatives are usefully to employ their time in opposition they must, apart from attacking the more severe ravages inflicted on the unfortunate by doctrinaire Labour ministers, apply themselves systematically to redressing the balance between individual and state provision, and individual choice and liberty, which once dignified, and presently bids to ruin, the Welfare State.
It will not be enough, as it seemed it was in 1970, to have new policies for individual areas, and to leave others to carry on as before. The duty of the Opposition is now to look 'again at the Welfare State as a whole; to decide how much provision they will feel able to offer the people in their next manifesto, and the principles on which that provision will be based; and to educate the electorate to accept what is possible. It is a daunting task, so far and wide has expectation gone. The only cynical consideration is that the Labour Government may, by the time of the next election, have done so much damage to welfare, and imposed so inconsiderate and stifling a bureaucracy, that expectations will be sufficiently depressed for people to accept an intelligent alternative.
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