Modernising Social Policy

Unravelling New Labour's Welfare Reforms

Tom Burdon, Charlie Cooper, Steph Petrie

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351734271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000: The 1997 election marked the prospect of a new era in social welfare - the possibility of establishing a third phase in the post-war history of the welfare state (the first being the creation of the Keynesian welfare state, the second the Thatcher/Major neo-liberal reforms). The key aim of this book is to critically explore the options for the future of welfare under New Labour. The welfare state that the government inherited from the Conservatives is widely believed to be in a critical condition. At the same time, there is evidence of widening social inequality in Britain which existing social policy measures fail to address. Whilst acknowledging that future welfare strategies are likely to operate within a market paradigm, the key argument of this book is that welfare providers should operate within a more accountable and democratic environment where service-users have the right to participate in decision-making processes affecting their welfare - regardless of the ability to pay. The book concludes that the dominant discourse shaping social policy in Britain must be recognized and should not be accepted uncritically and that there are very real economic (as well as social) benefits from taking measures to address social disadvantage.

1 The Emergence of ‘New’ Labour

Introduction

The 1997 General Election marked the prospect for a new epoch in British social policy. The British electorate, in thrall for so long to the 'neo-liberal' project of the Conservatives, followed trends elsewhere in Europe in the late 1990s and voted decisively for a new 'centre-left' government. Labour's landslide election victory was the largest in its history. According to some commentators, this turning point offered possibilities for establishing a 'third phase' in the post-war history of the welfare state (the first being the creation of the Keynesian welfare state, the second being the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s). The exultation that greeted Tony Blair's entrance to Downing Street on the morning of 2 May 1997 seemed to represent an extraordinarily deep-rooted sense of relief, shared throughout the nation, as if a huge dark cloud had lifted. Both The Observer (4 May 1997) and New Statesman (May 1997 Election Special), echoing Blair's own pronouncement, proclaimed Labour's victory as heralding the dawn of a 'new era'. This book critically explores this proclamation and considers the reality of, and options for, a new era of social welfare in Britain under New Labour.

The welfare state that the Labour government inherited from the Conservatives was in a critical condition. The National Health Service (NHS) was under strain due to a combination of an ageing population, increasing demand for new and expensive medical technology, and underfunding. The education system was facing numerous difficulties such as increasing school exclusions (even among primary-age children), decaying buildings and poor equipment, and an increasing sense of demoralisation amongst teachers. The nation's housing stock was falling into increasing disrepair; housing affordability, homelessness and rooflessness had become problems for increasing numbers of people. Social inequality was widening, and around one in four children lived below the poverty line. The 'family', increasingly expected to meet the demands of care in the community, faced intense pressures brought about by cut-backs in social services, longer working hours, the risks and fears of unemployment, and poverty. Welfare institutions, no longer able to cope with inequality and ensure access to essential services, had become overseers of a rationed, substandard, residualised service. Social policy in Britain was unable to address these problems because of the perceived need for financial prudence forced on government by globalisation, world competition and voters resistance to tax rises.

Much of the existing material on future prospects for social welfare under New Labour tend to measure the degree to which strands in its thinking reflect 'Old' Labour or neo-liberal social values. Despite their claims to a distinct 'Third Way', provisional verdicts suggest that there is clear policy convergence in some areas between New Labour and the neo-liberals. This is reflected most notably in the continuance of public spending controls and economic prudence, limits to state intervention, welfare to work, voluntarism, and quasi-markets in welfare (Powell 1999). New Labour has also been seen to embrace a particular conservative and conditional brand of communitarianism, characterised by highly moralistic and prescriptive approaches to collective responsibility. In return for collective rights, individuals are bound by duties and obligations (Driver and Martell 1998).

This book takes a different approach to evaluating future prospects for social welfare in Britain by exploring what we call the dominant discourse of welfare. By this we mean the way in which the dominant power interests within discourses construct the welfare subject as a problem to be dealt with by courses of action, created, articulated and put into practice through policy intervention. Social policy intervention is central to the way in which sense is made of our social world. Its constructs reflect and recreate power relationships in society by shaping our understanding of 'reality'. Therefore, it is essential to analyse the discourse of welfare and discursive practices in social policy intervention to fully appreciate how constructed 'abnormality' enshrined in policy enables power interests to achieve legitimacy and maintain the status quo. Discourse limits the space within which policy debates are conducted and agendas are formed, excluding the lived experience of those without power. However, discourses, by their inherent contradictions, can become sites for emancipation, constructing and reconstructing opportunities for new forms of political resistance.

Despite years of state intervention in welfare, governments remain concerned with the question of social cohesion in society, more recently expressed as social exclusion. Our assessment of New Labour's policies to tackle social exclusion leads us to conclude that they are not going to lead to a more inclusive society because they inhabit a policy framework set within the same discourse of welfare that underpinned the policies of Old Labour and the neo-liberals. We show that welfare policies do not take account of the complexity of modern Britain in terms of social diversity and difference. Indeed, we share the view of Hayek in this respect in that governments cannot know enough to plan society according to some grand scheme, since no conceivable plan can truly reflect the complexity of human diversity (Hayek 1975). Because of this, welfare provision is failing to meet the needs and wants of those groups who fail to fit the model of the normalised family central to the policies of both the neo-liberals and New Labour. Social relationships in British society are not constructed around the same social values central to New Labour's agenda. In particular, we believe the language of New Labour is derived from distorted constructions about the welfare subject (defined in New Labour's policies as those likely to become dependent on welfare if not forced to enter the world of 'work').

In order to illustrate this we draw on the work of Leonard (1997) and his attempt to highlight how the dominant discourse of welfare has been significantly constructed by the partial or supplementary discourses of 'work', 'consumption', 'family' and 'sexuality', constructing 'difference' as 'deviance' under the neo-liberals and now, we believe, under New Labour. We question New Labour's attempt at presenting themselves as something 'new'. While they may represent something different (and perhaps better) than the previous neo-liberal government in terms of, for example, their acknowledgement of social exclusion, in respect of their welfare policies we would say they are little different. This is largely because they inhabit the same discourse of welfare as both Old Labour and the neo-liberals and, as a consequence, their policies exacerbate, rather than alleviate, social exclusion.

Moreover, our analysis is concerned with broad changes in the social, economic and cultural fabric of society, and the impact of these on social policy developments. We show that social policy has been used throughout its different phases as part of a welfare discourse, constructed and reconstructed over time as a means of promoting economic priorities and maintaining social order. We demonstrate how policies have become more excluding and that this is the legacy of the British welfare state. We argue for a new era of welfare – one that recognises and acknowledges difference, and encourages new forms of co-operation between divergent interests – that will reverse the growing social divide in British society and bring greater security to the majority.

Before going on to describe the structure and content of this book, the next section will offer a brief description of the emergence of New Labour into British politics.

The emergence of New Labour

New Labour's evolution owes much to Neil Kinnock's own 'modernisation' of the Labour Party following the stinging election defeats of 1983 and 1987. Kinnock's reforms involved both the dilution and abandonment of a number of policies, as well as the rebranding of Labour's presentation style (such as the thornless red rose and US-style electioneering). This effectively led the way for John Smith's and Tony Blair's reconstruction of Labour after the more surprising defeat in the 1992 election. Blair arguably pushed through a more radical agenda of reforms after John Smith, who replaced Kinnock in 1992, died in 1994. It was Blair who introduced the title 'New' Labour alongside the jettisoning of a number of socialist policy objectives on production-in particular, discarding the old Clause 4 on state ownership. This effectively eliminated Old Labour's commitment to Keynesianism, and giving the state a dominant role in stabilising market capitalism in the interests of greater equality and social justice. Blair's 1997 manifesto mirrored the neo-liberal agenda, with no increases in taxation and low inflation alongside stable economic growth key priorities. Blair promised welfare reforms and work schemes, tough policies on crime, and strong families and communities. Still, it had been Old Labour in government that had shifted towards the political right. In 1976, James Callaghan, then Labour Prime Minister, responding to pressure from the International Monetary Fund, announced that the era of tax-and-spend was over (Driver and Martell 1998).

The principles of Old Labour were effectively destroyed in 1983 with the defeat of Michael Foot's election campaign. This defeat had been partly due to the 'Gang of Four' – Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rogers – who broke from Labour in 1981 to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The founders of the SDP were keen to distance themselves from Old Labour prescriptions and embrace the European social market model. Foot's manifesto A New Hope for Britain remained committed to state ownership and economic planning, wealth redistribution, unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC) – a document described by one Labour member as 'the longest suicide note in history' (cited in Powell 1999: 6). Kinnock's succession to Foot was to herald the beginnings of a shift in policy emphasis in the Labour Party. Initially, this was piecemeal, and Old Labour went into the 1987 election retaining plans for nationalisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament. Labour's third election defeat in succession, however, led to a policy review of greater magnitude and Labour effectively inhabiting the 'discourse' of the political right. The language of market competition and economic dynamism, efficiency and effectiveness, while present to some degree in Old Labour thinking, was now to pervade all areas of the party's agenda, marking a distinct shift away from the political economy of socialism and preparing the groundwork for Blair's own 'modernisation' project.

A key milestone in this development was the report of the Commission on Social Justice, published in 1994, which set out a programme for national renewal based largely on investment and education. The report argued that economic opportunity, achieved through education reforms and investment, is the basis of social justice. Statements endorsing any belief in a social insurance system providing for life's risks, or the desirability of promoting collective forms of welfare provision, were absent in the report. The way forward was to encourage individualised forms of private insurance. Quite clearly, the strategy was aimed at winning the vote in the south by enticing Middle Englanders away from the Conservatives through the promise of tax cuts. This required appealing to the values of, and being credible with, the comfortable middle class: the desire to progress in their careers; decent hospitals and schools; and freedom from crime and violence. As Giles Radice and Stephen Pollard wrote in one of a series of Fabian pamphlets published in September 1994:

To be credible, the basic core of Labour's ideas – community, fairness and opportunity – has to be clearly linked to a few key policies such as crime, education, employment and health. Labour has also to demonstrate its economic competence by continuing to emphasise the need to control public spending and to ensure value for money. (Cited in Driver and Martell 1998: 25)

This was to become the Blair project on his succession to the Labour leadership – meeting Labour's core values in new ways. Central to this project is the redistribution of opportunity (rather than income and wealth) in return for people accepting their moral obligations to society. In tandem is the need for sound fiscal policies and keeping public spending under tight control. It is within this context that New Labour's welfare policies are evolving.

Structure and content of the book

The following Chapter Two of the book offers an historical perspective of key ideological positions on welfare, highlighting how different viewpoints came, as a result of key social, political and economic factors, to predominate at different moments in time, influencing the shape and direction of social policy developments. It shows how social policy developments in Britain were largely influenced by two distinct but interconnected bodies of thought: Liberalism (and subsequently, neo-liberalism) and Fabian socialism. Both perspectives were committed to the aim of perpetuating capitalism. They differed, however, on how this might best be achieved.

This approach represents one way of understanding the making of social policy, and how policies and their effects mirror the interaction of power relationships in society. It is also one that relies heavily on the belief that social policy is driven by ideology, and policy outcomes largely reflect the interests of those groups whose ideological stance gains predominance at particular moments in history. From this perspective, social policy is functional for the particular material interests of specific groups. It is, however, an approach embedded in the 'modernist' tradition, and does not fully explain why some policies either fail to deliver their expected outcomes or, indeed, exacerbate the condition they aim to alter.

Therefore, in Chapter Three, we offer a different understanding of how social relationships are mediated through social policy intervention. We do this by examining the dominant discourse of welfare, by which we mean how individuals and groups come to be marginalised and excluded through the construction of 'abnormality' and, thus by inference, the construction of what is 'normal' and therefore desirable. Thus, as social policies become more prescriptive, the more the 'normalised' state dominates, with no space or legitimacy for ways of living that are 'Other than' the 'normal'. This leads us to argue that policies need to be developed within a different context, within a discourse of welfare that includes diverse agendas, diverse needs and varied ways of being, articulated and defined by individuals and groups themselves. This requires a new role for social welfare, one that facilitates dialogue and recognises contextuality. Effectively, a role that allows discursive practices to be fluid and relational by exposing and challenging the processes of exclusion and oppression, and encouraging active participation in policy making and implementation.

In Chapters Four to Eight, we apply this framework of understanding to what have been described as the five pillars of welfare in Britain-health, education, housing, income maintenance and family policy. The aim is to highlight how the discourse of welfare constructs the 'abnormal' and, thus, the 'normalised state', through the supplementary discourses of 'work', 'consumption', 'family' and 'sexuality'. Chapter Nine concludes by drawing together the threads of these analyses in a critique of New Labour policies. We question New Labour's claim that it has a new and distinctive project, one that represents a fundamental break with both Old Labour and the neo-liberals, and see instead the continuities rather than the ruptures with the past. In particular, New Labour continue to pathologise social problems by constructing 'normality' in a way that serves to objectify and exclude those individuals and groups whose lived experience is different. What is needed is a 'new' way of deconstructing this process of exclusion, and reflecting on its effect. Only then can we hope that welfare discursive practices, including policies, will become more inclusive.

References

Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1998) New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Hayek, F. (1975) 'The Principles of a Liberal Social Order', in A. de Crespigny and J. Cronin (eds.) Ideologies of Politics, Oxford University Press, Capetown.

Leonard. P. (1997) Postmodern Welfare: Reconstructing an Emancipatory Project, Sage, London.

Powell, M. (ed.) (1999), New Labour, New Welfare State? The 'third way' in British social policy, The Policy Press, Bristol.

2 The Development of Social Policy

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide the necessary background to understanding the current situation in the development of social policy. In order to do this the first part of the chapter will examine some significant features of the historical development of social policy that culminated in the mature welfare state of the post-war period. The second part of the chapter will look at a range of critiques, from both left and right, that developed as the conditions which sustained the post-war welfare state broke down in the 1970s.

Key phases of social policy development

The perspective employed in the account of the development of social policy which is given in the first part of this chapter is based on a Marxist approach. In this approach emphasis is given to the impact of the development of capitalism on policy. Particular attention is paid to the role of class conflict and to the balance of class forces in society. This approach highlights the way in which ruling groups represent powerful capitalist interests. There is a focus on how power is used to secure order and to ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 The Emergence of 'New' Labour
• 2 The Development of Social Policy
• 3 'Welfare' Perspectives
• 4 Health Policies
• 5 Education Policies
• 6 Housing Policies
• 7 Income Maintenance Policies
• 8 'Family' Policies
• 9 'Modernising' Welfare
• Index