10 Comments on On one (or more) condition…

Nicholas Beecroft on Mon, 2nd Jan 2012 2:56 pm


Hi Matthew, that’s a coincidence as I was debating this as you were writing it.
I agree. I think that we’ve industrialised and bureaucratised welfare in the same way that we have everything else. So we’ve lost the human level feedback and natural regulation which is inherent in relationships. Ie if we depended on family, friends and local community for benefits, then it would necessarily involve dialogue, discretion, judgement, feedback. Entitlement, irresponsibility and victim culture are only possible when welfare is seen as a giant abstract breast in the sky which we all have a “right” upon which to suck. There is a natural discipline that comes through authentic relationships which we need to reclaim from industrialised bureaucracy.
I’d like to see our benefits system be genuinely empowering and growing human potential and encouraging healthy society. I’d like it to be fair to those who pay for it, especially those whose living standards are pretty much the same as those who they support.

Ian Christie on Mon, 2nd Jan 2012 6:18 pm


Happy New Year, and thanks for this thoughtful post.
The key point here is that conditionality is not a feature of an individualised transaction but of a reciprocal relational process. Moreover, it can be argued in the light of this that the simple pairing of entitlement/obligation or rights/responsibility doesn’t do justice to the process we are concerned with. I may well need additional support or enforcement of a right in order to be in a position to fulfil an obligation and meet a responsibility. In the system developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, I need to be supported in my capabilities for flourishing if I am to enjoy an entitlement and be able to meet obligations attached to it. For more on this see my 1999 book for Demos with G Mensah-Coker, An Inclusive Future?, on disability and possibilities for new approaches to welfare and livelihood..

AndrewPercy on Mon, 2nd Jan 2012 6:59 pm


There is a relationship between peace and wealth, and we are rightfully aware of an entitlements system’s awkward position within that framework.
The root of the dislocation is method not the purpose. We intend to maintain peacefull and effective societies because they are highly productive, but the support we aim to provide is illconceived as a set of monetary benefits. The use of financial tools to satisfy social needs distorts the operation of markets and social behaviour.
A properly sustainable modern economy requires a highly functional modern society to operate within and this conundrum is resolved not by conditionality, but rather by appropriate tool selection.
Unconditional, non-monetary social support is the key.
See http://www.standardsoflife.org/sustainable_economics

Happy 2012!

Peter Roberts on Tue, 3rd Jan 2012 10:26 am


One wonders if this is the easiest approach, Matthew. Health professionals could spend tens of millions of hours telling the population not to smoke, not eat much sugar, not eat too much fat, avoid processed food & food polluted with pesticides and other dangerous chemicals, drink ‘sensibly’ and take the risk of losing their benefits by refusing to take dangerous or stressful jobs. An alternative would be to legislate against the companies who create and market all the problems in the first place. Both approaches would interfere with the ‘invisible hand’. Tackling the causes of the problems at source would be an awful lot cheaper, more effective and more moral though.

matthew taylor on Tue, 3rd Jan 2012 2:10 pm


Thanks for these thoughtful comments folks. As I say this is work in progress so ideas and references are very helpful

Edward Harkins FRSA on Tue, 3rd Jan 2012 9:57 pm


I’m sure you will have seen this week the Gruniad article, ‘Labour urges radical rethink on welfare’, but I thought it helpful to make sure that visitors to this discussion were aware of it. In the article the UK Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne argued that under Labour the UK Benefits system lost connection with contributory principles.

It generated some pretty lively letters to the editor:

Article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/02/labour-tough-line-on-welfare?INTCMP=SRCH
Responses:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/03/insult-to-memory-of-beveridge?INTCMP=SRCH

Indy Neogy on Thu, 5th Jan 2012 11:04 pm


Thanks to Edward for posting those links, I find it heartening that I’m not the only one to note that “conditionality” around unemployment only makes moral sense when you have some kind of commitment to full employment.

Thank you Matthew for making the point about sticks and carrots in the system. I fear too often the system is imagined as “like taking candy from a baby.” There are abuses and successful frauds, but for the average person, welfare is not a simple system.

Worth noting in passing that the more complex we make the system, the harder to navigate, then the more time and attention it demands from participants. Time and attention they don’t get to put into finding a job. And many of the “employability” schemes do not help, they simply waste time. Perhaps this is an area the RSA could research? Like drug rehabilitation, one suspects a holistic approach is needed.

On talking and nudging.. I have some relatives in the medical profession and they seem to always make it a point to talk about healthier lifestyles. However, they also acknowledge that for many people, the information and interest seems to make little impact on (for example) alcohol or food consumption. Smoking on the other hand has seen some changes over 30 years or so – but it was backed up by a huge public health campaign, including advertising and regulation and taxation.

I suspect we need to admit that certain kinds of behaviour change are very hard and it’s a long slog – we need to commit to it if we really believe in it.

Edward Harkins FRSA on Fri, 6th Jan 2012 11:46 am


Indy there is indeed a fascinating theme around how come we cut smoking rates so much, but have less success with alcohol and diet. One of the successes of post devolution Scotland is that these issues, that so scar Scotland’s health outcomes, are being vigorously addressed now. The problems remain, however, sticky and wicked.

Especially impressive researchers and collators on these matters include, for me, the Glasgow Centre for Population & Health, and Scotland’s nationwide Public Health Information Network (PHINS)

At the recent annual gathering of PHINS in Glasgow, some arresting facts about smoking came out. For example, and despite the tobacco lobby (with the collateral support of the likes of sometime Health Minister ‘Doctor’ Reid), there has been significant and sustained success in cutting the overall rate of smoking in Scotland. Perhaps surprisingly, the death rate from smoking related disease, notwithstanding the cutting, has remained stubbornly at about the same level. I have my own theory on that but would take up too much space here.

On success in cutting, I suggest that the successes on drink driving, car seat belts and smoking all had an element in common. The common element was success in campaigners inditing the activity as not solely a matter of personal choice – rather it was an anti-social and maybe even sociopathic activity that injured or killed other users, bystanders or passive, but unwilling, recipients. On the hardest-won success on smoking, the need for extensive and effective, but expensive, support that you touch on, has been crucial.

Alcohol is still probably the most fearsome challenge for Scotland. I have much hope for the outcomes from the SNP Scottish Government’s brave stand on imposing minimum alcohol pricing. Once again there is a well-resourced industry lobby or lobbies, and some weasel words and actions from some political quarters where the individuals concerned ought to know better.

Peter Roberts on Fri, 6th Jan 2012 2:00 pm


A few musings.

Conditionality is about making conditions. The conditions can always be rejected but then the benefit is lost. Power lies with the person or organization that can impose the conditions. ‘Stick and carrot’ is not the language of reciprocal relationships.

Many or most recipients will accept reasonable conditions that increase the human capital of themselves or their children or social capital generally but we seem to have returned to a time when our leaders, their bureaucrats, professionals and the (rest of the) public were perfectly happy to impose conditions on the poor and/or sick anyway. Some people feel they should do this because they know better but I assume others actually believe the constant messages that the poor and sick are work-shy scroungers that would spend their benefits on cigarettes, booze and drugs when they are not busy procreating or out on the nick.

Most professionals still think they know best. Matthew’s comment that ‘following medical advice is crucial to our health’ suggests that maybe he thinks so too. Most health and social care, however, is carried out by women, unpaid, within the family or ‘tribe’. Medical professionals, clean water, sewers and regulating the sale of dangerous or adulterated drugs, food & drink are only part of the equation. Health can only be co-produced. To claim benefit in Mexico a mother must attend workshops on nutrition and disease prevention so to some extent the government there understands this but the conditionality only extends to them being taught, not told how to behave.

The harm to other people of any action is indeed crucial. When an action causes harm to oneself only, the liberal argument would be that nobody else has any right to interfere. Where remedial treatment involves the use of resources the morality may change but that alone is no reason to impose conditions. As the pro-smoking lobby has correctly (!) argued for some time, a person’s NI contributions over their lifetime and any taxes / duties imposed must also be taken into account.

—

On ‘lifestyle choices’ too few people seem willing to appreciate that drug, alcohol and nicotine addiction seldom involves a choice except on Day 1. Other ‘choices’ don’t seem much like choices to the people concerned. Most mums really don’t want their children to grow up wheezing, unable to see their own genitals and then pre-deceasing them. People feed their children what they can afford, what they think or are told is good for them, what they know from experience they like and will eat and what they know how to cook or prepare.

Peter Roberts on Fri, 6th Jan 2012 4:12 pm


The last point related to children. Another relates to what adults choose to put into their bodies – and I’m happy to say it doesn’t involve any nudging.

Our genes have a major effect on what we enjoy / crave and most of us seem pretty much programmed to eat fat, sugar and salt and enjoy certain drugs. What we actually do varies in response to education (we used to teach nutrition and cooking in British schools…), past experience, social / peer pressures and the efforts of producers and retailers to make us use their products.

Manufacturers know very well what we are pre-programmed to like and tweek their products to make us like them more. Private companies – like drug dealers – are not interested in public health, they are only interested in profit. The government is happy to finance a ‘war’ against drug producers and dealers but wouldn’t dream of legislating against the manufacturers of the salt, fat and sugar-filled foods and drinks that are causing the current public health disaster. I’d settle for some tax changes but do wonder how many billions of pounds could be saved and lives saved or transformed if the other coke was simply added to the list of Class A drugs.

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