Inequality, 21st century enlightenment and the RSA
I started the day at a seminar held by Demos under the auspices of its Progressive Policy Forum. The seminar was worth attending for a background paper by Jonty Olliff-Cooper usefully summarising dimensions of equality and the impact of the Labour government.
In summary the findings are:
• Income inequality has stayed broadly neutral. This is the consequence of labour market effects which appear to drive higher inequality being cancelled out by redistribution by the Government. Most other developed countries have experienced rising inequality over the last two decades.
• Increases in public spending have reduced inequality. As the paper states: ‘benefits in kind (such as health, education, transport and housing) more than double the average post-tax income of the bottom 20 percent of households’. In some policy areas, for example turning round failing schools or investing in deprived areas, Labour has particularly targeted public services for the poorest so this redistributive effect may be even greater.
• Inequality in wealth has grown markedly partly as a by-product of income inequality but also because of house price inflation.
Looking forward, the picture is mixed at best. Tax changes currently being implemented will increase redistribution but labour market effects (in the context of higher unemployment) may continue to drive inequality. Despite all the blather about ‘efficiency savings’, public sector spending cuts are likely to impact more severely on poorer people. In relation to wealth, there are proposals from the Conservatives to reduce inheritance tax and from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives to cut back on the Child Trust Fund (a policy explicitly aimed at giving all adults a start in generating their own financial assets).
The other dimensions of this morning’s conversation were around public attitudes to inequality. The Equality and Human Rights Commission have undertaken focus groups which confirm a persistent finding from similar studies. The public is not particularly interested in equality as a policy goal but is much more exercised by what philosophers call ‘procedural justice’ – this is the idea of fairness in relation to the application of rules. So, if people are asked what is most unfair in society they are less likely to say poverty and exclusion and more to talk about illegal immigration and benefit cheating.
Which led me to make a link with a phenomenon I have mentioned before on this site. This is the contrast between our exaggerated sense of personal agency and our diminished sense of social agency. Poll after poll shows we tend to think that we, our family, and even our neighbourhood will do fine in the future but that society is falling apart.
There is, it seems to me, a parallel when it comes to fairness and morality. We are forgiving of ourselves, of our families and our friends but much harsher and more judgemental about strangers. We are like agony aunts when it comes to the frailties of our families and like Sun editorials when it comes to the weaknesses of strangers.
I believe that 21st century enlightenment requires us to reduce (even if we can never close) the intellectual and empathic gap between the personal and the social. If this is to happen it will be in organisations (workplaces, charities, community associations) as these exist between the personal and the social.
An important function of progressive organisations is to provide spaces which allow us to bring personal feelings of agency and empathy into alignment with our social imagination. Combining ideas, social research and civic innovation, the RSA could and should be such an organisation.
Family, character and class – the Cameron view
Our Trustees’ AwayDay (which was neither away nor a day, but very useful nevertheless) having finished, I find myself with a rare opening in my diary. How better to fill it than reading David Cameron’s speech on character and parenting delivered yesterday at Demos.
And what a fascinating speech it is. I hope it justifies this long post.
Let me start with some of the things I really liked about it.
It has a strong core narrative. It isn’t just a list of facts or sound bites. It is genuinely interesting. A couple of points made me pause, just to let them sink in. Like this for example:
‘ Commercialisation and the culture of children’s rights means that children are treated like adults while a great knot of rules and regulations and over-the-top bureaucratic nonsense means that increasingly adults are treated like children. With a culture of suspicion and paranoia that is increasingly preventing adults from even interacting with young people. We can’t go on like this. It’s time we gave children back their childhood and got adults to behave like adults’.
There was also a reassuring recognition of past mistakes
‘This is relatively new territory for the Conservative Party. In the past we’ve been guilty of giving the impression that to build a responsible society, all we needed was freedom for the individual plus a strong rule of law from the state. We didn’t talk enough about what happened in between.’
There were also elements which showed that the modern Conservative Party is willing to support policies previous Tories might have ruled out on principle. For example:
• Extra spending commitments: Sure Start, Health Visitors, a National Citizen Service for Young People, and the implicit cost of delivering on the pledge to let head teachers expel pupils unilaterally (Referral Units are very expensive).
• Criticism of the media: ‘The media needs to show some restraint as well. The premature sexualisation of our children has already gone way too far. There is way too much arbitrary violence in the lives of children too young to understand irony or fantasy. Businesses have got to understand that parents don’t like it and want it to stop’
• And a willingness to regulate when it is needed even where this adds burdens to business:
‘we’ll introduce Flexible Parental Leave, meaning both parents can share the responsibilities of caring for a new baby’
‘we’ll extend the right to request flexible working to all parents with a child under eighteen’
The speech also put meat on the bones of the Tory approach to decentralisation. On the one hand, Mr Cameron argues, both for schools and for Sure Start, that there are some practices that clearly work better than others, that services must be held to account for their effectiveness and that there should be more use of payment by results. On the other hand, he argues for more diverse provision (particularly more use of the not for profit sector) in running schools and Sure Start services.
This underlines a model which decentralises governance and ownership (so local services are not part of national or local bureaucracies) but, arguably, increases central prescription over the content of the service provided. Assuming they win power, it will be interesting to see whether the Conservatives can pull off this balancing act.
I was less convinced by the section of the speech on the foundations of good character. Mr Cameron is clearly very excited by the idea that it is parenting not class that matters:
‘I believe that this research produced recently by Demos is truly ground-breaking. It shows that the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by “confident and able” parents.
For those who care about fairness and inequality, this is one of the most important findings in a generation. It would be over the top to say that it is to social science what E=MC2 was to physics, but I think it is a real ‘sit up and think’ moment. That discovery defined the laws of relativity; this one is the new law for social mobility:
What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting’.
Wow – Richard Reeves as Einstein (not that I’m jealous, of course!). High praise indeed. The problem, I think, is that the evidence doesn’t quite make the point being argued by the Conservative leader. This is because his final rhetorical flourish conflates two arguments:
- If you have a good upbringing it can largely cancel out the effects of poverty
- You are much more likely to have a good upbringing if your family does not live in poverty.
The policy question is not whether Government should encourage good parenting (of course it should, and, to be fair, the current Labour Government has massively expanded parenting provision) it is, first, whether policy can significantly increase the proportion of poor families who parent successfully, and, second, whether this is a more effective strategy than simply trying to reduce the number of families in poverty.
Mr Cameron appears to acknowledge this when he says a few paragraphs later:
‘Successful parenting style in wealthier families occurs not because these people are intrinsically better, or that they love their children more. It is because with poverty can come a host of other problems that make parenting more difficult. Worse schools, higher crime, bad housing. Unemployment. Problems with alcohol and drugs. Mental health conditions. The wearying grind of worry about debt. Higher crime, bad housing. Unemployment. Problems with alcohol and drugs. Mental health conditions’
But this paragraph is hard to reconcile with the earlier statement (which is worth repeating):
‘What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting’
This I suspect is the take-out line, the one that shows the core philosophy and reassures the Party activist, rather than the more nuanced elaboration a few paragraphs later.
This impression is underlined by two further points. First, I hear (perhaps someone can confirm) that in questioning Mr Cameron rejected the idea that Government should see reducing statistical inequality as an objective of policy (which directly contradicts something I heard David Willetts say at a Bow Group meeting we both addressed last year). And the fact that Mr Cameron repeatedly praises the Demos work while pointedly ignoring its most uncomfortable finding for the Conservatives, which is that marital status does not seem to be a significant variable in successful parenting.
So this is a powerful, interesting and at times incisive speech (how often can we say that about political offerings?). It also confirms the impression that as more policy clarity is demanded and as the public spending sums get harder, the Cameron blend of progressive and traditional Conservative ideas may be gradually tilting towards the latter.
Discuss …
A question of character?
The long awaited Demos pamphlet on character is causing much debate. The think tank’s argument is that parenting, through the way it shapes character, is the most important determinant of a child’s life chances. The parenting style which Demos characterises as ‘tough love’ is the one most associated with good life outcomes, while both ‘authoritarian’ and ‘disengaged’ styles are much less successful.
When it comes to policy recommendations, Demos argues for greater clarity, investment and evaluation in relation to parenting and early years services. In particular, the authors argue for services to target resources at the psychologically vulnerable children who, research shows, would benefit most from the right form of parenting.
This is interesting stuff and it is hard to disagree with the findings. Those on the left will like the recognition that socialisation is vital to shaping life chances, which justifies investment and intervention in family life. On the right there will be enthusiasm for the idea that it is parental responsibility not just socio-economics that shapes children’s outcomes (although the Conservatives will not be pleased to see the pamphlet rejecting the suggestion that the marital status of parents is an important independent variable).
While welcoming the report and the debate it has opened, I have some reservations.
I am not sure how useful is the concept of ‘character’. It implies, first, that all the good personality attributes the pamphlet links to successful outcomes always go together in a single bundle: you’ve either got it or you haven’t. Second, while correctly highlighting the importance of our psychological predispositions and early-years socialisation, it is not clear to me whether character is an attribute of our programming or our decision making. If you are born happy, have great parenting and then go on to live a life of self interested middle class complacency, do you have better or worse character than the deeply troubled and disadvantaged individual who manages to survive or even to use their own experiences to help others? As my grandmother used to say to me ‘only cowards can be truly brave’.
No one can deny the importance of parenting and the early years; indeed over its twelve years in office Labour has dramatically increased investment in this stage of life. But we mustn’t move from this to a kind of individualistic determinism in which each person’s life chances are seen as laid down for ever by the combination of their psychological inheritance and experience of parenting.
In my annual lecture I quoted American scientists Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowler, authors of ‘Connected – The Surprising Power of Social Networks’:
‘ social influence does not end with the people we know. If we affect our friends, and they affect their friends, then our actions can potentially affect people we have never met. We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend gained weight, you gained weight. We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend stopped smoking, you stopped smoking. And we discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend became happy, you became happy’.
Just as research on the impact of the early years builds up, so does evidence of the importance of social networks and norms in shaping behaviour.
Perhaps the most interesting question, and one only touched on so far by Demos’ work, is how can social networks support parents in doing a better job? This takes us into some difficult issues about cultural norms. Effective intervention will be as much about community development as public service provision. But unless we are to have an incredibly intrusive state, communities themselves will need to find better ways of encouraging and supporting good parenting.
Progressive Conservatism: some questions
I have been asked by Demos to write a 500 word essay outlining any reservations I might have about the progressive Conservative project of Team Cameron. This is my first draft (the whole thing has to be in by close of play tomorrow). I have decided to take a broad view rather than focussing on specific policy issues. As always I know I can rely on stimulating feedback and advice from my readers…..
“ The essence of the new progressivism lies in reconciling a recognition of the importance of social justice and cohesion to individual human autonomy and well-being (an idea associated with the centre left) with the view that social progress is best pursued through the voluntary actions of individuals and associations rather than the well intentioned, but often counter productive, interventions of the central state (an idea associated with the centre right).
I take this to be what is meant by ‘progressive ends through Conservative means’. But it is a difficult balancing act, especially in Government; aspiring to radical change but being circumspect in the use of the most concrete and immediate instruments of change available to ministers.
This is why the coherence of contemporary Conservative thought is of importance – not only to commentators and policy wonks. Under the pressure of office it would be all too easy for a Conservative administration to abandon its social ambitions and enthusiasm for localism and civic action, instead reverting to a Thatcherite ‘strong state, free market’ model of modernisation.
Passing over the glaring gap in Conservative thinking concerning the UK’s relations with the rest of the world, there are three areas in which we need greater clarity about the Cameron project.
First, Conservatives need to be clearer about the state of society as they see it. The exaggerated talk of ‘broken Britain’ may work with a section of our beleaguered print media but it serves to confuse rather than enlighten. A thoughtful analysis would recognise not only that as many aspects of society are getting better are as getting worse (which is obvious), but would appreciate that the changes we welcome are often linked to those we bemoan. Take these examples: greater home ownership tends to increase the social exclusion of those who cannot afford to buy; rising participation in higher education has been achieved, in part, by making it easier for more students to meet the requirements for entry (a process generally referred to by Conservatives as ‘dumbing down’). It may be possible, partially and over time, to solve these and other conundrums but only if we see them as real and recognise that at some level there will be trade-offs to be made.
Second, we need to understand how the Conservative state will work. While one group of Conservatives talks about the importance of devolving power and building capacity in communities, another group – focussed on the coming public spending challenge – suggests centralised and technocratic solutions to state inefficiency. There is much talk of the state fostering civic initiative, much less convincing is the account of how this is to be done; a particular challenge is those areas (for example suburban social housing estates) which lack a ready supply of talented social entrepreneurs.
Third, how serious are the Conservatives about changing the way we do politics? This isn’t merely about new ways of configuring Whitehall, or new modes of communication (important though those are) it is about fundamental change to the anachronistic and destructive culture of political decision making. Arguably, this is the most important challenge, for how are the public to appreciate difficult trade offs, or to accept the variations in service levels and greater civic responsibilities that come with genuine decentralisation unless they engage constructively with decision makers?
The Tories have a small window of opportunity to change the terms of trade between politicians and citizens. Unless they take that opportunity they will face the same disconnect that has increasingly bedevilled Labour in government.”
Purpose, governance and engagement – why third sector organisations must face the big questions
(A short blog today as it’s already late, it’s Monday and I had some really good comments over the weekend so have already spent an hour on my site!)
We had an interesting session here this morning with a range of people from third sector organisations discussing issues around legitimacy, accountability and public value. The discussion deserves a fuller report but I’ll leave that to Katherine Hudson (who has promised to comment on this post).
Having listened to a wide ranging presentation from Indy Johar of Architecture00 and Joost Beunderman from Demos, and to the case study outlined by Dick Penny who runs the Bristol Watershed Media Centre I suggested that – in thinking about their public value – third sector organisations need to examine three distinct issues:
• Purpose and methods – what are we for and how do we work?
• Governance – how, and to whom, are we accountable?
• Engagement – how do we connect to the people we are supposed to serve?
When organisations are first created the three questions have one answer but through a process of organisational entropy the answers start to diverge. In many organisations (and I have to admit the RSA is sometimes one) the long standing formal structures of accountability can actually impede wider engagement. Other organisations may have gone through major changes in their aims and methods without being sure what this means for how they are governed or how they engage (this is Watershed’s issue).
As I said in a recent blog about membership organisations, many new charities are being set up with minimalist governance structures (akin to a private company). This doesn’t mean they don’t want to consult, engage or be answerable – just that they don’t see this being assisted by a cumbersome or quasi democratic internal governance.
But if a charity or social enterprise is having an impact, if it is receiving public money or acting with a public mandate, isn’t it important that it has robust governance? If an organisation has a long history where do today’s managers and Trustees get the authority to reform that mission?
These are tough questions. They lie behind some of the governance reforms we are putting in place here at the RSA. For too many organisations reforming, and seeking to align governance, purpose and engagement, feels like too much hard and distracting work. But a failure to examine, to modernise and to align will sooner or later undermine any organisation.
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