Involunteering – a step too far?
The panellists on Radio 4’s Moral Maze are asked to suggest possible debate topics for the next programme. I am trying to persuade the team that we should look at the idea of the long term unemployed being required to do voluntary work. I have a strong instinctive reaction to this proposal and I’m keen to explore whether it (the proposal and my reaction) is justified.
There is, in my view, no problem at all with conditionality in the welfare system. If people are getting out of work benefits paid for by the taxpayer then it is reasonable that they should be expected to look for employment or take a job that is on offer. This is what the public wants and it is important to maintaining public support for the welfare system. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that many unemployed people come retrospectively to value the structure placed in their lives by requirements to attend meetings with job advisors, compile CVs and attend interviews.
But I feel much more uneasy about a compulsion to do voluntary work. If conditionality is already being applied to a claimant and they are continuing to receive benefits, then we have to accept that the person involved is not to blame for their unemployment. (It is important to recognise that conditionality rules can and are being strictly applied with new and some existing claimants with quite severe disabilities being required to search for and take jobs.)
By all means encourage and support such a person to use their free time in ways which are self-improving and useful (and I would and indeed have encouraged friends of mine out of work to volunteer) but to make the right to subsistence dependent on doing good works is, to me, a step too far. It means we are placing extra citizenship obligations on people simply because they are unfortunate.
The counter argument might say that if unemployed people have time on their hands why shouldn’t they be expected to use it for social benefit. One problem is that this means the state adjudicating on what social benefit means. A paid job is a paid job regardless of its content but if an unemployed person uses their days to tend their allotment or spend more time with their family is this more or less useful than cleaning the local canal? Also, if we are applying this principle to the unemployed, why not also to pensioners? If you are receiving a state pension (not to mention the winter fuel allowance, free bus pass etc) then why shouldn’t you be required to use your retirement for social purpose, perhaps, say, providing mandatory childcare for grand children?
There are other problems too. Unwilling, unskilled people require a lot of supervision and this is expensive. The very idea of compulsory good works is problematic. I suggest a new word for the dictionary ‘involunteer’- somebody who is compelled by the state to do unpaid work. Those of us promoting the idea of a Big Society may worry that it will be tarnished if it is associated with chain gangs.
But the main objection is about rights and liberty. How odd that a Coalition which has commendably argued for the state to be less interfering and intrusive to demand that the right to a basic income should be conditional on poor people adhering to a governmental definition of good citizenship.
Inequality, Big Society, professional unemployment and other ‘lite bites’
Yesterday’s full English breakfast of a post on public service reform hasn’t elicited too many responses. I had promised to elaborate on some of its themes but I feel now like an over keen dinner party host trilling from the kitchen that ‘there’s plenty more if anyone wants seconds’ – impervious to the sound of the dog munching away at the firsts it has been surreptitiously fed by desperate guests.
So here instead are a few tasty titbits:
What shall we do with the redundant consultants?
First, a call for ideas: the news that the Sustainable Development Commission is to join the growing list of doomed quangos means that there will be even more intelligent people with skills in the general area of research, evaluation, communication and co-ordination coming into what is already a massively overcrowded market. There are thousands more people wanting to be consultants at just the time when public sector demand for consultants is likely to dive. So what is to become of these people? Is there some kind of link to the problem of who is going to organise the Big Society in disadvantaged communities. What kind of incentives might be used to encourage some of these talented, public spirited, professionals to offer their skills freely or very cheaply?
Can the Big Society get out of the Moral Maze?
Those who are interested in the Big Society debate – and the splendid Tessy Britton has about thirty people involved in an on-line conversation – may want to tune into the Moral Maze tonight (Radio 4 eight o’clock), which is exploring the Prime Minister’s big idea. Given the politics of the other panellists I suspect that for the purposes of the programme I may be press ganged into being a Big Society sceptic. But, however I perform, there are some great witnesses, including the ubiquitous Phillip Blond and Nick Pearce, the deeply wise former head of the Number Ten policy unit.
Agreeing to differ
Tomorrow we are hosting a debate between, on the one hand, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett authors of ‘The Spirit Level’ with its argument that inequality screws up the whole of society and, on the other, researchers commissioned by the right of centre think tank, Policy Exchange, who say the whole thesis is deeply flawed.
In my role as chair I will be attempting to achieve what I described in last year’s annual lecture as a ‘transcendent’ moment in debate; when it is possible to identity what it is people actually disagree about. This in my experience is very rare as most political and policy debate comprises people making erroneous allegations about what the other side thinks. So I am hoping for more light than heat tomorrow. But given that supporters of both sides have apparently been rallying their troops it’s not going to be easy.
Climate change – excuse my ignorance
I have been getting so little response to my posts just recently that I thought I would write one that is bound to elicit a loud response (while I will also be pondering whether it is time to hang up my blogging boots).
The backlash against the stupid and unethical behaviour of climate scientists at East Anglia University, the shot across David Cameron’s green bows by former shadow cabinet member David Davis in The Telegraph this morning, and the Daily Express’ championing of highly controversial climate change sceptic Ian Plimer are all signs of a growing tide.
I had already begun to notice that among Conservative friends of mine the theory of anthropogenic climate change now ranks with the European Union as a subject that merely has to be mentioned to elicit a hostile reaction. Although the Tory front bench remains strongly committed to the need for a concerted action on climate change, at the level of party activists and political opinion formers a clear left right gap is emerging. At the recent Conservative conference the loudest applause on the fringe went to the sceptical views eloquently expressed by Lord Lawson.
The problem with knowing how to respond is that 99% of us have neither the time nor the expertise to make our decision based purely on the science. People with strong opinions throw around their favourite statistics claiming their views are scientifically based but this usually tells you much more about who these people are inclined to trust than what the facts say.
Maybe it would be better for the debate if more of us owned up to how much we rely on hunch, trust and selecting certain facts as the ones we intuitively feel are the most important. At the risk of sounding naive and feeble minded, let me try to be honest about what drives my views.
My starting point is two facts which I don’t think are disputed: first that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and second that human activity is leading to much more of it being pumped into the atmosphere, with much more to come if we don’t find alternative ways of generating and using energy. Furthermore I find it hard to see why the overwhelming majority of scientists – from a whole variety of perspectives and disciplines – would sign up to the climate change thesis if there weren’t very good reasons to do so.
There seem to be two questions that cause the biggest quasi-scientific controversy. First, has there been major climate change in the past unrelated to human emissions and if so does this invalidate the IPCC thesis? Second, what is actually happening to the climate now and how can we predict what will happen in the future on the basis of assumptions about the link between human-caused emissions and temperatures.
On the first of these I think we should beware the argument that just because there was an unexplained correlation in the past, or even that a correlation doesn’t work perfectly, that it doesn’t exist. The fact that some people get lung cancer having never smoked doesn’t disprove the link. Equally, while a football team may have had an inexplicable bad run in the past doesn’t mean its present bad run can’t rightly be put at the door of its manager.
On the issues of climate trends and scenarios, I accept the precautionary principle (whilst not believing this is a principle that should be applied in all situations of risk). There are enough reasons to think rising emissions could drive accelerating warming to conclude it is not an experiment we should conduct if we can avoid it.
Finally, I believe that we can adjust to a low carbon economy without having to massively hamper other goals such as global economic development; not because we are all happy to become vegetarians and live in yurts but because a combination of changes in consumption, clever regulation and technological innovation can do the trick, and at the same time help us deal with the problem of the finite supply of carbon based energy.
As I read this back I know it lacks the certainty and authority with which so many non- scientists speak on this subject. I am discussing this issue on the Moral Maze tonight and I know I will probably – and not for the first time - be the most wishy- washy voice. But given that the overwhelming majority of us who will be affected by the decision on climate policy maybe it is useful to explore basic arguments at a level accessible to a busy layperson.
David, meet Michael
I spent some time yesterday evening with David Willetts, Shadow Secretary of State for Universities and Skills. I am a fan of David’s, finding him thoughtful, open minded and progressive. Indeed he was the respondent I chose for my second annual lecture. But having heard David speak about his views of higher education I wonder whether I should introduce him to another impressive Tory politician, Michael Gove. It is far from clear to me that they share the same world view.
Last night, at the dinner we were both attending, several people criticised the Government’s target of 50% of your people going into higher education. But David was eloquent in his support for the expansion of HE, even while recognising that levels of participation had gone up faster than levels of attainment. As well as saying that university has many advantages for young people in addition to gaining qualifications, he pointed out that the expansion had largely been in vocational areas and that about two out of three people at university are studying for a degree necessary for them to enter their career of choice. He also explicitly rejected the notion that the new degrees being taught in new universities were in ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects.
This was music to my ears. At almost exactly the same time David was making his point at the dinner, I was using a very similar argument on this week’s Radio 4 Moral Maze.
But how are we to square David’s view with the thrust of Michael Gove’s lecture here last June. In referring to universities in his speech, the Conservative education spokesman spoke exclusively about the view of the elite Russell Group. He argued strongly against what he clearly saw as Mickey Mouse subjects and qualifications (although to be fair he didn’t use this phrase). Moreover, I interpreted the thrust of Gove’s speech that he was determined to raise the bar of academic attainment, something which would surely lead in the short term to lower levels of participation in higher education.
So, while David Willetts espouses a laissez faire, expansionary view of post compulsory education, his shadow cabinet colleague urges a return to a more rigidly defined set of subjects and content with progression capped by rising attainment requirements.
Perhaps there is a way of explaining this apparent tension but I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to understand it. I blame my school, or should it be my university?
Lurching to the left on my second moral maze
I found myself lurching to the left on my second moral maze last night. The discussion was on the morality of capitalism. It wasn’t a terribly balanced panel as Will Self and Claire Fox are both left leaning and Melanie Philips, while socially conservative, is a vocal critique of the excesses of consumerist individualism. Indeed, as an advocate of the social market economy, I might have been the most pro-capitalist of us all.
The problem was that the more I quizzed our two witnesses defending the free market the more frustrated I became. Neither Richard North from the Institute of Economic Affairs, nor Eamon Butler from the Adam Smith Institute, seemed willing to admit there are inherent problems of modern financial and consumer capitalism that have been exposed by the current crisis. For Richard North the problem wasn’t that capitalism had failed but that the people running it had been unwise and unprofessional. For Eamon Butler the problem wasn’t capitalism but bad regulation by the state. While both had to recognise that things have gone seriously wrong now, they both gave the clear impression that when the worst of the storm has passed they will again be standard bearers for free markets, minimal regulation and a residual state.
This prompted me to think back to a fantastic event we held last week marking the publication of the second volume of Bernard Donoghue’s diaries, covering the last years of the 1974-79 Labour administration. Listening to Bernard and also to former Labour MPs Shirley Williams and David Marquand it was obvious that the events of the time had left deep scars. The winter of discontent exposed profound failings in both the Labour Movement (particularly the inability of trade union leaders to control their shop stewards) and the corporatist model of decision making. As Labour confronted those failings it lurched first to the left and then eventually to a new centre.
My worry now about the champions of free markets is that they don’t seem ready to engage in this kind of soul searching. Instead the search is on for an easy scapegoat so that when the good economic times come back they too can return to the old slogans and certainties. Markets are a brilliant mechanism for processing information and matching demand and supply. The desire to succeed at business has driven innovation, raised productivity and made us all materially better off. But if the friends of capitalism aren’t willing to ask hard questions and come up with brave and cogent answers they will leave this territory to those who think the problem is the market itself.
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