What I would like to hear from Mr Darling
As we all await Mr Darling’s action-packed pre-budget report the focus is on cuts and taxes. Depending on their political orientation and the briefing they have received, newspapers can choose whether to highlight an attack on city bonuses, constraints on public spending or general increases in taxation.
The overall thrust of the package seems right; spending constraint but imposed gradually so as not to choke off recovery, tax increases weighted towards those who can most afford them. Indeed, it is interesting to speculate how different a Conservative pre-budget report would have been in these circumstances.
But there are some other messages I would like to hear from Mr Darling. And, to be honest, I’m not holding my breath.
Apparently the Chancellor will say that health, education and policing will be protected from cuts and may even have small increases in funding over the next three years. I understand the politics of this. It is in line with the Government’s commitment to guaranteed entitlements in these services. But it may not be the best policy. As SOLACE and CIPFA warned this morning, the consequence is that other local government services take the brunt of the cuts in social spending. It could be non-statutory provision like youth services, public space, sport, leisure and culture that get squeezed. This in turn could lead to a deterioration in the public sphere, just as happened in many places in the early 80s. In terms of social impact it would be much better to force productivity gains in schools, hospital and police services (where, after years of budget increases, there is plenty of scope) than cuts that will weaken the social fabric.
SOLACE and CIPFA also warn this morning that as the state pulls back, citizens themselves – individually and collectively – will have to plug the gap. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is scope for many services to become more co-productive, by which I mean that their outcome is seen to be created by the combined efforts of state and citizen. But an imposed cuts package is the worst context in which to generate a constructive public debate about reconfiguring services. We should be having a national and local conversation about how citizen engagement can help protect service outcomes even while budgets are being cut. How much emphasis will we see today on the need for a richer public engagement about the choices we now face?
This links to the wider need for a story of social mobilisation. I have written before about the message Stein Ringen gave here at the RSA about Labour’s failure to mobilise public sector workers or the general public behind goals like eradicating child poverty. Labour aspirations were noble but too often they felt like things Government was doing to people rather than with them. I also wrote last week about how well people often respond when they face a shared crisis.
It is not easy for either Mr Darling or Mr Brown, but there needs to be a sense today of the Government seeking to get people behind the mission of safeguarding society while reducing debt. The measure of a Government’s worth is not just whether it can have good ideas or pull new policies out of a hat but whether it can engage and mobilise the population.
The poor, are they always with us?
I will respond to all the comments individually, but I must start by thanking those who responded to my transparent cry for some online TLC. I like being complimented as much as the next person but more important, in the context of a busy responsible job here at the RSA, is the reassurance that my blogging isn’t entirely self indulgent.
I am currently on my way to a Governors’ meeting at the RSA Academy in Tipton. I am looking forward in particular to hearing from the head boy and girl and seeing progress on the new building. The Academy is in a disadvantaged area of a poor part of the country and one which has suffered more than most in the recession. So on the train journey up it was powerful to read the latest poverty report produced by the New Policy Institute for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The top line is that levels of poverty, unemployment and repossession have been rising, not just with the recession, but since 2004. Overall poverty levels are now back at 2000 levels, the number of people out of work and looking for a job is as high as it has been since 1997 and repossession rates are back at 1994 levels. How we respond to these figures will, of course, reflect our different beliefs and values, but I wonder whether some important changes over the last decade may shift the terms of the debate?
Those who see inequality as fair, a reflection of merit or effort may find it harder now to argue that the poor are to blame for their plight. First, surely we all accept that there are many victims – particularly among the young – of a recession caused not by the failings of the general workforce but by greed and stupidity among the rich. Second, the last decade and more has seen the gradually tightening of welfare to work rules. Hardly anyone is now exempt from the requirements to look for or prepare for work. Third, a growing constituency among those in poverty is the working poor. According to the NPI report there are now two million children living in low-income working households, the highest figure ever recorded. Yet, all this is despite the redistributive impact of Labour tax and spend policies since 1997 (to be highlighted in the next few days in a report from the 2020 Public Services Trust, based at the RSA).
All of which suggests that the debate we need about the kind of society we want, and what this means for all of us, needs to be braver and more far reaching. To make a fundamental difference may require society-wide commitment and mobilisation. As Professor Stein Ringen recently argued at the RSA, for all its efforts New Labour never explained that all of us – not just ministers and officials – would have to play a role in creating a fairer society. The biggest danger is that, having had a Government which has tried to tackle poverty and inequality, we look at the grim statistics published today and abandon the hope of progress, perhaps accepting endemically high levels of poverty as he inevitable corollary of globalisation. Whether starting from a political perspective on the right, left or the centre I hope RSA Fellows agree with me that this is a danger we should seek to counter in our lectures, our research and in the activities of our Fellows.
RSA Animate
RSA Mobile
RSA Comment- RSA Projects Blogs
- Twitter @RSAMatthew
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.