ONE of the features of the heated debate over the Welfare Reform Bill is that it has turned into an argument about Labour’s history. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has made an audacious bid to claim the mantle of old Labour heroes by pointing out that the Labour Party – as its name implies – has always been pro-work and that conditionality for benefits is not some novel invention, but embedded in the party’s traditions.
His critics could use the same history to ask whether or not the proposed conditions in the bill accord with this tradition. The debate coincides with the centenary of Beatrice Webb’s Minority Report to the Poor Law Commission of 1909. The Minority Report may have failed to abolish the workhouse, but it was the first comprehensive argument for the universal welfare state – which William Beveridge, Webb’s advisor on the Commission, eventually brought about. At first glance, the Minority Report appears to back the idea that Labour’s advocates of welfare could be somewhat punitive. It even suggests that those refusing work or training should be shipped off to a detention colony.
However, this is to miss the insight of Webb’s argument. Making the workhouse unattractive and demeaning in order to deter the illegitimate claimant, she argued, was in direct conflict with the aim of helping people out of poverty and into work. By trying to provide welfare and create deterrence within a single system, the Poor Law had been spectacularly ineffective at preventing destitution. Webb’s solution was also simple: separate out the issue of how to treat the unemployed from the method of deterring unfounded claims on the system. Replace ungenerous and punitive provision with generous and enabling provision underpinned by robust conditions.
Fast-forward 100 years and the Government’s current proposal for a “work for your benefit” scheme for those who have been unemployed for more than two years risks mixing up these two ideas once again. On the one hand, the scheme is supposed to help claimants improve their work prospects and “employability skills”. On the other, it is billed as a way of cracking down on those “playing the system”. According to the recent White Paper: “The prospect of attending mandatory full-time activity for a substantial period of time would act as an effective deterrent.” As the Child Poverty Action Group points out, full-time work for just £61 a week works out at a wage of £1.73 an hour.
But trying to conflate these functions within a single scheme risks missing the lesson of 1909. Then, as now, any system which seeks to deter illegitimate claims by lessening the conditions of those who merit support will not only be ineffective, but also fails the test of equal citizenship on which our welfare state depends.
That hasn’t stopped the Conservatives and right-wing press ramping up this agenda. Behind the Tories’ rhetoric of modernisation remains a profoundly anti-welfare agenda – one that continues to view any receipt of benefits as morally dubious.
Purnell has said he wants to distance the Government’s plans from the punitive ethos of workfare, although mixed messages remain around the Bill. But instead of drawing up the trench lines over a fundamental disagreement of principle – conditionality or not – the Government and its critics could still find common ground by ensuring the bill reflects the lessons learned a century ago. Yes, let’s have more support to help the long-term unemployed back into work,together with a framework of fair conditionality and sanctions to prevent exploitation of the system. However, as Webb showed, you can’t achieve both at once simply by making the experience of welfare unpleasant.
Tim Horton is research director of the Fabian Society
