What kind of transformational changes can we propose to deal with our society’s ills, after the health crisis?
First of all, a change of attitude is needed. We should demand that our government accept that its duty and purpose is to serve our whole national community and restore its total wellbeing. There should be no more specially privileged groups, whether hedge-fund or Union party donors and no more disadvantaged groups mainly told to fend for themselves. In the post-Brexit Britain of national sovereignty, the government must remember that everyone has a right to share this sovereignty and so all are equally entitled to have a chance of a good life. There should be a new understood Social Contract between government and people: that each government expecting and getting the co-operation of citizens in times of national crisis should commit to serve and care for them perpetually – in sickness and in health.
Among the foremost of the great ills of our society is the poverty of 14 million people, including many children. Liberals believe that to live in poverty is to live without freedom, and poverty may now hang over many more, with the loss of jobs and businesses during the health crisis. The Tory government’s mantra that people must work to get out of poverty rings even more hollowly now.
We must, therefore, press our policies allowing everyone sufficient income to live with dignity, with an investment of £5 billion per year to make the benefits system work effectively. Child poverty has to be tackled by urgently removing the two-child limit, scrapping the benefits cap and increasing the child element of the system. Ensuring universal access to basic services should be a guiding principle, so everyone has somewhere safe and warm to live, sufficient food to provide a healthy diet, and access to the digital and transport infrastructures necessary today. There should be incentives, not sanctions, to encourage people into work.
What next should we be demanding of the government to deal with mounting unemployment? The present Chancellor has staved off deprivation with his grants and loans, but we should press for new and radical measures to build full employment again. Members can propose, and some that might perhaps be tried include:
- Government financial backing for councils to foster new ‘green’ jobs, such as the provision of anaerobic digesters in villages, or building greenhouses heated by wastewater as a company is trialling in East Anglia;
- Encouragement of co-operative enterprises such as possibly restaurants and bars sharing premises and developing different specialities as well as regular delivery services;
- Subsidies to guest houses and hotels willing to set aside part of their premises to provide rental accommodation for at least a year for families leaving the cities in search of new opportunities;
- Grants to engineering firms which came together to provide extra hospital equipment to encourage their further collaboration in developing other useful products;
- A fall-back government Jobs Guarantee scheme to offer work to people unable to find any paid employment yet not wanting to live perpetually on benefits.
In this health crisis, the inadequate funding of the NHS and social care has become unhappily apparent, and proper support for both in future must now be an all-party commitment. But the ills of inadequate and too expensive housing provision, and inconsistent quality of schooling for all children and of skills training, should also be tackled in a new Social Contract for our time
* Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Cumberland Lib Dems
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76 Comments
Katharine, you do not mention devolution of government resources, so that local authorities, perhaps combined in regions, can do what is needed in their areas. We often complain that socialist state control is bad, but even now under Conservative policies over the last ten years, we find centralisation hampering our effectiveness in dealing with the virus. Lack of resources for various parts of the country has been harmful for very many years and needs to be radically changed. Centralised government, based on national average statistics, means lack of ability to react quickly when something is wrong in any particular part of the country until it gets so bad that ‘intervention’ becomes difficult and takes too long. Lack of ability of LAs to plan long term for their areas is another factor, because they are so dependent on government hand outs and bureaucratic applications for funds.
Post virus, the next crisis is how to pay for increased public service employment and a doubling or tripling of the unemployed, 5 billion is out by a factor of 20-40 at the current rates, let alone removing caps and increasing pay-outs of a complex system that is creaking at the seams. 14 million in comparative poverty could easily end up as 14 million in absolute poverty if the economy does not bounce back, so hyper flexibility in the workforce is going to be needed (which will only happen with welfare set at survival rates rather than lifestyle rates) whilst companies are going to need incentives to take massive risks, so no easy tax money there. Yes, you can have everyone working for the govn with salaries capped by penal taxation and hyperinflation due to the ruination of Sterling or even take everyone’s wealth off them so that everyone is reduced to serfdom. None of that will work long term so let’s hope capitalism does actually work as it is supposed to.
What I am about to say probably won’t make me very popular amongst some correspondents; but when have I ever courted popularity?
Let’s start with employment. While I do not in any way deny the right to work for fair wages, I acknowledge that there are people, who, for whatever reason, will take advantage of any system introduced. The bosses have done so in the past. Take the modern apprenticeship scheme, for example. Many firms, both large and small, took government (in other words OUR) cash to train youngsters and frankly offered little in return. For many, it was a source of cheap labour, as I know from my younger son’s experience. We used to laugh at the Germans for sticking with the more traditional apprenticeship; we’re not laughing now. On the other side, there are people taking advantage of the benefit system, there probably always will be, and they give the rest of the unintentionally unemployed a bad name. The idea of making work more attractive than unemployment was probably behind the introduction of Universal Credit. It’s a pity that it was so badly handled.
Then there’s housing, or the lack of it at an affordable price. First things first. Not EVERYBODY wants to own their own home. While the majority clearly does, supply, or lack of it, with more generous lending arrangements available, means inflation in property prices. It’s been with us a long time. Many homeowners no longer just view their house as a roof over their heads, but rather a way of making money and a cash cow for their retirement. Many economists still cite a rise in house prices as being the sign of a healthy and booming economy. Really? Fine if your wages are rising to match.. and then?
One more example. The ‘spare room subsidy’ (aka ‘bedroom tax’) made sense if you had a single person renting a multi bedroomed dwelling, which would be far more suitable for a family. Why not ‘encourage’ that person to move to a smaller property? That might have made sense if such properties were available, especially in the locality; but they clearly weren’t. Forward planning? Or am I being over simple?
I could, of course give other examples; but suffice it to say that if conquering ‘poverty’ however you define it were that simple, we would have cracked it by now. The trouble with any policy is that people, who don’t share your view, just get in the way!
Katharine, you asked about a National Care Service.
I would integrate all care staff into the existing NHS staff system whilst operating in existing buildings (until due for replacement) – in the same way staff were integrated into the NHS from previous arrangements in 1948.
In NHS Scotland moves are already well underway to integrate health and social care (see the Highlands model as an example) …. it’s a case of England playing catch up again.
See for example :
Highland Health and Social Care Services – NHS Highlandwww.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk › OurAreas › HHSCS › Pages
Highland Health and Social Care Services … of the two operational sub-groups of the Board (the other being Argyll and Bute Community Health Partnership).
What I find strange about this, is that it seems to imply that there is a “government” distinct from the people. Government is people, chosen by other people to act on their behalf. Everything government does comes from the people – be that financial resources (tax) or labour (employees). You characterise it almost like a feudal relationship, when it’s the complete opposite.
Government acts through the consensus of the people so, in reality the social contract is what the majority of citizens deem is acceptable behaviour for and to each other. Which has to include, as Beveridge understood, a requirement to behave responsibly and to take on personal responsibility so as not to over-burden fellow citizens through foolish or irresponsible behaviour.
John Marriott
The ‘Bedroom Tax’ only made sense if was to have been applied to owner occupied properties as well as tenanted properties. It was set up by politicians who would not apply such restrictions on themselves and who would never live in social housing, but it’s OK for the lower orders to be forced to move.
A constitution would amongst other things define a contract between the state and the people specifying what each can expect. It would be a legal document. It is important that people can rely on the state at times of crisis. The state needs to rethink what level of contingency it should have, especially with further endemics, climate change and increasing inequality. The issue of picking fruit has raised the issue of jobs that are provided for those who would otherwise depend on benefits. Social care providers might be suitable for one of the in between ownerships between public and private.
@Steve Griffiths “The ‘Bedroom Tax’ only made sense if was to have been applied to owner occupied properties as well as tenanted properties.”
Not really. It only applies to social housing because that housing is, as per the aims of the Welfare State, safety-net housing provided to citizens. The issue is that such housing is not a safety net when it is not allocated according to need, and there was (is?) a huge problem of social housing being under-occupied whilst others in desperate need of social housing are on long waiting lists.
The private rented sector is (again, as per Beveridge’s dictums) not there as a safety net.
@Steve Griffiths
You can argue the toss about most things. As someone who grew up mainly in various Council owned properties I am sad that so many people, especially politicians at all levels, tend to view such properties as, to quote a former District Council Housing Officer I knew, “a stigmatised last resort”.
Here’s the dilemma we face. When I was a member of our local district council I used to get requests from elderly residents, living alone following bereavement in three bedroom houses, for a move to a smaller bungalow (our area did not have many multi storey flats back then). Now, this would have been an ideal opportunity to find much needed accommodation for families on our housing waiting list. Unfortunately there weren’t the smaller council properties available to satisfy demand. Forward planning again?
Before I ‘retired’ as a councillor in 2017 I sat on a joint committee of local councils, on this occasion as a County Council representative, tasked with drawing up a Local Plan. I’m pleased to say that we agreed to my suggestion that we included in our proposals housing provision for the elderly commensurate with their requirements, acknowledging the demographics of the area, in other words, single story single bedroom accommodation, as opposed to just multi bedroomed so called ‘executive homes’ or three storey so called ‘affordable’ town houses.
Nobody is advocating that only the public sector can satisfy housing needs. We need the private sector to do the heavy lifting. However, they need their feet keeping close to the fire and that’s where a good, forward looking local plan can help. That’s how public need and private greed can at least co exist, for the good of us all.
Should we think in terms of a contract between government and the people or, if we must talk of contracts, should it not be between the people themselves who agree to form a government for their collective benefit? The latter seems much more egalitarian and stresses that power lies with the people and not between two separate ‘organs’, namely, government and the people.
Nigel Jones. Thank you, Nigel, you make a very good point that the need for greater devolution of resources is one that should concern us. I am aware of the cutting of funding for local services in the last decade, and we certainly should demand both better funding, with I suppose more empowering of councils to use those resources, and also that there is funding matched to regional needs. I had heard, for example that schools in the north-west were underfunded compared with other regions, though I learnt no details.
I guess that you may be right to think that the five ills we have identified as needing to be addressed with a new Social Contract should have a context, not only of the demands of facing the climate crisis, but also of the need for fairer distribution of resources between regions and localities. On the other hand, that may tend to make us lean towards top-down solutions from government?
“Nobody is advocating that only the public sector can satisfy housing needs. ”
I did an application for a job in the civil service (the same test was used for the British computer company ICL). We were asked to give priority to ex-servicemen. On leaving I heard chat from other examinees, who stated what choices they had made with their discretion.
I came to realise that we were being tested on whether we would follow policy.
Servicemen and women are often posted abroad, affecting the education of their progeny, the continuity of their housing and community life, etc.
In Calne, (Wiltshire, near Chippenham) Some housing was built for married quarters on the basis that if the military base were to close the housing could be sold into the private sector, which has happened, although fashions in the private sector have changed over the years. There is nowadays a demand for effective, and efficient clean heating in preference to wood and coal.
Frank West. Thank you for considering the related problems of paying the bills of the current crisis and the expected rise in unemployment. I am sure you are right to suggest that there will have to be flexibility in the work force, but I don’t agree that welfare should be set at survival rates. The buying of goods to increase demand and revive the economy is needed from everyone, including those on benefits. We need some radical ideas on flexibility, which is why I float the concept that people may forsake cities in search of new opportunities in places new to them, as many did when new towns were built. I have also wondered whether government might be prepared to subsidise the Trussell Trust, the main provider of the foodbanks, actually to employ some of the people coming to get the food to do some of the work currently done by volunteers, of receiving, sorting and packing the donated goods.
John Marriott. I just don’t accept the idea that the poor are always with us, John, and neither does our party. But Michael BG and I want to strengthen its commitment to ending relative poverty, and especially at this time to make sure is does not increase.
TCO. There certainly is a government ‘distinct from the people’ when it is a Tory government, if we judge by the past decade and the attitudes of the present crowd in power. It is a bad joke that Boris Johnson and his docile colleagues have claimed to represent the people, and in any case those three words are less meaningful than the word government.
Peter Hirst. We are not aiming for a law with the Social Contract, Peter. Beveridge himself did not seek a law with that name, but for measures to alleviate the evils that he saw themselves to be enacted in laws. Our own progressive policies may well require further legislation, and we may like Beveridge depend on another party to be in power to enact them. Unless, of course, we can persuade the present government!!
@Katharine Pindar “There certainly is a government ‘distinct from the people’ when it is a Tory government, if we judge by the past decade and the attitudes of the present crowd in power. It is a bad joke that Boris Johnson and his docile colleagues have claimed to represent the people, and in any case those three words are less meaningful than the word government.”
The current government is as legitimate as any other Tory or Labour government elected under FPTP. To say that they uniquely don’t represent what the people want in a way that other governments didn’t is just nonsense.
You may not like them, but a lot of people did and do. Pretending otherwise is just wishful thinking.
Katharine, The poor are *always* with us. Economic, social and sometimes just bad luck ensures it is always there.
The question is what do people choose to do about it.
@Katharine Pindar
If you gave ten people, £100 each and told them to do whatever they liked with it within, say, a week, I’m pretty certain that, at the end of that time, quite a few will have spent it, some on worthwhile things, others not, some will have put it in the bank and a few will have actually invested it and made a profit. The point I am trying to make is that, forbwhatever reason, some people and money just don’t go together. They say that money talks. Well, for many of us, all it says is “Goodbye”.
Perhaps I’m being a bit flippant, and I know from your writings that you take things very seriously; but there really is no magic bullet that can kill poverty. You might think you are speaking for “our party”; but I always thought that one of the main tenets of liberalism was a belief in the rights of the individual. If citizen A wants, to coin a Johnsonian phrase, to “spaff” his £100 “up the wall”, while citizen B prefers to save some of his, surely that’s their decision. Would a true liberal deny them that right? Now, if neither gets that £100 in the first place, that’s a different matter.
The simple fact is that you really can’t legislate for people, not that you shouldn’t try. However, don’t be disappointed if you fail. Life will never be perfect and neither will the human race.
“The poor are always with us”. Some are, sadly, some not :
“Covid-19 deaths twice as high in poorest areas in England and Wales. Most deprived areas had 55.1 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 25.3 in affluent areas”. – The Guardian i hour ago.
“Food banks record 81% surge in demand as coronavirus causes thousands to go hungry”. – The i, 5 hours ago.
It’s high time for the Lib Dem parliamentary hierarchy to get the 2019 Alston UN Report on Poverty and Inequality in the UK down off the shelf, dust it down, read it, digest it and do something about it.
I know Ed Davey has a copy because I gave it to him last September when he admitted he hadn’t read it.
William Beveridge was strongly influenced by Keynes economic analysis. His system of social security was based on a scheme of national insurance contributions from a fully employed workforce. While Beveridge never tackled the problem of rents he made the assumption that mass public housing programs would furnish affordable housing for the great majority of industrial workers.
Beveridge was clear that any functioning system of social security had to be underpinned by full employment and we need to understand how to achieve that.
As Tcherneva writes in Full Employment: The road not taken http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_789.pdf
Keynes favored directly employing the unemployed on a continuous basis via a permanent on-the-spot employment program. In recessions, a strong boost to demand and large-scale capital investment to absorb some of the unemployed was needed. As economies recovered and expanded, smaller and more targeted direct job creation programs for the unemployed in distressed areas would secure true full employment without fueling inflationary pressures or eroding the income distribution.
What type of jobs? Not the ditch-digging kind the profession has again mistakenly identified with the Keynes’s solution. Could we not use more universities, local schools, recreation areas, theaters, museums, galleries, cafes, or dance halls, Keynes asked. He identified pressing needs to address at the time; almost a century later we can point to the same needs that wealthy and developed nations have: declining communities, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate public housing, environmental degradation. Public works, Keynes argued can be used to “replan the environment of our daily life… Not only shall we come to possess these excellent things, but…we can hope to keep employment good for many years to come”. Some projects, such as large-scale housing programs, would require careful planning and organization, but some would be swift and inexpensive: “[T]o preserve the national domain for exercise and recreation and the enjoyment and contemplation of nature the cliffs and coastline of the country . . . that requires nothing more than the decision to act”
The social security safety net sits on two pillars – Full employment and affordable housing. Without these two foundations, in a poorer world, there is no safety net.
@ Katharine,
” There should be incentives, not sanctions, to encourage people into work.”
Isn’t there usually a bit of both for everyone? Most of us know that there is the incentive of a pay cheque at the end of the week or month. On the other hand, most of us, (or maybe its just me?) know that if we don’t go out to work we’ll end up homeless and in the divorce courts for failing to provide food and shelter for the children.
This is a genuine question so I hope you can answer it. Why are Lib Dems only interested in how the income/wealth/national cake, or whatever you want to call it, is divided up? And I agree that the shares should be a lot more equal than they are. But, what about what everyone should be required to do to create it in the first place?
For those who can genuinely make no contribution then, of course, we should not ask anything. But there are many people who could make a contribution and who want to make it if only they had the opportunity. I’m thinking of many people who are intellectually or physically handicapped who don’t get a look in when they are in competition with able bodied people. All Lib Dems are offering are social benefits but everyone needs more than that – no matter how generous those benefits are. Incidentally, no-one should hold their breath on any improvement in those any time soon.
@John Marriott “You might think you are speaking for “our party”; but I always thought that one of the main tenets of liberalism was a belief in the rights of the individual. If citizen A wants, to coin a Johnsonian phrase, to “spaff” his £100 “up the wall”, while citizen B prefers to save some of his, surely that’s their decision. Would a true liberal deny them that right?”
And the obvious next question is, given that both were given the same amount of money and both chose to behave in different ways – one responsibly, one irresponsibly – why should the one who saved his money then be obliged to give some of it to the one who spent it? Both knew the consequence of their actions – with rights (to spend as they see fit) come responsibilities (to live with the consequences).
‘Covid19 deaths twice as high in poorest areas’ – thank you, David (Raw) for giving references for what I heard on the lunchtime World at One on Radio 4. It is just one more sad confirmation of the recent Marmot Review of the last ten years, which found that health has stopped improving nationally and that inequalities in life expectancy have increased, with the biggest fall in poor areas. The recommendations of Professor Marmot, as with those of the UN Rapporteur on poverty Philip Alston made a year ago, ought to be some of the latter-day bibles for our party.
As for the tenets of liberalism, John Marriott, none of us is contesting the right of individuals to do what they want with their own money (always providing their doing so doesn’t harm others), but I trust I AM speaking for our party in wanting to make sure that everyone in our country has enough. Plus, of course, Joseph, a job if they want one and an affordable home. I think we agree on Keynes and Tcherneva about job provision when it is needed: thank you for the timely and useful quote.
Yes, Peter, it follows that (as you know) I agree with you too on the desirability of work being offered for everyone, because everyone can do something, and that I would rather our party backed that than other options (which I won’t mention here in case of the thread being taken over by them!). But the removal of sanctions is party policy, devised as part of the rectification of the cruel aspects of Universal Credit roll-out.
Daniel Duggan. Thank you for your thoughts, Daniel. The trouble is that we already have a government in place, so can’t start again, and it is in my view one that for the past ten years has not served the people nearly well enough. As Liberals, we do indeed want power to be devolved and shared, and for everyone to have a part in it.
@TCO
Spot on!
@Katharine Pindar
“A job if they want one”. Should there really be a choice for the able bodied?
TCO 1st May ’20 – 4:47pm……………@John Marriott “You might think you are speaking for “our party”; but I always thought that one of the main tenets of liberalism was a belief in the rights of the individual. If citizen A wants, to coin a Johnsonian phrase, to “spaff” his £100 “up the wall”, while citizen B prefers to save some of his, surely that’s their decision. Would a true liberal deny them that right?”………..
So what if A+ starts up a business that fails and ends up like A? What happens if A++ has a severely disabled child and can’t work? What happens if A+++ develops a long term Illness What happens if A++++…….?The list of reasons for poverty is endless
To answer TCO..Who should B help?
I am amused by the age-old question arising here of why the responsible citizen should help to pay for the irresponsible who has squandered his money. It has so many New Testament echoes: think of the Prodigal Son, or of those labourers who were miffed at only getting the same rate of pay as the ones who came late in the day, while they had been there early on – to which the employer replied, ‘But you were all told what the rate was for this day.’
John, I was thinking of people who don’t need to work, not of able-bodied people refusing to work, though I think they should be given a choice and something appropriate to their education and background. I really am puzzled by your siding with TCO, who sounds more and more of a Tory whenever he writes, when you have had such a good Liberal career.
Good answer, thank you expats!
Frank West,
You are correct. A single unemployed person living in rented accommodation could receive benefits in the region of £10,000 a year, so one million would cost £10 billion. The £5 billion extra each year mentioned by Katharine has nothing to do with any increase because of an increase in the number of unemployed. This amount would need to be increased in line with the increase in the number of unemployed people. Applying £10 billion after two years with the February number of claimants would not increase benefit levels to the poverty line. It will take more than five years of increasing the amount spent on working age benefit by £5 billion each year to increase the benefit level to the poverty line. Do you think that having an income at the poverty line is a “lifestyle” rate? And if so why?
I don’t understand where you get the idea that Katharine Pindar is advocating “everyone working for the govn with salaries capped by penal taxation and hyperinflation due to the ruination of Sterling”.
TCO,
Social housing was never intended to be only “safety-net housing”; social housing was intended to be provided for everyone who wanted to rent, because the private rental market was so bad. I am thinking of the 1920s initially (started in 1919). Then there was Harold Macmillan in the early 1950s facilitating the building of 300,000 new houses a year.
John Marriott,
In our party constitution we declare that poverty shouldn’t enslave people, therefore we need to ensure no one lives in poverty. We believe that everyone should have the money to make their choices and so do not have to choose for example between heat or food.
Joe Bourke,
Indeed, we need full employment and enough social housing. As I would say, everyone who wants a job should have one and everyone who wants a home of their own should have one.
Peter Martin,
Liberals value every human equally and believe everyone should have equal freedom and so no one should live in poverty. Having enough money not to live in poverty does not mean that a person can’t make a contribution to society. As I often say a liberal society allows everyone to fulfil their full potential.
@Katharine Pindar
I know what happened to the Prodigal Son; but I never made any claims to be an active Christian. I’ve no idea whether TCO is a Tory or not. Does it make him a bad person if he or she is? As far as having had “a good Liberal career”, when it comes to finding answers, I wouldn’t allow my politics to get in the way.
@expats
Can’t disagree with you. A great deal of success is down to hard work and nous; but luck will often play a key rôle as well.
Just a quick note. The academic on Any Questions this evening mentioned both the Alston report and the Marmot review in the discussion there about the poorest suffering more than the rest from the virus; good to know that it was familiar territory to him, and I will listen again tomorrow lunchtime and then check out who he is, possibly an ally for us.
John Marriott. It depends on what you mean by ‘a bad person’. Can you give me a reference to what ‘a good person’ may be, and explain your own definition, please?
It’s Anthony Costello, Katharine, of my old alma mater, UCL.
Anthony Costello is Professor of International Child Health and Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health. He trained as a paediatrician and has expertise in maternal and child health epidemiology and programmes in developing countries. He contributes papers on paediatrics, maternal health, health economics, health systems, child development, nutrition and infectious disease.
His areas of scientific expertise include the evaluation of community interventions on maternal and newborn mortality, community mobilisation through women’s groups, the cost-effectiveness of interventions, community and social life saving treatments for maternal and newborn mortality in the poorest populations, and links between sustainable livelihoods and nutrition. He is currently exploring the health effects of climate change in south Asia and Africa.
International Advisory Board, The Lancet. Chair, UCL Lancet commission on managing the health effects of climate change.
Board member, Wellcome Bloomsbury Centre for Tropical Medicine. Founder and former Executive Director, Women and Children First. Founder and co-ordinator of partnerships with universities and institutes in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Malawi providing surveillance in populations covering up to 3 million.
Director, Towards 4plus5 consortium for achieving the Millennium Development Goals for mothers and children. Investigator on the Evidence for Action programme to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in six African countries.Director, Wellcome Trust Strategic Award for Population Science in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Malawi
Director (1995-2010) of three UK Department for Inetrnational Development Research Programme Consortia covering Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Tanzania
Vice President, Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2009)
@ John Marriott TCO would have fitted in happily with Robert Lowe’s Adullamites in 1865, John.
@Katharine Pindar
You are obviously not familiar with the use of this phrase to indicate that sometimes, just because you may disagree with the political stance of someone, you can still acknowledge a contribution they may have made or the truth of something they may have said. Then, of course, we may be back to defining the difference between good and evil. I’ll leave those with faith to do that.
My use of “bad person” was promoted by your comment about Mr/Ms TCO on their “sounding more like a Tory”, which says more about you than them. Live and let live, I say. I bet that a lot of “Tories” work for the NHS in life threatening situations, so that doesn’t make them bad persons in your book, does it? So, if I may ask, perhaps you might like to define what “a Tory” is?
You mentioned my “good Liberal career”. Well, during that “career” I learned to work with local politicians of all persuasions like Tories and Labour as well as in my latter days, UKIP and, in the case of ‘Independents’, apparently none. To get things done you have to get off your high horse and stop attacking everything the other lot does. It’s called compromise and, boy, could we have done with a bit of that over recent years!
@ Micheal BG,
“Having enough money not to live in poverty does not mean that a person can’t make a contribution to society. ”
This all sounds very nice and Lib Demish but isn’t it rather Utopian?
I really don’t know if the people who are responsible for this sort of thing are living in poverty. But I do know that you want to subsidise their activities by giving them a UBI.
https://i2-prod.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article21949009.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200b/0__GFMP_SDR_290420-Scotland-flytipping-037.jpg
Whereas I am happy to take them out of poverty, if that really is their problem, but only on condition they work to clear it up.
What’s the better solution?
Just watch the P & O ferry ‘Pride of Canterbury sail past our house to anchor indefinitely in the Firth of Forth because of the Covid Crisis. When this business is over there needs to be an enquiry into the double standards of tax avoiding companies getting tax payers money to avoid their responsibilities. Virgin is another example.
P&O is planning to cut essential workers’ pay, despite using the Government’s emergency coronavirus wages scheme to furlough more than 1,000 staff. In early 2019, the Pride of Canterbury, like all P&O vessels on the Dover-to-Calais route, was flagged out to Cyprus, a measure explained by the company as motivated by tax advantages in view of Brexit. She is now registered in Limassol.
Wonderful thing red in tooth and claw free market economics taking advantage of the ‘the Nanny State’.
@Katharine Pindar perhaps you could explain to me, and everyone else, why if two people were given £100, one person squandered it and the other saved it, the one who saved it should then use some of that savings to pay for the one who squandered it – in other words, the squander will end up with £150 and the saver £50. How is that fair or equitable, qualities you purport to support? I am not religious so I have no interest in Biblical parallels – i want to know how you justify it to us, and by extension, the voters.
Peter Martin 2nd May ’20 – 8:28am
The only factual part is your “I really don’t know if the people who are responsible for this sort of thing are living in poverty.”….
Most fly tipping is done by dodgy businesses (large and small)…However, the massive increase due to the lockdown is due to those., who normally work, getting involved in DIY/garage clearing etc. ( Studies by universities of Southampton and Portsmouth among others)..So hardly those in poverty..
@David Raw
What a fantastic historian of the Liberals you are, and living now in such an idyllic place (“just watch(sic) the P&O ferry …. sail past our house to anchor …. in the Firth of Forth“). I’ve just looked up the Adullamites on Wikipedia as I had quite frankly never heard of them. Mind you, they didn’t last very long did they? A bit like Kilroy Silk’s ‘Veritas’ or the recent ‘Independent’ lot, whose name, if they ever did agree on what to call themselves, escapes me! I like your tips, although most of us appear to agree that Dangerfield was a bit of a cad. Wilson (not Harold) is up next, as recommended by none other than Lord Greaves, after I have finished Paxman’s take on WW1 – quite racy really if a trifle anecdotal.
@expats
You may be right in laying the blame for most fly tipping on “dodgy businesses (large and small)”; but there are quite a few “dodgy” folks out there who think they can get away with what amounts to me to another form of antisocial behaviour, and that includes, at tge present time, those people having bbq parties for friends at home, travelling comparatively large distances to beauty spots in the name of fresh air and exercise, raging against the infringements of their personal liberty, or on lumping them as ‘fit and healthy’ baby boomers with all those geriatrics in care homes etc., etc. Come on, folks, do as you have been told at this critical time. Lockdown might be brutal but it appears to work. Stick at it, stay safe and STAY ALIVE!
@ JosephB @ Katharine,
You both seem to be quoting or mentioning Pavlina Tcherneva with some approval. Which is curious because she, like myself, is not at all on the same page as most Lib Dems.
Here she argues against a universal basic income policy and in favour of a job guarantee:
http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/the-argument-against-basic-income
To get back to the subject, How to advance society’s wellbeing after the health crisis, the most important parts of the proposed Social Contract to me will be to tackle poverty and health inequality. We must not let the people living in poverty in our society fall into a worse position when the government starts tackling the increased national debt. Hopefully we can work with other opposition parties to insist to the government that the transformational changes people will be expecting after the crisis should include new attention to and full support for the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our national community, who have even had to suffer more deaths from the virus than the better-off.
Bur there is likely to be a rise in the number of people living hand to mouth in the near future because of rising unemployment, and it would be good to have members’ thoughts on how new job opportunities may be created to get near-full employment again, which of course will anyway help fill the government’s depleted coffers as more
people are enabled to buy goods and pay taxes once again.
David (Raw), thank you for kindly providing full biographical notes of the distinguished professor Anthony Costelloe, as well as reminding us of the need to keep watch on large companies trying to profit unfairly from present government handouts.
…. anyway help fill the government’s depleted coffers ….
The Govt doesn’t have “coffers”. On a macroeconomic level the Govt should be spending more when its income is less and less when its income is more.
No Government can help anyone, especially the poorest, if they don’t understand the basics of how the economy works. That’s how the Lib Dems got themselves into disrepute by being part of a very austerity minded, and wrong headed, Tory coalition.
Peter Martin,
when you say the government doesn’t have coffers, whether you realise or not it is you who is endorsing Mrs Thatcher’s 1983 speech to the Conservative Party conference
“Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay—that “someone else” is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.”
This is also why David Raw and others rail against tax-avoiding companies getting tax payers money . Government spending has to be paid for by the public by a combination of taxes to cover the costs directly, interest payments on accumulated borrowings and by means of engineered inflation to erode the value of public savings and therefore the burden of government borrowings. Either way as Milton Friedman often tried to make clear “there is no such thing as a free lunch in economics”.
To sooner we recognise that simple fact the sooner we can dispense with the notion that many people seem to have that the government can spend whatever it chooses )without cost to anyone) simply by printing money. Only then can sensible policy be made on the basis of who benefits from fiscal expansion and who bears the cost of redistribution. Such policy would recognise, as Pavlina Tcherneva does, that undirected stimulus (outsideof recessions) rarely benefits the unemployed at the lower end of the income distribution. This is why fiscal stimulus has to be directed at useful and productive public works that enhance productivity and quality of life; and job guarantees to create effective demand for labour, Not squandered on aimless aggregate demand targets aimed at exponential increases in planet-destroying consumption spending or spurious income equalisation programs that disincentivise self-reliance and environmental sustainability.
Joseph, I was so struck by the balanced fluency and articulate richness of expression in your last sentence that I just let it roll through my mind for a few minutes, enjoying it before trying to understand it! I’m unsure that I do, but I appreciate your passion in writing it. I could follow better the previous sentence and agree with it, so long as I inwardly translate ‘fiscal stimulus’ as ‘government spending’, i hope reasonably correctly. I often wish economists would include the phrase ‘in other words’ and use it,
to explain things in everyday English.
Your comment of yesterday afternoon, quoting Tchernova, was more accessible to me, and I have retained your helpful sentence there: ‘Beveridge was clear that any functioning system of social security has to be underpinned by full employment.’ Just so today, I suppose, we must seek full employment for the country in order to retain and enhance the necessary welfare benefits.
Unfortunately I found that the good Professor Costello who appeared on Any Questions and spoke of Alston and Marmot had not mentioned the full extent of poverty in this country. I thought I had heard him say, and today on listening to the programme again, I confirmed, that he spoke of 4000 people living in poverty here. But Philip Alston in his Statement of November 2018 had reported, ’14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.’ I wonder how these poor people have been surviving the health crisis, and how many may not have survived at all. I believe we should cite Alston, who studied many reports as well as investigating in person, in campaigning for the poorest to be better helped in future.
Katharine, you say, “I wonder how these poor people have been surviving the health crisis, and how many may not have survived at all”.
The Guardian 1 May, 2020, carried part of the answer :
“The first two weeks of the coronavirus lockdown triggered an unprecedented rise in food bank use as the economy was hit and household incomes plunged, data from hundreds of emergency food aid charities reveals.
The Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest food bank network, said it experienced its busiest ever period after lockdown was announced on 23 March, when it issued 50,000 food parcels in the space of a week, almost double its usual volume.
A similar picture emerged from the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), which said its food banks recorded a 59% increase in demand for emergency food support between February and March – 17 times higher than the same period a year ago.”
We have poverty thanks to social conservatism. We don’t need a “social contract”, we need to have policies to eradicate poverty and and the will and resources to win the argument for why they are necessary and desirable.
Katharine,
I think one of the key problems with poverty campaigning is the use of the word poverty to describe inequality. Beveridge never used the word poverty he used the word ‘want’ by which he meant material deprivation. The UN uses a measure of extreme poverty of living on $1.25 a day or less, clearly a measure that is not of much use in the UK where no one could live on such a low income.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has always defined poverty as “when a person’s resources are not sufficient to meet their minimum needs”. In 2016, however, the foundation added a new measurement to its scorecard: destitution – a term coined to describe someone facing two or more of the following in a month: sleeping rough, having one or no meals a day for two or more days, being unable to heat or to light your home for five or more days, going without weather-appropriate clothes or without basic toiletries.
It is where need is the greatest that limited resources should be targeted first i.e. any family or individual living in destitution. In many cases there will be mental health, drug or alcohol addiction issues to be dealt with that cannot be addressed by increases in benefit payments. It will take a much more comprehensive and intensive approach along the lines of the housing first programs https://endhomelessness.org/resource/housing-first/
Inequality in the labour market derives from the exorbitant share of value produced by economic activity that is taken in the form of economic rents in the form of rents and debt interest that in turn squeezes down wages to subsistence levels. Over 50% of those classed as in relative poverty are homeowners whose disposable income is depleted by high mortgage payments. Address these issues through tax reform on the basis of land values and excess profits and a unitary taxation system and you begin to tackle inequality at its source.
@ Joe Bourke “In many cases there will be mental health, drug or alcohol addiction issues to be dealt with that cannot be addressed by increases in benefit payments”.
No, Joe. That should be ‘In SOME cases’ – not ‘in MANY cases’. That’s my experience as Chair of Foodbank over the last few years.
Liberals, and liberals, should avoid being judgemental…… as I notice in some posts on LDV……… particularly the people John Marriott would now knowingly describe as Adullamites. (Cheers, John. Take a good look at John Morley next).
Old Charlie Dickens described such Utilitarians as Gradgrind and Scrooge, and I’m sure they voted Benthamite Liberal back in the 1860/70’s.
David Raw,
this is a review of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation strategy for ending poverty that concludes solving the housing crisis is the only way to end poverty in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/26/housing-end-poverty-numbers-joseph-rowntree-foundation.
– Boost the supply of genuinely affordable housing.
– Enable young people leaving care to maximise their potential, with proper support on housing, employment and training.
– Unfreeze working-age benefit levels and increase them in line with rises in the cost of essentials such as food, clothing and housing.
– Benefits should also account for the extra costs faced by those with a disability, longstanding illness or a mental health condition, including those associated with housing.
“While it is clear that improvements to the labour and housing markets alone will not guarantee shared prosperity for all, the report also warns the rise in evictions is increasing poverty: “High rents and evictions from private tenancies are a major driver of homelessness in some areas. Increasing the supply of genuinely affordable housing to bring down costs across tenures has become central to solving poverty in much of the UK.”
“Low housing supply and high costs are also driving up poverty in…parts of the country, such as Oxford and the south-east.”
“The Housing First programme, which supports homeless people and which is popular in Denmark and piloted in parts of England, can be particularly effective. The report says an impressive 90% of those supported by the programme globally have been kept off the streets.”
@ JoeB,
You know very well that I would put it the opposite way around to Mrs Thatcher. ie There is no such thing as taxpayers money. It is all public money -originally. The taxman doesn’t accept commercial bank created money.That doesn’t mean that the real resources which are created by the population aren’t appropriated by Govt. It’s essentially a bait and switch exercise if you want to look at it from a cynical right wing POV .
I’d be interested to see you quote, precisely, anything that Pavlina Tcherneva has written that you think I’m in disagreement with. I’m not saying there isn’t anything! She’s probably more orthodox MMT than I am. But I am saying that you can’t be as critical of MMT as you are, and agree with her at the same time. Of the three of us, you have to be the odd one out!
I suspect what she’s getting at with her comment on a general stimulus missing out the lowest skilled is connected to her advocacy of the JG. She’ll be saying that we’ll probably run into an inflation problem before they are offered jobs. She’s quite right of course.
Yes, I know many greenish neoliberals would say we can’t have full employment, because for that we need growth, and growth destroys the planet. It is an issue to be addressed but the solution isn’t to simply continue with a depressed capitalism.
Andrew T. Thanks for joining in, Andrew, and of course you are right in one sense. But when the UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, reported on the situation he found in Britain in November 2018, he investigated the causes of poverty here in a wide-ranging and well-resourced study, and told us that he felt the ‘social contract’, a concept derived from Beveridge, had broken down in Britain. That is where the idea came from for me, and it was his indictment of government policies and attitude to the poor and disadvantaged that fired me up to campaign for all the suggestions he made, including combatting government indifference and reforming the application of universal credit which had caused much misery and increased poverty and even homelessness.
There is also a reason for this campaign which is specifically for our party. I believe our party needs to get back to having a share in power. But when Mr Corbyn was leader of the Labour party, he often focused on poverty and inequality as the great evils for our country today, and it was the Labour party welfare spokesperson who spoke in support of the Alston Statement and, sadly, not ours. If we simply campaign against poverty and inequality, though we must, we shall be seen as satellites of Labour. But if we frame our policy in terms of renewing the social contract that Professor Alston told us was broken, then we have a distinctive voice. And just as his Statement and Report go far beyond asking for higher welfare payments, so we can legitimately campaign equally against other evils besides poverty, the equivalents of those William Beveridge focused on in the Forties, that is, inadequate health care, homelessness and insufficient affordable housing, inconsistent and inadequate education and training opportunities, and unemployment. So that is what all this is about; I hope this explanation helps.
Peter Martin,
In our constitution we imply along with declaring lots of other things that we wish to ensure no one is restricted in their liberty by poverty. Therefore all party members should recognise that one of our political goals is the end of poverty. We also declare we want to enable everyone to develop their talents to the full. If a person lives in poverty they will have less of a chance to develop their talents to the full. I make no apologies for these aims.
If someone commits a crime liberals believe they should be punished. Having a UBI and fly tipping are not related. If they were, as we have no UBI, we would have no fly tipping. The increase in fly tipping seems to have been caused by councils closing their household waste collection centres. (My local Liberal Democrat Councillors are campaigning to get ours open.) Most other fly tipping seems to be caused by rogue traders as Expats pointed out.
I don’t think there is any evidence that most Liberal Democrats support a UBI. Recently (2016 and 2019) whenever a policy working group discussed a UBI they rejected it. In 2016 a negative income tax, which some say is like a UBI, was rejected by our Federal conference.
TCO,
If you respond fully to my comments addressed to you yesterday at 10.02 pm I will respond to your comment of 4.47pm.
Katharine,
The parable of the workers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1-16) has always struck me as unfair as the labourers do not get the same hourly rate. It might express the free market system where not all labourers are paid at the same rate, with some seeming to need a higher hourly rate to do any work. However the parable is not about how people should act.
Joe Bourke,
Recent history teaches us that the Bank of England can create as much money as it wishes with quantitative easing and the UK government can borrow as much as it wants. I not think anyone on LDV advocates huge increases to aggregate demand or exponential increases to government spending with corresponding rises in national debt.
I am clear that we as a party reject the idea that in a liberal society anyone should live in poverty, we do not advocate total economic equality. The most important reduction in economic inequalities would be no one being deprived by living in poverty. We see poverty as being something that enslaves people and we want no one to be so enslaved.
The JRF say 50% per cent of those living in poverty are homeowners; 18% own their home outright and 32% have mortgages. If you are in work and pay rent and are poor the state will give you financial help to pay some of your rent, if you have a mortgage the help is non-existent and if you are not working the government will only lend you some money to pay most of your mortgage interest.
Please can you explain how there would be any poverty in the UK if benefit levels were set at the poverty line, there was no benefit cap, housing benefit would pay up to 100% of a person’s rent when required and the government would pay the same proportion of a person’s mortgage interest as they would if that person was paying rent?
@ Michael BG,
It looks like you’ve missed the point about fly tipping. There’s lots of people, not everyone but a significant minority, making a living in the black economy who aren’t at all socially responsible. Fly tipping is just an example. If they pick up a load of waste, for cash, they won’t want to spend any of that disposing the waste at a council depot even when they are open. It will cost them money. So they dump it in a quite lane.
I’m sure you know that already. And yet somehow you think that topping up their income with a UBI will “enable them to develop their talents to the full”. It won’t. They’ll just spend more time in the pub! I really wonder what planet you’re living on at times!
@ Andrew T,
“….we need to have policies to eradicate poverty and and the will and resources…..”
But what policies? That’s the difficulty. Which political party is advocating policies which they believe will increase poverty? The political right do, with some justification, believe that the rise of global capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. Therefore they’ll say we need more capitalism and less socialism. I’m sure you’ve heard this line in the Lib Dems too.
Many in the Lib Dems think that you can eradicate poverty by bringing everyone’s income up to a certain minimum level through the use of a UBI and other social benefits. The problem with this is that the difference between going out to work in a job which doesn’t pay much more than the minimum level and the level of the benefits is tiny. It may even be negative when work related expenses like travel are included. So why bother getting up in the morning? Many wouldn’t, or didn’t, and the ones that did became resentful of those they consider to be working the system.
This is essentially why we do now have a much harsher system of social welfare than we used to.
The solution requires some fresh thinking. Instead of just considering what incomes workers receive we also have to include what society should receive from the workers in return. “Workers” has to be the key word here. It’s fantasy politics to think that you can solve poverty by paying people to do nothing.
Joseph, thank you for your thoughts on poverty and inequality. However, I note that your references are from 2016. Philip Alston, in his meticulous research, appended references to every page of his November 2018 Statement, and one of them is a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, ‘Destitution in the UK 2018, reference https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2018. He also references the Social Metrics Commission report of September 2018 entitled ‘A new measure of poverty for the UK’. Therefore the Professor was perfectly clear and up-to-date in his references to poverty and to deprivation, which I quoted yesterday at 4.42 pm, and he did not conflate poverty with inequality. Perhaps you would look up the 2018 reports and quote from them? Do they include the information you offered, that over 50% of those classed in relative poverty are home owners? Not that I am here arguing for or against your contention that the major way to end poverty in the UK is to solve the housing crisis – if, as I am assuming, you agree with the 2016 JRF report – but clearly we need to have up-to-date reports, and perhaps there may have been others in 2019.
@ Katharine
It’s great that you are pushing for the party to take poverty seriously and consider things like the Philip Alston report.
I support your aims but not necessarily your proposal. I think this party performed poorly in carrying out its fundamental aims in regards to eradicating poverty during the coalition. That doesn’t mean we should cede that political aim to the Labour party for eternity.
@ Peter Martin
Not fantasy politics, liberal politics.
Katharine,
the full fact summary as of September 2019 https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/ makes some important points:
“.. one of the most valuable questions to ask anyone who makes claims on this topic is: what do you mean by poverty?”
“Poverty rates fell in the years after 2010, as the UK recovered from the financial crisis, but are now showing clear signs of rising again.” Why do you think this was? Earnings and therefore median incomes were falling, but benefits were index-linked during the coalition only being frozen from 2016.
How does the SMC define poverty?
Firstly, they take into account people’s incomes, housing and mortgage costs, childcare, costs associated with disability, and accessible savings. They look at families rather than individuals because families tend to share resources.
They effectively place all families in the UK in a line, from those with the most resources to those with the least. The family in the middle is the “median family”. Any family that has 54% or less of what that median family has is defined as being in poverty.
Why 54%? Actually, the SMC itself openly admits this is a “largely arbitrary” choice. It’s actually chosen so that there’s almost no difference in the overall level of UK poverty between this new measure and the existing ones used by the government. The main measure of relative poverty shows as many as 14 million people in poverty—this new measure has it at 14.3 million, due to this choice.
Changing that threshold makes a stark difference too—using the previous year’s figures if you made it 50%, you’d have “moved” 2.5 million people out of poverty. If you went for 60%, you’d have increased poverty by 2.3 million people.
What the data tells you is there has been no dramatic change in relative poverty. What there has been is an increasing level of what the JRF defines as destitution as evidenced by increased food bank usage and rough sleeping. This is where resources need to be concentrated first. We need to deal with destitution directly through the benefit system and programs like housing first. Addressing relative poverty (inequality) requires a wider approach that tackles the source of inequality – the extraction of economic rents from much of the value produced in the economy.
Joe, I accept, having read the SMC report via Full Facts – many thanks for that reference – that there has been a rise in absolute low income people, also known as those in destitution, since 2010, whereas the number of those in relative low income households has remained much the same. So, you say, we must concentrate first on relieving the families in absolute poverty. But as the government estimate is that 30% of British children are living in poverty, 26% of them in absolute poverty, I don’t think it is reasonable to make the distinction – it is absolutely necessary for us to campaign to lift all children out of poverty, since these are horrifying figures. Nor do I see any reason to equate relative poverty with inequality. One of the sources of inequality may indeed be economic rents, having much to do presumably with the housing crisis, but you make no case for identifying relative poverty with inequality, and it seems almost as if you do so to avoid us having to face the whole appalling number of 14 million of our fellow citizens of whom upward of four m;;ion are children living in poverty. Well, I won’t do that.
Andrew T. thank you for coming back into the discussion. I am glad you support the aim of myself and Michael BG in putting the campaign against poverty in this country first, and don’t concede the field to the Labour party. We did indeed slip badly during the Coalition, and I think have slipped again this past year in leaving it to Labour (and, incidentally, the Scots Nationalists) to express warm support for the Alston proposals. However, we have tended to have slightly more generous policies proposed on welfare in our Manifestos than have Labour, and we did pass the Fairer Shares for All policy at the Bournemouth Conference last year, though Michael and I wish it had been stronger. We have a basis for moving forward with radical proposals, but we will not be heeded much in the country if, with our uncertain record, we concentrate solely on fighting poverty. Let us by all means campaign with Labour and others on this, but we need to show that we have a platform plain to see that includes the intention of campaigning on at least four other great evils, as means towards restoring the social contract that should exist in our democracy between government and people.
Katharine,
I have previously noted that 50% of those classed as in relative poverty are homeowners.
Michael BG writes above “The JRF say 50% per cent of those living in poverty are homeowners; 18% own their home outright and 32% have mortgages. If you are in work and pay rent and are poor the state will give you financial help to pay some of your rent, if you have a mortgage the help is non-existent and if you are not working the government will only lend you some money to pay most of your mortgage interest.”
He then goes on to suggest that paying the same proportion of a person’s mortgage interest as they would if that person was paying rent would alleviate the problem.
What is being suggested here is that whatever level house prices go to the rents and mortgage interest will be paid for by taxpayers through the benefits system. That in itself will fuel further increases in rents and house prices.
It is of course wholly impractical. The issue of rents and unaffordable mortgage payments needs to be tackled at source. Anything else is just tilting at windmills.
Peter Martin,
Of course I missed the point you were trying to make by just posting a picture without any words to make your point. If someone chooses to spend time in a pub, that is fine. I have spent many an hour in pubs. I don’t think the majority should be penalised because of the actions of a few. A Liberal government should provide a society where everyone can develop their talents to the full. It makes no difference if a few choose not to do this.
As I set out for Joe, benefit levels should be set at the poverty line, there should be no benefit cap, housing benefit should pay up to 100% of a person’s rent when required and the government should pay the same proportion of a person’s mortgage interest as they would if that person was paying rent. Plus the minimum wage should be set at 70% of medium earnings. Therefore if a person works their income would be higher than if they don’t, especially if there was at least a £50 a week disregard before a person losses any of their benefits while keeping the taper rate at 63%. This would be a liberal system. I just don’t understand why you think such a system would be a bad thing to have. Perhaps you dislike people having the freedom not to work. However, I expect you think it is fine for those aged over 65 to choose not to work.
Andrew T,
Do you support my proposal for ending poverty?
Joe Bourke,
I am happy with the definition of poverty used by the JRF. I would not be unhappy to use the one set by the Social Metrics Commission. Whichever one I use, as a liberal I believe anyone living below that level have their freedoms and liberty restricted. Therefore as a liberal I want to create a society in which no one lives below that level and has their freedoms and liberty restricted by living in relative poverty. What I don’t understand is why you don’t think in a liberal society no one should live in relative poverty.
I hope you do know that Katharine and I are proposing a new social contract which not only deals with poverty, but also deals with the housing crisis as well as restoring a government commitment to full employment.
If we built over 300,000 new homes a year of which at least 209,000 were social homes, we could meet the demand for homes and so reduce the price of homes, both to rent and to buy.
If we assume we have dealt with the housing crisis and property prices and rents are near stable can you then either answer my question in my 10.41pm comment of yesterday or admit that it is possible to end poverty by increasing the benefit levels to the poverty line (please use any definition you want for this line).
@ Michael BG
I’m quite keen on the idea of a UBI but might support other proposals too. It’s a bit more complicated than pure policy though, how we market things, who is on board etc.
I do think as a Liberal party we need to focus on actual issues like poverty, lack of housing, unequal access to the legal system etc rather than making broad brush statements about contracts that appear to be arguing for more statism.
Michael BG,
it is possible to have a greater redistribution of incomes, but you need the consent of those you are taking income from to implement large scale changes. It is far easier to gain such consent when services and benefits are universal or if redistribution is effected through a progressive tax system.
In 2017-18 the average UK household income after housing costs was:
top quintile: £47,700
second highest quintile: £30,900
middle quintile: £22,800
second lowest quintile: £16,100
bottom quintile: £9,200
If, as you suggest, benefit levels were set at the poverty line, housing benefit would pay up to 100% of a person’s rent or mortgage interest (with no benefit cap as per policy) and there was no requirement to work for a living you would very likely see a majority of those currently in the bottom two quintiles choosing to live on benefits, including a great number of keyworkers providing essential services.
Paying 100% of the rent for so many people and paying mortgage interest would see a massive increase in housing costs to absorb the state largesse that was given to benefit claimants. The only way around that is Land Value Tax to recoup the increased rents and land value appreciation to fund the payments you are intent on making.
It is not possible to build 300,000 homes a year without land reform https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2019/06/land-reform-the-key-to-ambitious-social-housing/
The viability of state pensions and the social security safety net rests on two pillars – full employment of the able-bodied workforce. (having 30%+ of the current workforce idle is impractical) and affordable housing (that can only be delivered with substantial land and tax reforms to address the cost of land and the distribution of housing wealth).
@ Michael BG,
“It makes no difference if a few choose not to do this.”
You’re wrong. It will, it does , and it has.
In the 1970s the social welfare system was relatively benign. I used it only once myself. I remember having a pleasant chat with a young lady behind the counter who sent me off on a couple of interviews for jobs and gave me forms to fill in case I needed to apply for unemployment benefit. Fortunately I was offered one of the jobs so there was no need.
But there was widespread concern at the time about abuse of the system. Now, you and I might think the misuse was greatly exaggerated, and so the concern was unwarranted, but it wasn’t how many other people saw it. This paved the way for Thatcherism and the kind of oppressive social welfare system we now have.
Just a few cases of abuse, and there may well be more than a few with a UBI, will have devastating effects on public opinion.
Joe and Peter. In our Liberal approach to trying to end poverty, Michael BG and I have never suggested that people of working age who are physically and mentally fit should not be expected to seek paid employment. We are not trying to overthrow the present system by which fit people are required to seek paid work before benefits are paid to them, only to make the benefits system fair to those who are not able to do so or cannot find the work they need. Of course we don’t want a state of affairs where everyone who wants to can live on benefits even if they could do valuable work.
Personally I would like to see everyone in our country expected to make a contribution to society, but I think all should be enabled to live free and fulfilled lives too, and receiving adequate benefits when they need them is an essential part of this.
@ JoeB,
“If, as you suggest, benefit levels were set at the poverty line……..you would very likely see a majority of those currently in the bottom two quintiles choosing to live on benefits……… including a great number of keyworkers providing essential services.”
Yes I agree that’s the problem and no amount of funding, from LVT or anywhere else, even if it were possible (which I doubt), would be a solution to a loss of workers providing “essential” services.
This doesn’t mean I agree with essential workers being poorly paid. BUT the problem needs to be tackled in different ways.
Peter Martin,
Land Value Tax does two things in this respect. It enables a reduction in the tax on labour and a greater focus on taxation of economic rents and recoups gains accruing to landowners as a consequence of increases in housing benefit and investment in public infrastructure.
Alter https://libdemsalter.org.uk/en/ is a member of the Coalition for Economic Justice http://www.c4ej.com/ as is the Labour Land Campaign https://www.labourland.org/
The coalition was formed in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis with the following memorandum of understanding:
“The current economic crisis highlights, again, the inadequacies of the economic system which is unstable and deeply flawed. It is clear that events are demonstrating the common feature of repeated economic booms and depressions in the speculative rise in land prices.
In order to address this problem we need to suggest to the wider world that it is possible to create a new approach that delivers both economic justice and prosperity for all. This solution must be based upon the annual collection of land value for public purposes.
This meeting agrees that there is an urgent need to convince policy makers of this, and for them to develop (with our assistance) policies to capture unearned land values. Such policies would enable taxes on labour and enterprise to be minimised. Investment in necessary public infrastructure would thus be recovered for public benefit.”
The Beveridge social contract provides a safety net for those in need through no fault of their own, not an alternative to paying our way in society as best we can.
Andrew T,
A UBI will not deal with poverty unless either it is set at the poverty line or it is on top of existing benefits and together they are at least at the poverty level. I don’t understand why you think the problems of society could be solved without action from the state. The idea of a social contract is not new, but the one set up after the Second World War is failing the people of the UK. This is why we need a new one which deals with poverty; poor health; the lack of appropriate education, skills and training; the housing crisis; and unemployment and underemployment.
Joe Bourke,
You seem to be ignoring that the new social contract that Katharine and I are proposing includes a government commitment to full employment. The number of people who would choose to live on the poverty line are likely to be few, (nowhere near 30% of the working age population) because most people aspire to have a life which consists of more than just existing by living on the poverty line. (Of course this policy is based on a liberal view of human nature.) The paying of 100% of a person’s mortgage interest would need to be only applied to existing mortgages at the time a person had an income reduction which made them eligible for benefits.
The Shelter article you provided the link to is about the Land Compensation Act 1961. Both Katharine and I have already stated our support for this act to be reformed. Do you want it repeals or amended, and if amended do you have a form of new wording?
Do you support the benefit cap rather than our policy to abolish it?
You have stated you support a UBI, do you only support one if it is set lower than the poverty line?
Peter Martin,
My point about it making no difference was a reference to it not making any difference to liberals. Liberals need to come up with ways of persuading people to their way of thinking, or at least a majority of voters if we are ever to be elected as a majority government.
@ Joe B,
My point was on a more fundamental level. The reason the government issues the currency, then demands taxes, and insists they be paid in the currency of issue is to appropriate, some would say expropriate, some of the available labour in the workforce and goods/services (essentially labour power) produced in the economy.
The Government doesn’t need something. ie money from taxation, that it has created in the first instance. It demands the taxation revenue then pays for labour (either directly or indirectly through the purchase of goods and services) so that the providers of labour have some means of paying their taxes.
So, therefore, an unconditional universal payment short circuits the whole system. Especially if the payment is large enough to enable key workers to cease to be workers at all.
PS Good that we could agree on something for once on the other thread!
Raising welfare benefit payments to the poverty level may well depend on land value capture and consequent taxes on land values for the country to afford them in the end, but the increases could be phased in over several years. Colleagues have jibbed at the idea that 100% of a person’s rental costs or mortgage repayments should be part of the welfare package when people become unemployed, but I suggest this would be a temporary measure. We are seeing a lot of temporary payments being made, thankfully, by the Chancellor at present, and our acting leader Ed Davey is asking for the payments to workers on furlough to be continued for the time being. But end they eventually must.
Continuing on this theme of temporary payments, I want to contest the idea that sufficient welfare payments bring the risk of people ‘living on benefits’ for preference. As Michael has said, it is unlikely that people would want to live permanently even on increased rates. But the UN Rapporteur on poverty Philip Alston also pointed to a relevant fact. This is that many people on precarious incomes can be completely thrown by a sudden disaster – obvious possibilities being job or business loss, but there are many others such as illness or accident or the misfortune of a family member. Having little if any savings, people then are forced to apply for benefits and perhaps go to food banks. At the moment families with children on free school meals are reliant on vouchers or school packages or charitable support. My point is that all these misfortunes are temporary, and people are not expecting to continue to need and receive new and extra benefits when their immediate problems are resolved.
“Raising welfare benefit payments to the poverty level may well depend on land value capture and consequent taxes on land values for the country to afford them ……”
One BIG mistake which is quite common on the left is to think that the income of the poor can be increased only by taxing the rich. Robin Hood fashion. But, generally speaking, taxing the rich won’t decrease their consumption of goods and services. You’d have to tax Sri and Gopi Hinduja and family, who are worth some £22bn, according to the Times “Rich List” an awful lot to make them think twice about buying another Rolls Royce.
On the other hand, you can make me think twice about buying another VW Golf by taxing me more. And that is why taxes can sometimes enable the Govt to spend more without it causing inflation. But, sadly, and as you can see from the link below, I’m not on the rich list!
This is not to say that we shouldn’t tax the rich much more than we do, but we do that to reduce wealth inequality rather than to raise spending money.
https://news.sky.com/story/who-made-the-sunday-times-rich-list-this-year-11717733
Change will most likely come to our society in the next few months, I believe, both as a result of the pandemic and of the approach of our separation from the EU. It will be up to us and the progressives in the other parties to ensure that we have public opinion on our side, as we try to shape the changes for the wellbeing of the nation and not of the Tory party..
Change will of course come from the people, but we should plant the seedlings for new growth. I hope there will be some dispersal of people from the cities to the towns, but that will depend on good invitations to jobs and enterprises and homes in the towns, provided both by the government, the local authorities and individuals with spacious premises such as hotel owners.. Could for instance some very wealthy people be persuaded, by a carrot-and-stick approach (yes, more tax, but some alleviation for public service) to fund and foster enterprise parks in poor towns like Sunderland and Workington or Rochdale? Could the enterprises be set up perhaps, to provide ‘green’ jobs, from turning waste water and household waste into heating for small businesses and homes, from fitting solar panels to new-build houses to insulating older houses and instituting more charging points for electric vehicles? There is so much to be done in combatting climate change as well as the imminent unemployment.
Blue-sky thinking is indeed needed, as our Acting Leader has said. The invitation to take part in the changes that should come is especially in the Liberal Democrat gift, with our commitment to empowering people. But this government has to be shown that now it must serve all of the people all of the time, for the lack of that purpose has left desolate places in all parts of the UK, where the health of the poor is all too susceptible to the ravages of this virus.
“Blue-sky thinking is indeed needed, as our Acting Leader has said. ”
That’s probably another reason not to choose him as your real leader 🙂
“Blue sky thinking” is like “thinking outside the box” but with the emphasis of total freedom from practical constraints. It should appeal to those like Michael BG who accept that the Lib Dems “aren’t on the same page” as the voters but it is the voters who need to change rather than the Lib Dems. Still it would be good if the Lib Dems could “touch base” with the voters just occasionally and take some “feedback” after “running a few ideas up the flagpole”!
Anyway enough of the corporate speak. Everyone knows what the big practical constraint is right now. It’s one we can’t ignore and it’s not Brexit.
We do need new ideas, Peter Martin, whether we call them ‘blue sky thinking’ or not! I have tried in this thread to suggest a few. It is new employment opportunities that are needed, to prevent the alarming rise in unemployment among young people that is now predicted. Well, young people if fit and healthy commonly have energy and optimism and get-up-and-go capacity. Older would-be entrepreneurs who know of possible enterprises – why not propose taking over closed restaurants and starting new take-away services for one – should be able to lure young people through social media. I know younger friends who spend lots of time on Facebook (not Ebay any more), buying and selling. Producing or buying in some needed product, and selling it in a locality reasonably near you should not be difficult. And young people should be encouraged to move locations, probably out of the big cities, in search of new opportunities. and creating them themselves. Blue sky thinking, everyone, please!
On finding work for the newly unemployed, I see that the Institute for Fiscal Studies is suggesting that the government should hire many to build schools, railway lines or broadband infrastructure. At the same time Italy, the repeller of migrants, is now allowing 600,000 of them to stay and work, having found them essential in recent weeks in caring for the elderly and in picking crops. I know that here large-scale farmers have found our own people as well as imported Romanians invaluable in picking crops. But I hope whatever schemes of temporary job creation our government comes up with, they will provide funds to make sure care workers are given better pay and employment rights in permanent jobs in future, since they are essential workers who have been shamefully undervalued up to now.