Are we still the party of Beveridge?

The Liberal Democrats, ran on a manifesto focusing on health and social care. However upon reading it on the day of its release I was disappointed – because it actually said very little about reforming welfare. To put this in blunt terms, approximately 24 percent of the United Kingdom’s population is disabled – we had, in our manifesto, three insubstantial commitments on welfare reform for disabled people. That is not nearly good enough.

As Rachel Reeves’ first budget approaches, with new announcements on welfare “reforms” being made – including £3 billion in welfare cuts, it is a scary time to be a disabled person reliant upon the welfare state. With “workfare” being put before healthcare, it is estimated up to 500,000 people suffering from long-term sickness will be forced back into work, just so HMRC can drum up some more tax revenue. We must stand firmly against this cacophony of harmful policies, one of which includes putting job coaches on mental health wards, where vulnerable patients are receiving care for often severe mental health conditions. The Labour Party also wants to cut benefits for mentally ill people, which would imply they do not view mental health conditions to be valid as disabilities – an ableist notion.

So, I put to you, the reader, the first of two simple yet blunt questions; where is our opposition to these harmful policies which will disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable in our society? I have looked at our party’s social media pages, I have looked at the social media pages of our Members of Parliament, and I must say I am bitterly disappointed. Make no mistake, our party has not done nearly enough to regain the trust of disabled people, and I say that as someone who disabled. We have not been a voice for the disabled community, we have not stood with them nor have we acknowledged our responsibility for the policies which harmed them, during the 2010-2015 coalition government.

I do not mean for this article to make for “easy reading”, I mean for it to be blunt, for it to be reflective, and for it to hold our party to account. We have, ahead of us, a test and if we fail to stand up for disabled people and people suffering from long-term sickness now, that will send a clear message to the aforementioned people: that we do not care about them. However, there is an alternative path available to us; we can choose to act.

Make no mistake, we are in no position to prevent a Labour vote from passing, and we should not be surprised if their new Members of Parliament do not ever vote with us. Although, regardless of those facts, we must stand with the disabled community and anyone who is reliant upon the welfare state due to long-term sickness.

To the most underrepresented people in our society, who are enslaved by poverty and squalor, it is incumbent upon us to lend our voice so that they can be heard. I shall now put to you a second question; are we still the party of Beveridge? Because I firmly believe that if we fail to stand with the vulnerable right now, the answer will be a simple “no”.

It is time for the Liberal Democrats to find our voice, to reflect upon our history, and to lend our voice to the voiceless right now… because who else will?

* Jack Carter is a member of the Liberal Democrats based in Somerset.

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25 Comments

  • William Francis 20th Oct '24 - 1:03pm

    Well said!

    The party is too timid when it comes to critcising Labour.

  • Jack Carter…”The Labour Party also wants to cut benefits for mentally ill people, which would imply they do not view mental health conditions to be valid as disabilities – an ableist notion.”

    You quote, as a fact, an article in the ‘Telegraph’ which, even that Tory newspaper qualifies with the words, “being considered by, etc….”

    Any argument based on extrapolating such a conclusion from rumour is of dubious value..

  • Brandon Masih 20th Oct '24 - 4:14pm

    Great debut article Jack, you’re absolutely right we need a stronger voice against demonising those on welfare, especially those with disabilities or in vulnerable positions.

    @expats , we have many many piece on here discussing rumours of policy being reported in media, and we have spokespersons addressing the rumours and our positions on it… in the media, just as Daisy Cooper did this morning! I see no reason the fact it isn’t a settled and announced thing to make Jack’s entire argument here dubious given he’s speaking as a person with a disability who is (rightfully) concerned about the reports and how we’d respond!

  • nigel hunter 20th Oct '24 - 5:26pm

    Everything waits for the budget. Then we can act. In my opinion we do seem to act too ‘nice’ ,mild, not make a lot of noise publishing our policies .Our Beverage credentials should not be ignored.

  • David Warren 20th Oct '24 - 5:41pm

    Great article from Jack!

    Experiencing how Labour ran health, social care and welfare at first hand is what brought me to the Liberal Democrats. Now 15 years on a new Labour administration shows no sign of being any better than the Blair/Brown administrations.

    Our current policies are progressive and would help those in greater need but they are not transformative. We need to reclaim the mantle of Beveridge and key to that is putting a figure on what a citizen needs to live on if they are unable to be in full time work. Once we have that we need to argue for it!

  • Katharine Pindar 20th Oct '24 - 5:53pm

    Yes, Jack, we are still the party of Beveridge. Look at the Fairer Society motion we passed at the York Conference last spring, moved by Wendy Chamberlain our then Work and Pensions spokesperson, which aims to ‘End deep poverty, including a radical overhaul of the welfare system, so no family ever has to use a food bank in Britain, by taking immediate steps to repair the safety net, including restoring the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, introducing emergency grants (not loans) and stopping deducting debt repayments at unaffordable rates. ‘

    But some of us, including Michael Berwick-Gooding (see our OpEd article ‘Tell the Chancellor…’ concurrent with yours) were like you rather disappointed with the limited Manifesto summary of our great aims. We want our party leadership now to make plain our (constitutional) commitment to tackling poverty in this country, and, surely with the backing of progressive MPs from Labour, pressure our new government not to actually increase poverty by trying to cut the benefits and force back to work people who have to suffer disability mental or physical and illness at home. Let’s have a movement in our party to insist our progressive policies are what the country needs (including an uplift of Universal Credit beyond September’s 1.7% inflation rate) and press them on the government: we could expect Social Liberal Forum to provide that focus for us.

  • James Fowler 20th Oct '24 - 6:15pm

    We never were the Party of Beveridge. That Party was, is and will always remain the Labour Party. A historical accident means that, very briefly, William Beveridge was a Liberal MP. Beveridge’s big ideas for society were absorbed to varying degrees by all three Parties at the time, and many others since. Only one Party, the Labour Party, entirely bought into them and put them on the statute book.

  • Katharine Pindar 20th Oct '24 - 9:02pm

    James Fowler, William Beveridge was a Liberal. His ideas of the five Great Evils that had to be combatted in our country after the Second World War were taken up and acted on by the post-war Labour government. They still have validity today, having been given a modern focus and interpretation by social Liberals in our party, and have informed Liberal Democrat policy. I should be happy to see the new Labour government facing up to the five evils, the first of which should be recognition of poverty: still more than 14 million people living in poverty.

  • William Francis 20th Oct '24 - 9:31pm

    @James Fowler

    Does that mean if the Tories won the 1945 General election, the Conservatives would be the party of Beveridge?

    It’s a massive stretch to claim that Labour is the party of Beveridge when Beveridge wasn’t even a member, and stronger connections to the Liberal party; having participated in the Liberal Summer school movement and sat on the Liberal benches in the Lords. Not to mention his 1948 book voluntary-action challenges the view that he was as statist as socialists and anti-socialists claim he was. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719083815/

  • Peter Martin 20th Oct '24 - 10:45pm

    Are those LibDems who are claiming Beveridge as one of their own fully aware of what is in his famous report?

    Beveridge said: “benefit in return for contributions, rather than free allowances from the state is what the people of Britain desire.”

    I think this is probably still true. Except that contributions need not necessarily be financial. However I don’t see this sentiment echoed by those Lib Dems who are campaigning against poverty. The feeling, if I understand them correctly, is mainly that nothing should be asked in return.

    I don’t believe this is going to be electorally successful any time soon. A better approach has to be the guarantee of a job for those who need one, which should include a large measure training, and at a living wage.

  • Peter Davies 21st Oct '24 - 6:27am

    @Peter you have a point. We are not the party of Beveridge and this is not the country he lived in. Both have moved on by three generations. Contribution based welfare was always nonsense but it was the idea that allowed the construction of a more generous, largely non-contributary system.

  • Mark Frankel 21st Oct '24 - 8:32am

    Peter Martin speaks my mind. If 24% of the population are disabled does that mean they have to be subsidised by the remaining 76%? Surely not.Our policies have to be realistic and sustainable.

  • Steve Comer 21st Oct '24 - 8:40am

    We did the right thing, and got positive publicity, for the action we took on carer’s overpayments. I believe we are still the party of Beveridge, and Keynes too, but maybe we need to make that clearer. I hope we will have the opportunity in this Parliament to contrast our progressive and modern Liberalism with the centralist, top down control freakery of Labour.

  • Steve Trevethan 21st Oct '24 - 9:28am

    Might the Liberal Democrat Party emphasize its social liberal root?

    “Social liberalism endorses social justice, a mixed economy and the expansion of civil and political rights.” [From Wikipedia]

    Its underlying premise is that an optimal state/government is a positive power in a society because it protects and enhances the socio-economic contexts, rights, duties and opportunities of all, meaning absolutely all citizens and their children. It holds that to optimize such contexts and opportunities is the prime criterion for assessing governmental purpose, functions and size.

    “The measure of individual freedom is not how much the state leaves people alone, but the extent to which it enables and protects them and so maximizes their opportunities and incentives to develop and flourish.” [From historian Peter Weller}

    P. S. A little more from economist and historian Michael Hudson to follow later!

  • Peter Martin 21st Oct '24 - 10:20am

    @ Matt Frankel,

    Just a minute! I didn’t actually say that those who are disabled shouldn’t be helped by the rest of the community. Obviously the more disabled there are, and the more serious the disabilities, the harder it is to provide that help. But, thankfully, it’s nowhere near 24%.

    I am saying that the voting population aren’t sympathetic to the idea of universal means tested benefits for everyone, no strings attached, especially if they perceive the recipients to be capable of making a contribution. Many disabled people too would like to play their part in society. One way we can help is by giving them a job they can actually do. We’d be helping ourselves too.

    https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/19198/pdf/

  • Kathy Erasmus 21st Oct '24 - 10:24am

    Totally agree we seem to have turned into a vote chasing party. I filled Tim Farrons review of the election, this asked which Libdem policies I’d campaigned on, I canvassed on 5 campaigns and not one of them highlighted Any national Libdem policies

  • Nonconformistradical 21st Oct '24 - 10:26am

    @Mark Frankel

    “If 24% of the population are disabled does that mean they have to be subsidised by the remaining 76%? Surely not.”

    If those disabled people incur, purely because of their disability, greater costs than otherwise similarly placed non-disabled people, and they are not able to finance those extra costs out of their own resources – are you proposing that they should be left at permanent disadvantage compared with otherwise similarly placed non-disabled people?

  • Steve Trevethan 21st Oct '24 - 12:31pm

    Michael Hudson, who has an excellent internet site, points out that there are three basic powers/forces in society:

    1) the government
    2) the rich/powerful/influential
    3) the regular people

    The combination of any two has more power and influence than the third.

    Currently, and previously, we seem to experience 1 and 2 combining with the result and/or purpose of exploiting 3.

    Might we promote and pursue policies which get 1 and 3 working together for the sustainable benefit of all?

    Might we also promote Mr F D Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, which are of two types:
    1) Freedom of
    2) Freedom from

    Might current political and socio-economic theory/fashion be putting an inequitable and unsustainable over emphasis on “Freedom For” (the rich/powerful/influential) which erodes and destroys the “Freedom From” which is needed for the many and the sustainability of our one and only environment?

  • Well said, Jack.
    We are the party of Beveridge but we absolutely have to live by it. I hope we become far less timid against Labour where they fail to deliver.

  • Helen Dudden 22nd Oct '24 - 10:26am

    Housing is a massive problem for disabled people. Often 10 year wait for something suitable. The government wants to get disabled people working but gives little in return.
    One of my grandchildren is autistic and eating is problem. She was only having liquid special meal replacement. At school now she finds new friends and her SEND is working well. There are a few other children and the teachers sits with them for lunch. She may never learn to read easily, but she can communicate with us and the melt downs are less. Mental health is an illness how this government feels it’s not is one issue.
    I believe education is very important for children and she tells her parents she is learning. Going to school to learn. You may never get what but she is doing it.

  • Katharine Pindar 22nd Oct '24 - 5:09pm

    Helen, how right you are about the difficulty of finding suitable housing for disabled people. I remember the trauma of a friend of mine, seeking a properly-equipped ground-floor flat for her seriously injured son who had spent many months in hospital. He and his devoted girlfriend from Continental Europe, who worked the many months in shop work in the Midlands to be able to visit him in hospital, eventually had one blessed Christmas together in a flat found for them in the family’s locality before he died.

    Jack is so right in this article to demand so much more from our party in support of people with disabilities, and the proposed welfare cuts must be prevented.

    In May of this year the Equality and Human Rights Commission started an inquiry to examine whether ministers at the Department of Work and Pensions acted unlawfully by failing to protect claimants with learning disabilities or severe mental illness. I can find no further reference to this inquiry beyond May. We must ask our spokespeople to find out if the inquiry was perhaps stalled by the GE but has hopefully been revived since.

  • James Fowler 23rd Oct '24 - 8:20pm

    @William and Katharine. Beveridge’s ideas embodied high minded Edwardian social reform. By 1945 he was probably somewhat behind where the conduct of government and public opinion had got to. The social reformers of his ilk and vintage either all became stalwart Labour through the 1920s, or always had been from the outset. In many ways Beveridge was an outlier in not openly joining them, but in reality his personal party political membership is fairly unimportant. The reality is that top down social reform as an idea was owned by Labour almost from outset, and the Liberals who espoused it before the First World War quickly became Labour afterwards.

  • Katharine Pindar 24th Oct '24 - 3:06pm

    James, that does seem an extraordinarily Labour-centric comment! The Liberals have been at the centre of social justice action since the great reforming government of Asquith and Lloyd George in the early twentieth century, with which I believe Beveridge himself as a young man had association. His great Reform ideas were eagerly taken up by the Labour government in the Second World War, but remain relevant to today’s Liberal Democrat social-justice agenda. Please see the concurrent Most Read article from myself and Michael Berwick-Gooding for a discussion of Beveridge’s ideas in the comments.

  • Peter Hirst 28th Oct '24 - 4:41pm

    I think it is fair in the present political context to support policies that show our priorities even if we are uncertain whether we’d be able to implement them at the present time.

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