Transcript Evaluating New Labour’s welfare reforms

Last time ...
Student feedback exercise (2nd Feb): what does
‘citizenship’ means?
•A problematic concept that largely contributes
towards perpetuating the status quo by serving to
exclude ‘outsiders’
•A battleground upon which to mobilise bottomup, grassroots collective action in pursuit of greater
social justice
•Largely ‘meaningless’ – in need of challenging?
•Alternative concepts? Human rights?
Evaluating New Labour’s
welfare reforms - strategies of
inclusion or exclusion?
Evaluating New Labour’s welfare reforms strategies of inclusion or exclusion?
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Background
New Labour and ‘Social Exclusion’
Critique and concerns
Conclusion
Background
• ‘Social exclusion’ discourse originated in France in the 1980s
• Debate in Britain prompted by New Labour’s inheritance of a
deeply divided society in 1997 – except for New Zealand, Britain
experienced the highest growth in income inequality since 1979
(JRF 1995)
• New Labour committed to Conservative spending plans for first
2 years of office (with no income tax rises) – convergence with
neo-liberal economic orthodoxy
• ‘Social exclusion’ served to differentiate New Labour’s social
polices from previous Conservatives
• Established the Social Exclusion Unit in 1997 to co-ordinate
policies aimed at tackling unemployment, poor skills, low
incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health
and family breakdown.
New Labour’s definition of ‘social
exclusion’
• ‘Social exclusion is about more than income poverty. It is a
short–hand term for what can happen when people or
areas have a combination of linked problems, such as
unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes,
poor housing, high crime and family breakdown. These
problems are linked and mutually reinforcing’
• ‘Social exclusion has its roots in poor early years, is
compounded by the absence of basics such as a job and a
home, and is often left unsolved by public services working
in silos. The Social Exclusion Task Force aims to correct this.
We work with the rest of government to identify priorities,
test solutions, and facilitate collaboration across
government’ (Cabinet Office 2009 at:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/social_exclusion_task_force/context.aspx )
Policies aimed at inclusion
• Emphasis on getting people back into paid work through
‘welfare to work’ New Deal programmes and ‘making
work pay’ (via the National Minimum Wage and Working
Tax Credits)
• Particular focus on getting parents back to work through
‘support’ for ‘childcare’
• Measures aimed at supporting parenting – e.g. Sure Start
introduced to integrate services (childcare, education,
health, etc.) for child support (up to 14 years)
• Efforts to raise educational attainment (e.g. EAZs,
Excellence in Cities, Connexions)
• Efforts aimed at improving service delivery (via joined-up
thinking, better targeting and community engagement)
Achievements claimed to date?
• ‘To tackle income poverty, the focus has been on helping
people into work, including through the New Deals, welfare
to work and tax credits to make work pay ...
• To tackle poor services, funding has increased and
performance management improved. As a result, schools in
the poorest areas have been improving at a faster rate than
the rest, and better early years services have enabled many
women to return to work, reducing child poverty and
delivering a firm foundation for future learning and
development for nearly all three and four year olds.
• And to tackle powerlessness, community engagement has
been placed at the heart of regeneration, through
programmes like the New Deal for Communities and
Neighbourhood Renewal ...’ (Cabinet Office 2009, ibid).
Future priorities
• ‘Parenting and the early years have a new importance ...
• The links between problems have a new importance. After
improving the quality of particular services, it is now
important to improve the joins between them. We are
developing a much better understanding of the relationship
of poverty to a set of complex problems ... . We now need
to consider solutions that start with the problems as
experienced by the individual and family and their
articulated needs, and provide a coordinated response
across a range of services that is greater rather than less
than the sum of the parts.
• And prevention has a new importance. Better data is
making it increasingly possible to identify earlier who needs
support. ...’ (Cabinet Office 2009, ibid).
New Labour and ‘social exclusion’ – an
analysis
• Represents a shift in emphasis in Labour Party
politics away from a concern with ‘social
inequality’ and unequal income distribution –
effectively depoliticises poverty
• Focus now on the ‘handicaps’ of the excluded
‘them’, and how to integrate them with the
included ‘us’ (a ‘deficit model’)
• Represents closure of other possibilities (i.e. the
redistribution of wealth and power) (Byrne 2006)
3 Discourses of Social Exclusion
• A redistributionist discourse (RED) - prime
concern is poverty and inequality (solution:
redistribution of wealth and power)
• A moral underclass discourse (MUD) - prime
concern is the behaviour of the poor and
‘dependency culture’ (solution: moral and
behavioural reform)
• A social integrationist discourse (SID) - prime
concern is inclusion through paid work (solution:
work incentivisation schemes) (Levitas 2005)
New Labour’s discourse?
Critique: strategies of inclusion or
exclusion?
Emphasis on inclusion through paid work
problematic:
• Impact of pressure to work at all costs (including
lone parents with children 7 years old) on family
life and the wellbeing of children (quality of
childcare provision variable)? (See Good
Childhood Enquiry 2009 and Unicef Report 2007)
• Effect of the credit crunch on Britain’s labour
market?
The Credit Crunch
• Significant reduction in the availability of loans for
mortgages and small businesses (or severe tightening of
the conditions required to obtain a loan)
• Largely caused by an anticipated decline in the value of
the collateral used by the banks to secure the loans – i.e.
in August 2007, this being the sudden fall in property
values in US (particularly hitting the sub-prime market) –
leading to lenders wanting their money back
• Root cause of problem has been overborrowing in US and
UK (esp on housing) fuelled by low interest rates, rising
property values, speculation and reckless lending
practices (Northern Rock 130% mortgages at 6x salary) –
set within the context of a deregulated financial market .
The Credit Crunch
• Loss of confidence in banking sector as banks faced
increasing losses on their loans (threatening their
solvency). Wholesale creditors to banks (assorted
financial institutions) sought their money back
• September 2008 – banking system on verge of collapse
• Treasury sought to prop up sector through
nationalisations (Northern Rock, B&B and HBOS) and
loan guarantees to others (£600bn by October 2008)
• Govt announce further loan guarantees for corporate
and consumer debt to encourage lending.
The impact of the credit crunch on the
employment rate
Economy 2009
• Global downturn - but UK predicted to shrink the
most (by 2.8 per cent) (IMF 2009, World
Economic Outlook)
• UK unemployment expected to exceed 3m by end
of year (The Independent 29/1/09)
• Housebuilding at lowest level since 1924
(Guardian 15/12/08)
• Housing repossessions expected to reach 75,000
in year – highest since 1991 (Guardian 4/12/08)
Other areas of concern
• Impact of competition between schools on social
inclusion?
• Community engagement in social programmes
problematic – whose community? And for whose
benefit? Who gains? Who loses? (refer to
community safety, cohesion and wellbeing)
• Lack of political influence locally and globally –
with power increasingly residing with global
multi-national corporations (aided by a powerful
network of international finance institutions)
Conclusion
• New Labour define problem of ‘social exclusion’ in
terms of flawed behavioural factors and barriers to
paid work - policy solutions seek to transform
behaviour and remove barriers to paid work
• Byrne questions the authenticity of this agenda:
‘[E]xclusion is ... a necessary and inherent
characteristic of an unequal postindustrial capitalism
founded around a flexible labour market and with a
systematic constraining of the organizational powers
of workers as collective actors. ... ’ As such, ‘it is
impossible to eliminate it by any set of social policies
directed at the excluded alone’ (Byrne 2005, pp. 173,
175-6).
• In which case, can anything be done?