|
Nicholas Timmins,
The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State, New edition
(HarperCollins, 2001), pp.xvi+708, £12.99.
This book announces itself
as a 'new edition' of the book Timmins published in 1995, and
any review of a new edition of a book is inevitably a review of
the original edition, which was a unique history of the welfare
state, revealing what a remarkable achievement it was and still
is.
The introduction sets out both a plan and some of Timmins' conclusions.
He candidly admits that the book includes those things which interest
him, as any biography does; so, fortunately for the purposes of
this newsletter, the book contains more on social security benefits
than many other authors' biographies of the welfare state would
have done.
Timmins' initial conclusions are that there was no 'golden age';
that social policy has always been driven by diverse and often
irreconcilable aims; that it is difficult to discover explicitly
labour or conservative approaches to reform; that the Beveridge
Report and its (partial) implementation were colossal achievements;
that anger at continuing inequality is highly appropriate; and
that change frequently results in unintended consequences ( -
there is a useful section in pp.282f on Family Income Supplement's
(FIS) tendency to depress wage rates and to increase the depth
of the 'poverty trap', which was first defined in relation to
FIS).
In a short review it is not possible to discuss the detail of
the historical argument of the remaining chapters. Instead, I
shall highlight those parts of the history and of Timmins' treatment
of it which will be of particular relevance to readers of this
newsletter.
The remarkable implementation and survival of Child Benefit runs
as a seam of gold through the book, and Timmins recognises the
importance of not means-testing it (as have politicians of various
political hues). Child Benefit was an important element in Beveridge's
plan to ensure that families would be better off in employment
than out of it, and this theme too runs throughout the history,
and particularly through the revised chapter 20 and the new chapter
21 in the new edition: chapters which discuss the recent New Deal,
Working Families Tax Credits (WFTC), and plans for tax credits
for people without dependent children. Similarly, Beveridge wanted
most elderly people to be on non-means-tested pensions, and governments
are still pursuing this goal by different means in order to maximise
personal savings for old age. (The proposed income guarantee for
pensioners will be a wrong turn in this respect).
Beveridge wanted a contributory scheme because he wanted everyone
to contribute as well as to receive. When he wrote his report,
only higher paid employees were paying income tax, so national
insurance contributions paid by every employee were the obvious
way to enable everyone to contribute. An important general lesson
to draw from Timmins' history is that a single aim can often be
met via different routes; and an important particular lesson is
that a tax-based social security system would now achieve Beveridge's
aim that everyone should contribute because now people on relatively
low incomes are paying income tax.
Beveridge's aim was a contributory 'platform' and a means-tested
'safety net', but because the rates of contributory benefits were
set at similar levels to those of means-tested benefits (National
Assistance, subsequently renamed Supplementary Benefit and then
Income Support), and because means-tested benefits included housing
costs and contributory benefits did not, by 1954 the 'safety net'
was supporting 1,800,000 people. As we shall see, the position
has worsened since then.
An interesting subplot is the way in which radical proposals have
frequently been made, often several times, before being implemented.
Labour's manifesto of 1964 contained a pledge to integrate tax
and benefits and thus abolish means-tests for pensioners, and
then for others (p.225); in 1974 the Conservative government was
working on tax credits; and the Working Families Tax Credit integrates
a means-test with income tax assessment for some employees. The
possibility of a Citizen's Income scheme gets a mention in this
context - but the book is biography, not prophecy, so we should
not expect Timmins to have explored this possibility further.
(Maybe he should write another book).
From 1978 onwards a note of defeatism enters the story as governments
continually adjusted and renamed means-tested benefits rather
than seeking to replace them with something different. (The account
of the 1983 Housing Benefit Supplement fiasco is particularly
revealing). Norman Fowler's 1986 review was intended to be radical,
but the outcome wasn't (though it did for the first time apply
the same means test to in-work, out-of-work and housing benefits,
making the poverty trap shallower but wider).
It is a pity that the new edition no longer contains the interesting
tables to be found in the original edition; but interesting figures
in the original chapter 20 are still there in the new edition,
and they show that by 1992 there were 5.6m people on Income Support,
which, when dependents are included, means 20% of the population.
The figure was 4% in 1948. Both editions, in different ways, reveal
increasing inequality, with the new edition recognising that recent
policies have at least arrested the acceleration of inequality
for those on the lowest incomes.
It is often difficult to discuss such recent developments objectively,
but Timmins has useful sections on developments in social security
policy at the end of the last Conservative administration and
during New Labour's first period in office. The continuities are
interesting, and particularly those relating to attempts to provide
incentives to work and to attempts to reduce means-testing. Also
useful is the recognition that Beveridge's scheme was a development
rather than a revolution and that the search for a 'big idea'
to solve the problems facing the social security system has (so
far) ended in failure. The unthinkable has not yet been thought
by governments, even if various unthinkables have been thought
by various individuals and think-tanks.
An interesting outcome of recent developments is an increase in
means-testing (for Working Families Tax Credits is better described
as a means-tested benefit than as any other kind, and the pensioner
income guarantee will be one too); and Timmins concludes that
universal provision is having a hard time of it and will continue
to do so.
This new edition of Timmins' 'biography of the welfare state'
is essential reading for anyone interested in the current debate
on social security reform, a debate which must now be linked with
that on income tax reform. Whilst a Citizen's Income approach
to the problem is currently not high on the agenda, Timmins' book
shows that the issues amongst which this approach operates are
precisely those within which debate on the future of social security
is taking place: incentives to seek employment and to save; income
maintenance; housing costs; complexity; inequality; responsibility
to contribute …… And he also shows that Beveridge's
aim was to provide a 'platform' on which people could build (because
to provide a platform is to encourage individual effort) and that
our social security system is no longer true to this vision because
its chief instrument is a set of means-tested safety-nets. Beveridge
would have wanted us to seek a new 'platform'.
The only conclusion to draw is that discussion of a Citizen's
Income is central to any future discussion of social security
reform.
Order
Today! |
