by David Ward
Napoleon once told Le Comte de Molé the value of being both a fox and a lion, “the whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be one or the other”. For Labour on the prime minister’s speech on welfare and “opportunity” on 22 June, the tempting response will be to roar at injustice as Andy Burnham indicated he would do in the recent Newsnight debate. But there are reasons to be wary of that approach.
We saw in the last parliament how effective Tory attacks on perceived injustices on those who work to provide a living for others can be. No matter how much howling is heard from the left about Benefits Street or reductions in the benefit cap it all falls straight into Osborne’s electoral trap.
Instead we can take a far more interesting approach. To say Cameron has a point on welfare and hold him to account for it.
The prime minister suggests there is a problem with government “topping up low pay…We need to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society.” And of course, he’s right. It’s what Ed Miliband used to call predistribution. For some reason it didn’t catch on.
It is surely welcome if the PM wants to, for example, increase the minimum wage substantially and the thresholds for national insurance. But if the approach is to simply scale back tax credits and increase income tax thresholds, the most effective attack will be to hold him to account for policy which is unlikely to achieve his aims.
We have to be clear that Labour is not about increasing the size of the welfare bill, it’s about providing better jobs, lives and futures for the majority. Subsidising companies who pay low wages is a funny way to spend scarce resources. But accepting a future as a low wage economy isn’t right either.
Cameron came to office amid a blaze of promises about “A march of the makers” and export led growth which would “rebalance the economy”. We should be asking what happened to any of that optimism. Where are the new jobs in high end manufacturing or creative industries? What happened to government plans like Tech City or a year of coding? Nobody wants to live in a Britain where high skill and high pay jobs become the preserve of the few and the argument is about how to shift a few budgets around to fix the problem.
Some of the more interesting parts of Labour’s manifesto were on tackling low productivity and finding ways to invest in growing industries. Let’s pick that up and make those plans more concrete. And then let’s take the government to task for giving up on a rebalanced economy and make it clear they’ve failed to tackle the low pay high welfare society.
Similarly Cameron talks about the importance of early years support, as Liz Kendall has in Labour’s leadership contest, and how government agencies protect vulnerable young people. We should support these aims. But if the policy is little more than swapping one governance regime for another or a veneer for cuts to Local Authority budgets he needs to be held to account on the outcomes.
From UKIP switchers in our heartlands to those who opted for the Conservatives in the marginals we needed to win, this is one area where we can send a strong message that we are focused on what works. Yes we’ll bring down the welfare bill, and we’ll do it by making work pay.
David Ward is a Labour campaigner in south London
Tags: cuts, David Cameron, david ward, living wage, predistribution, welfare
Only way to reduce the welfare bill is increase tax thresholds at the basic level allowing more people to keep and spend their own money, and lift the point where NI is paid, this will reduce the need for in work benefits. Stop child benefit for anybody with more than two children, after that if you want them you pay for them.
This brings me to the NHS, start to have hotel charges of £5 per patient per day, remember the elderly if they are in hospital a long time lose their pension to a great extent, exemptions based on prescription charge exemption. Simple and easy to administer.
Bob, I’d go further – scrap Tax Credits for anyone working less than 35 hours per week for one employer.
The only way empoyers are going to start taking people on full time is if they are forced.
Bob, as for the NHS.
This brings me to the NHS, start to have hotel charges of £5 per patient per day, remember the elderly if they are in hospital a long time lose their pension to a great extent, exemptions based on prescription charge exemption. Simple and easy to administer
.You have got to start accepting that the NHS no longer exists. It is devolved to Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and soon Manchester. How the devolved areas wish to run their respective NHSs is none of Westminsters business anymore. Westminster cannot pass any legislation regarding the NHS except for NHS England (less NHS Manchester)
Tafia, do it the simple way, increase tax thresholds at the start, cuts out an awful lot of extra cost to the taxpayer of administration. Scraping tax credits will not affect employers as ttehy just pay the minimum wage upwards.
If the NHS in Wales Scotland and NI don’t want hotel charges then that’s fine but if we did introduce charges the elderly when they are discharged will have money available to them to live on when they are discharged. The Labour Party were warned by William Hague about the risks of devolution and now you see what has happened. Scotland had a voting system that was supposed to fix the result so that the SNP never had a majority. That worked well then.
The Labour Party were warned by William Hague about the risks of devolution and now you see what has happened.
Devolution is a good thing and there needs to be more of it and faster – including for England.