The history of British welfare policy is much shorter than we think. Looking back just one hundred years, Britain not only lacked a welfare state – the very idea of such a system was intellectually radical. Beatrice Webb’s 1909 Minority Report on the Poor Law therefore deserves celebration as a landmark moment in the history of ideas.
Four principles are central to this intellectual legacy: that poverty is the result of structural causes rather than individual moral fault (contrary to the rhetoric and substance of current Conservative thinking); that the prevention of poverty is better than reactive treatment; that prevention is best achieved by the state rather than charity; and that this state action should express a collective duty of care that we owe to one another as equal citizens.
These ideas led to concrete policy proposals which were equally radical for the time. Webb’s far-sighted recommendations included a national health service, the universal provision of aid to the unemployed, and a national minimum wage. Britain had to wait until the 1942 Beveridge report for the first of these two landmarks – influenced by the 28-year-old Beveridge’s research for Webb on the minority report – and yet another half-century until the first Blair government for the third.
We must now continue to press for Webb’s principles if we are to make further progress on decreasing poverty and inequality in 21st century Britain.
A ‘living wage’ — giving all our citizens not just the material means of survival, but also the chance lead the kind of quality of life that many take for granted — is a concrete policy call that flows directly from the principles of the minority report. For Beatrice Webb there was no doubt that poverty is relative; inextricably tied to shared social assumptions concerning wellbeing and quality of life. And the minimum wage she proposed was not just to lift the poor out of absolute poverty. She could have turned to other policy mechanisms if this was her sole aim. The deeper principle at stake was equality of social status and citizenship – a value that is steadily corroded if a whole class of people are denied the basic opportunities that the rest of us take for granted.
So we must make far greater effort to narrow the yawning wealth gap of modern Britain. This requires more than just a levelling up, bringing those at the bottom closer to those in the middle of the income spectrum. A sense of equality among citizens is difficult to maintain when some of our very wealthiest are allowed to get away with off-shoring their wealth, refusing to pay their dues to the society that gave them the opportunity to create that vast wealth. Taxes on high earners needs to go up, and loopholes closed, so they actually pay. Proceeds should be used to fund initiatives such as the child trust fund that are designed to improve the life chances of individuals, allowing them a small financial cushion but also sending out an important signal about financial inclusion and aspiration.
And we need to make the case that this is not simply about welfare ‘generosity’. It is a contemporary application of the minority report principle that we should prevent rather than merely treat poverty. Prevention here encompasses an understanding of the psychology of poverty, seen most clearly in a downward spiral of individual (as well as collective) self-esteem in chronically disadvantaged communities. The government has understood this principle, and has taken a great stride in increasing the budget for ‘talking therapies’, which address the psychological impact of poverty, from £5m to £170m. This is potentially a very significant step forward in the history of our welfare state. We must make sure this help reaches those who need it most.
There is one last lesson we should take from the history of the minority report and its impact. Deep change takes time, and with persistence once radical ideas can become part of an established welfare settlement.