Introduction

I am very grateful for the chance to speak to Progress tonight, on the cusp of what is an important time for the cause of welfare reformers in the Labour party

This week we have the third reading of the welfare reform bill;

Next week, we have our national policy forum in Wrexham, when I’ll present the first results of our huge exercise talking, debating, listening, reconnecting with the public all over our country.

And so tonight, I want set out:

• What we’ve heard about the new politics of responsibility,

• Why I believe the Tories have misunderstood what the public are seeking; and

• Where I think Labour now needs to radically renew our policy for the welfare state

The policy review

Let me start with the policy review.

When Ed Miliband asked to lead this review for the party over the next few years, I was very clear that now was not the time to dot every i and cross every t of our next manifesto.

That would be an error the Conservatives would love us to make.

But, I was clear too that the task had to start with first things first.

And that meant reconnecting with the public.

When we lost office last year, the result was simply awful.

A 1983-level of returns. The worst performance since 1918.

A result that means its now possible to leave our capital in north London, carry on north and not reach another Labour seat until one bumped into Austin Mitchell in Grimsby.

The worst statistic for me was that nearly 60% of voters said that Labour was not just a bit, but seriously, out of touch with the lives of ordinary working people.

For the peoples’ party that was a hell of an achievement.

For that simple reason I say Ed Miliband was dead right to say our work starts with the job of reconnecting with the people whose trust we must earn again to once again win the chance to serve.

And then to change our party, to Refound Labour, so that never again do we drift away into a world of our own.

Now we could sugar-coat this, but frankly what’s the point.

Now is the time for some hard truths. Not comfortable delusions.

Frankly, what this report will say is no more difficult than the difficult conversations we’ve all had on the doorstep for the last couple of years.

If we’re not prepared to put that in the public domain, then what are we in this business for?

Now I know there will be some who want to say, this is just Liam Byrne banging on about immigration, welfare reform and deficit reduction just like he always does.

But I’m not saying we write this up in glorious technicolour in order to say, look at the pessismism of the public.

We want to be their leaders. Lets us follow them.

On the contrary.

I believe we win by telling a story about national renewal. An optimistic account of how we win in a world economy that is forecast to grow and grow.

But if we do want to win back the peoples’ trust to lead again, we have to understand how the public sees us, and why.

Therein starts the business of renewal.

So now, we have now been in touch with over 4 million members of the public. Over 20,000 submissions and ideas have already flooded in.

There is plenty of which we can be proud. The achievements we made in Northern Ireland, fixing the NHS, getting people back to work, the National Minimum Wage, neighbourhood policing, tax credits…

These are all things that the public associate with us and the our time in office. We remain Britain’s party of the fair deal.

But, overall the public is deeply worried. Anxious. Nervous. Pessimistic.

Our argument about the squeezed middle has struck a chord. People feel desperately squeezed by flat wages and rising prices and the threat of unemployment. Families are shopping around like never before.

The challenge for the next generation is a profound concern. People don’t worry about their kids finding a partner – our ability to fall in love appears undiminished – but getting to college, getting a house, saving for a pension; all these things are felt to be far harder than ever before.

But there is one sentiment more that really shines through.

People are angry about the state we face and they believe a new politics of responsibility is the answer.

There’s a sense of too many great sins; wealth without work; commerce without morality; politics without principle

That’s why I think that throughout our listening events, and our campaign work, we’ve heard so much about;

• The need for a sensible – but determined – way forward on cutting the deficit;

• A fury about the bank bonus culture that helped land us with today’s deficit;

• The echo of the anger with parliamentary expenses and a sharper sense of betrayal about the broken political promises on tuition fees;

• And the ambition for a system of immigration control and welfare reform that does not pay out before people have paid in.

 

Earlier today Ed MiIiband called for “a new era of responsibility.” He is right on the money. This is absolutely the right way forward for Labour.

The appetite for a renewed responsibility state, isn’t a concern about our neighbours’ private conduct; it’s about our country’s public duties. It’s not about private ethics. It’s about public ethics.

It’s about how we behave as a good neighbour; act as a good parent, and get a job and pay tax if you can.

What this means for the Left

Now generally speaking, I am some-one who believes the British public typically has a sixth sense about what’s right and what’s wrong.

So, I do believe herein lies the bones of the answer to what Labour does next.

Can I ask you for a moment to cast your mind back for a moment to the birth of New Labour. You’ll remember perhaps, the optimism, the organisation and our arguments.

Which at its essence was about the future.

Was about how as a nation our performance could match our potential

And that it was possible for nation constituted like ours, to combine economic efficiency and social justice.

It was an argument that so strong that the wisest in today’s government do it homage.

The big challenge for us became, surely, that 10 years into the new century, voters confronted static wages and rising prices, in-your-face bank bonuses on the one hand and welfare bills on the other.

To voters that felt like economic injustice and social inefficiency.

Britain today is an anxious and worried island. Instinctively they like want we say about opportunity, optimism and an outlook for our country that is upbeat. But instinctively they feel that a new politics of responsibility has got to come first.

Now, why am I an optimist of the left?

Because crucially for us, people have not given up on the role of the state.

If you ask people do they think the answer to our national problems is for a government that gets stuck into problems; or simply walks off the pitch, then overwhelmingly people say, we want a government that gets stuck in.

But they want a government that is a bit more muscular with markets and a bit more sensitive to society; more attuned to traditional feelings of community, identity, reciprocity.

More determined to govern a society where people at the top, the middle and the bottom do the right thing by everyone else.

That’s the opportunity for Labour.

When people think about government, right now, they do not believe they will get out what they put in.

Quite simply there is a sense, that if we stop rewarding people for doing the wrong thing, we could do more help to the people doing the right thing.

I think that tells us that at the absolute core of winning back the public’s trust is the creation of a new kind of bargain. And I think that can start with the welfare state.

 

What does this mean for Labour?

As I said a few weeks ago, Labour is not ahead on the issue of welfare reform.

Given the thirst for responsibility, welfare reform is one of the policy areas where Labour needs to win back trust.

We have to show the public we get it.

By the time of the next election we must present tough, costed, forward looking proposals that put the welfare state on the side of the hard-working majority. We must not and we will not disappoint people.

We have to explain how we would reward work, protect the vulnerable and get tough on those who are consistently found shirking their responsibilities.

We have to explain how we would reshape the universal benefit system which bends to the differing needs that people face as they go through their lives.

We have to explain how a party which is after all, called the Labour Party, stands once again as the party of the right and the responsibility to work.

Right now there is a responsibility on government to do more to help create jobs.

It is frankly irresponsible to offer a Work Programme that is smaller than Labour’s.

It is irresponsible because rising unemployment is costing our country a fortune; £12 billion has gone on the welfare bill since this government took office – £500 for every household in the country’.

And if we did more to offer opportunity, then frankly we could demand more responsibility of those still stuck on benefits.

My constituency has the second highest unemployment in Britain.

Yet on the door-step, my constituents are very clear that we need to be tougher with those not trying hard enough to get into work.

So, I do believe we should repeat the bank bonus tax to provide £600 million to fund youth jobs.

It is outrageous that the DWP are spending more on stationery than their scheme to get young people back to work.

Yet alongside opportunity we should be tougher on enshrining a culture of work in every community in the country.

If you’re a parent who is long-term out of work, we should be intervening to make sure that children do not follow their parents onto the dole queues.

We have to make sure that habits of worklessness are not passed down from one generation to the next.

There are ideas pioneered in Australia with compulsory workshops and interviews that tell us a different, tougher approach is possible.

Second, we should explore saying to those looking for work that we expect you to work as hard as you to find a job.

Today, we ask people to sign on every fortnight. But for some, shouldn’t we saying we want to check every week how you’re getting on?

But, third, we need to reshape the welfare state so that for those who do the right thing, who do work hard, who do pay in, there is frankly something more that comes back.

The Tory vision, rehearsed over and over again in the House of Commons is that the welfare state is a safety net there only if you’re in the direst of straits.

That is not a welfare state for a democracy of responsibility.

We need a bolder vision. Of a welfare state that genuinely helps those trying to get ahead in life.

That means we have to ask ourselves what are the new risks that families today need to safeguard themselves against. Where – and when – do people need that extra help not just to pick themselves up when things go wrong, but to make more rapid progress when the wind is behind them.

Those risks are very different to the risks that Beveridge identified.

Take the basic problem of unemployment benefit.

If this recession showed one thing, it showed unemployment can hit anyone. Add to this the trend towards self-employment.

Nearly ¾ million more people have become self-employed in the last decade.

When more and more higher earners face the uncertainties of unemployment, is there a way of protecting peoples’ income in the first period they are out of work, as they do so successfully in Denmark?

Further, when families today face a radically new lifecycle for savings – with tuition fees to pay back, big mortgage deposits to save for, and the cost of social care and a pension that needs to nourish them far longer in old age – we have to ask how is the welfare state helping ordinary working people face.

Tories on welfare

The Tories are nowhere on this argument.

Their analysis says let the welfare state become a safety net for the worst case scenario.

The result is a bill that frankly we will vote against because it is at once an attack on ambition and an assault on compassion.

It is an attack on ambition because they have no idea what childcare support will be provided for thousands of working families who need childcare support in order to work the hours and shifts then need.

It is an attack on ambition because its remove all support from anyone with £16,000 in savings.

It is an attack on ambition because it offers a bureaucratic nightmare for 3 million self-employed people who potentially face filing returns to the DWP every month.

It is an attack on compassion because it risks watering down child poverty targets.

And it’s an attack on compassion because while I think ESA should be reformed, I think that it is wrong to ask people battling cancer to start filling in job applications.

Like most families, I know from bitter experience that it takes more than courage to beat cancer. And finding a job is not part of any recovery programme I’ve heard doctors recommend.

Of course we should cut welfare to help cut the deficit.

But this should be done by pushing unemployed people into jobs. Not pushing the disabled into poverty. That’s simply and unfair way to treat some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

That is what I now fear the government’s welfare reform bill is about to effect.

Perhaps most egregious of all is the policy to abolish DLA mobility payments. This will overnight, leave disabled people as prisoners in their care homes.”

Iain Duncan Smith may think his strategy is very elegant. I would repeat to him, Churchill’s warning.

However beautiful the strategy one should occasionally look at the results

My message to the Lib Dem MPs is rather different.

If they share our progressive values they should join us in defeating the Welfare Reform Bill this week.

Don’t be fooled by the idea that to succeed in politics you have to rise above your principles.

Don’t sacrifice the principles of Lloyd George, of Beveridge, or Keynes, for the political convenience of the hour.

You, like me, will have heard the voices of vulnerable people who are counting on us to protect them.

Conclusion

Let me conclude.

I believe that this appetite for renewed responsibility is what unites the concern we hear for realistic, clear policies on deficit reduction; sensible border control; strong welfare reform; action on bank bonuses; an attack on government waste; determined action on crime, and a renewal of the welfare bargain that genuinely helps those aspiring to do well deal with the new risks they confront in life, whether it’s the care crunch, the new challenge of saving for university fees, a deposit, retraining and then a pension, or the risks of unemployment or self-employment.

Ultimately, Labour has the best message; no matter who you are, or where you’re from, if you work hard and play by the rules, you deserve to succeed.

But, if we want people to buy into a notion of opportunity tomorrow, it’s got to come with a sense of the new bargain for government, a bargain that rewards the people who do the right thing. Get that bargain right and we can win.

Ends. Check against delivery.

 

 

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