Voters get tough on welfare. That was the punchline in the chapter on welfare in the recently published British Attitudes Survey. This significant change in attitude does not follow previous cyclical trends where increasing unemployment was accompanied by a more sympathetic response by taxpayers to those out of work. In a prolonged recession more voters now believe that more of the unemployed could work if they wanted to. Not only has public opinion hardened but the attitude of claimants themselves to other claimants has similarly toughened.
The survey considered whether this change in the public view has been led by the political parties’ hardening stance, under both Labour as well as under this coalition government. Party supporters generally come into line with their own government’s views.
Let us leave aside whether ‘toughening’ is the right word. My guess is that voters see this very clearly in terms of fairness and justice.
Instead let us concentrate on another issue. Surveys can only give data on questions that are asked. One key question was not asked.
What I believe to have happened to voter opinion is that Britain’s liberal political elite has so dominated the debate – on welfare, and on antisocial behaviour to take just one other example – that to declare to pollsters contrary views was like swearing in public. This missing question would have asked whether in the past voters would have been reticent in discussing their true beliefs if they ran contrary to the political views peddled by politicians.
Three sets of findings from the British Attitudes Survey are crucial for Labour to understand and to take fully into account when crafting future policy.
First, voters extended a protective arm over two areas of welfares, believing governments have responsibility for its provision. Support for the NHS has increased. So too has a belief in the government’s responsibility to ensure people have enough to live on if they become long-term sick or disabled.
Second, the belief that governments have a responsibility to the unemployed to have enough to live on has plummeted. In 2001, 85 per cent of voters supported this view. In 2011 only 59 per cent did.
Third, and the only surprise for me, is that voters do not buy the soft sell on pensioners, and have not for a very long time. Only 62 per cent of taxpayers in 2001 believed there was a government responsibility to ensure that pensioners have enough to live on. In 2011 it was 52 per cent.
I draw three crucial political lessons from these findings. Organisations representing pensioners are phenomenally successful in promoting pensioner interests. However, the 1960s-type scare stories, while providing good news coverage, will surely no longer work with voters as we move forwards. We need a pension reform strategy that appeals to voters who have taken care not to become dependent on pension credits.
The next lesson centres on a workable alternative pension strategy. We must find the courage to separate ourselves from the universal credit strategy generally and specifically how it will relate to pensions. We need to think for the long term.
There is no substitute to a universal funded scheme that pools risks and that wraps around the current pay-as-you-go state retirement pension to offer a minimum guaranteed pension in retirement. The aim should be to get everyone who has paid their contributions off means-tested assistance. That limited but crucial pension reform is the only one that should concern governments. What people provide for themselves in retirement is not the concern of governments and should not be subsidised by taxpayers.
Lastly, and most importantly, we need to plan over a similar long term to move from a means-tested needs-based welfare to one where welfare is awarded on contribution. It is the only approach to welfare reform that voters really care about.
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Frank Field is MP for Birkenhead and former minister for welfare reform
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Middle class, Daily Mail reading, swing voting people want that might just squeak the Labour Party into winning the election want to get tough on welfare. I’m guessing the recipients of welfare don’t want to be got tough on, and I don’t think the chattering classes want it either. I guess it’s not even on the upper class’s radar, to be honest.
Field, like many on the right, conflates a number of different pieces of evidence to get where he wants to go, and ignores any evidence to the contrary. Much of public opinion on this issue has absolutely no basis in truth, or concerns a tiny minority of claimants or indeed the British population. From this – Field – and the red tops – have constructed a nightmare-ish, Hogathian vision of feckless, drunk, high, betracksuited claimants unable or unwilling to work without the possibility of starvation to tempt them back into normality.
Getting tough on benefit claimants is also often a cypher for covert racism amongst the red tops – as A10 nationals are widely, and paradoxically seen as claiming a whole welter of benefits, whilst simultaneously somehow also taking a variety of manual work off true British unemployed workers!
Frank has been peddling these rightwing, US-inspired, tired old free market cliches for years now. He’s also not a fan of the NHS and wants to replace it – like many Conservatives and rightwing Liberal Democrats – with – guess what – a contribution based system. He has been advising the Cameron government on poverty – not something many Labour MPs do, and included these very suggestions to the Tories. Even they think they are too radical and likely to get the voters to desert them in droves if/when introduced. Field also supports the return of national service to tackle unemployment. I do wonder more or less daily what the Rt Hon Member for Birkenhead is actually doing in the Labour Party – he makes Progress look like the Socialist Campaign Group in comparison.