On ‘welfare ‘ Labour is struggling to find the right policy and language. In the last parliament we spent a lot of time attacking the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s policies, through debates on the welfare reform bill, opposition led debates, and at prime minister’s questions. There was no lack of anger and passion.

The Tories played a blinder on us in terms of language and attitude. The clearest example is the household benefit cap. Contrary to an oft-repeated accusation, we voted and spoke against this during the passage of the bill … but we completely failed to persuade the public. For the Tories this was a highly symbolic measure, used effectively to convey the picture of an overgenerous benefits system. By setting it at the level of average earnings many employed households, were encouraged to wonder why they were working so hard if others could get more ‘doing nothing’.

We tried to respond with facts. We pointed out that employed households with children would receive child benefit and child tax credits to add to earnings. We explained that only a small number of people received benefits at this level. Since the original cap was introduced at any one time only around 22,000 households in the whole of the United Kingdom have been affected.

Our ‘facts’ failed to persuade partly because the Tory narrative resonated with many people’s experience. The drift of social security over the last 30 or more years has created some very real anomalies. Unemployment benefit (now job seeker’s allowance) has fallen from 22 per cent of average earnings in the 1970s to 11 per cent in this decade. Since the basic benefit for over 25s is £73.10 per week, nobody living without a working partner can manage on this. A host of means-tested top-ups have been added. The last Labour government tried to even the playing field with working tax credits. For all the talk of ‘making work pay’ many of the new rules of universal credit ensure that it will not.

We cannot stop pointing out the worst of Tory policy. The wins on tax credits and on personal independence payment should not be allowed to obscure the fact that spending in real terms is to fall more during this parliament than in the last. The household benefit cap is about to be racheted tightly. For example, from November some two child households receiving employment and support allowance (and thus currently unfit for work) and living in modestly-priced private lets could lose £60 per week. We need to raise our voices loudly about such harshness.

Even where our arguments did start to cut through (eg on the bedroom tax) it was not enough. We did not win power and the bedroom tax is still with us.

Expressing outrage on individual issues is not sufficient. We need to place this in a context of an overall plan for social security, one which can command support across society. That means looking at tax alongside benefits. Increases in the tax threshold have helped many lower earners, but for the lowest earners it is a ‘one-off’ gain. In contrast, for higher earners each threshold is a gift that keeps giving. Tax credits were much more effective in tackling family poverty. A gradual loss as earnings rose gave many more a stake in the system. Under universal credit the ‘taper’ is much sharper, and it will be much more a ‘benefit for the poor’.

Reintroducing a stronger contributory element is often proposed as a means of getting people to ‘buy in’ to the social security system. Because it is difficult and can appear dauntingly long term, this is often dismissed as impractical. The recent Fabian report ‘For Us All’ is worth serious consideration, coming up with some practical ways of changing the balance in our system.

We need to develop a narrative which does not just reverse the worst Tory ‘reforms’, but brings together a coherent and financially sensible framework. In this we are actually helped by the 2016 Office for Budget Responsibility welfare trends report that highlights that, in fact, many of the most trumpeted Tory welfare reforms on incapacity and disability benefits have yielded little by way of saving. So change may be more affordable than it might seem at first sight.

We need our new framework soon, and then we need to unite around it.

Above all, it needs to be one which voters can look at and say ‘yes, that looks fair and there is something there for me , maybe not now but I can see what it could do for me at some time in my life’.

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Sheila Gilmore is a candidate in the general members’ section in the Progress strategy board elections. She tweets at @SheilaGilmore49

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