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Public attitudes to dependency and the welfare state.

Article Excerpt
This paper argues that for over 20 years there has been a disjunction between the dominant political discourse in the UK about the welfare state and public attitudes to the welfare state. Conservative politicians in the 1980s and 1990s sought (on the whole unsuccessfully) to reduce the size and scope of public social provision. New Labour's politics has been dominated either by a fear of the electoral consequences of expanding public spending and taxation or by a repulsion from dependency. In contrast, majority public opinion has favoured improvements in services even if it means increases in taxes. Public attitudes to the welfare state and dependency are explored using the 2001 British Social Attitudes survey and by analysing changes in attitudes over time. Logistic regression is used to explore variation in attitudes between different social groups. Explanations for the disjunction between political and public discourses are discussed.

Introduction

Concern about dependency has been a long-term theme in social policy. The principle of less eligibility in the Poor Law; the rigours of the unemployment assistance board in the 1930s; the work tests in the Beveridge insurance and assistance schemes; the abolition of earnings-related unemployment benefit and benefits for 16- to 18-year-olds together with cuts in the real level of out-of-work benefits by the Thatcher government in the 1980s; New Labour's New Deals and the creation of Jobcentre Plus; all were and are driven by a desire to minimise dependency (of working-age people) on benefits.

In the postwar period, intolerance of dependency is perhaps most closely associated with the rhetoric of the New Right. The 'crisis of the welfare state', they argued, had a lot to do with dependency: overgenerous benefits and the high levels of personal tax required to fund them were at the heart of the failure of the UK. They undermined incentives to work and to save, the competitiveness of UK industry and family obligations; indeed the welfare state had to be rolled back and 'power returned to the people' in the words of the 1979 Thatcher manifesto. John Moore, who was (briefly) a Secretary of State for Social Security, said that he wanted to change the climate of opinion from 'the sullen apathy of dependence and towards the sheer delight of personal achievement.'

This preoccupation with dependency is also echoed in the Third Way/New Labour/Blairite discourses (Labour Party 1997). Early New Labour politics branded social security benefits as detrimental for 'people's efforts and motivation to take paid work' and creating a 'poverty trap' (Labour Party 1996, p.2); thus the notion of 'welfare to work' was created. The Green and White Papers produced by Frank Field, Minister for Welfare Reform in 1998, reinforced the mantras: 'hand up not a hand out', 'work for those who can', 'welfare for those who cannot' (Minister for Welfare Reform 1998; see also Harman 1997). This kind of social integrationist discourse (Levitas 1999) rhetoric is perhaps less prevalent in more recent government publications but is still salient in the speeches of the Prime Minister. This for example:

Today's welfare state should not be a top-down paternalist act of charity, a handout. It should be based on mutual responsibility, our rights and our duties: our right to a decent start in life; our duty to make the most of it and in any case to abide by the rules and laws of the society that we live in ... but there are also obligations to take advantage of the help offered, to get into work ... this shouldn't be looked at as something we're handing down, it is part of what the community is doing itself. I have always said; tough on crime, tough on the causes of...

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