Frankie" Field would be unleashed to mount a full-scale axe attack on social security and the welfare state have been somewhat exaggerated, according to the relatively tame formulations in the new government Green Paper. It appears that Field has been unable to persuade his New Labour colleagues of the viability of embarking on a root and branch demolition of state-funded serThere is little hint in the document of Field's deep, public affection for the privatised pension schemes forced upon the people of Chile in the aftermath of the brutal military coup of 1973 which smashed the trade unions and working class political parties. Perhaps his fellow ministers are saving this for a later stage in the evolution of the Blair government.
The relative blandness of the Green Paper should not however imply that it has anything progressive to offer working people. It represents a wholesale ideological retreat not simply from "socialism" - of which Field, Blair and co have never been supporters - but from any notion of redistributing wealth, and from any policy of Thatcher's gap It begins by drawing attention to the widening gap between rich and poor under the Thatcher government: "Between 1979 and 1994/95, households in the top fifth of -fight for wage increases if the Labour govthe population saw income rises in excess of 50 percent; but the incomes of those in the bottom fifth barely rose in real terms."
The increased inequality "has been parwhile children are also suffering: "nearly 3 million children are growing up in workBut these developments are discussed almost as if the effects have been accidental, rather than the outcome of deliberate and cynical Tory policies: of tax cuts for the rich; wage cuts for the poor; creating a pool of unemployment to drive down wages and weaken union resistance; by Thatcher's government to earnings - thus rapidly diately see why the Green tion to preserve almost all of them Gordon Brown's pledge not to increase taxes on the rich for the lifetime of the government effectively rules attempt to redistribute wealth and narrow the gap between rich and poor.
The Green Paper echoes previous statements by government ministers that New Labour has no intention of restoring the link between pensions and earnings. And the "New Deal" schemes to press-gang the unemployed into subsidised jobs are just a new way of using unemployment to hold Of course the rhetoric of the Green Paper is one of moral concern for "inequality". and "social exclusion". But it has no tangible perspective on how these problems are An old-fashioned Labour view might be UNFORTHE UNEMPLOYED that a decent minimum wage might make a significant contribution to those at the bottom of the pay scales, a first small step towards closing the gap. But we already know that the government is looking to fix the minimum wage at a pitifully low level - perhaps £3.50 an hour, with a host of exemptions to allow some of the worst skinflint employers to escape any extra A trade union view would be that organised workers could be given a chance to ernment would simply sweep away the battery of anti-union laws brought in by the Tories and give a legal right to recognition: but again it is clear that for New Labour this simple option is "unthinkable". With progressive taxation, a decent minimum wagi and the option of trade union Green Paper can offer is empty phrases expressing concern and endless ritual references to education and training as the way to bridge the gap between abject poverty and the prosperity of Blair's new"This third way will take us into welfare system will become Green Paper phrases and the education, training and endless ritual the exits from welfare references to education and This will no doubt be of poor pensioners, who are offered preBut such abstract nonsense flies in the face of the daily reality of millions unemployed and low-paid workers, whom there simply are not enough decent jobs to go round, regardless of how many Indeed, while ministers set out to foster the Tory myth of the work-shy, feckless unemploved wilfully deciding to live on lavish state hand-outs. the Green Paper tacitly admits that the opposite is the case: hundreds of thousands of people are working for lousy, cheapskate employers despite the fact that they are worse off than they would "Prior to the implementation of the * FORTHEUNEMPLOYED reforms announced in the Budget, 740,000 people lost 70p for every fl they earned families gained less than 10p for every extra £1 earned. .. Almost one in seven people who moved from welfare to work said they were worse off in work than unemployed." (Chapter one para 16)
The government answer of course -which they have picked up and continued from the Tories - is to offer a range of benefits to low-paid workers which effectively subsidise the lowest-paying employers. Pay packets insufficient to cover the cost of renting or buying accommodation can be increased by Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, while the employers pocket incentives for employers to keep low, not least by raising to £81 per week the threshold at which earnings require employers to pay National Insurance contributions: workers below this figure will The Green Paper persists in ignoring the of low-paid workers in Britain. We are told that "A pay packet gives people independence and status in course read that "For many people the absence of paid work is a guarantee of a life on a low income": but for millions, paid work IS a life on low income - and many pensioners are still suffering as a result of spending their entire working lives on low Comfortably insulated from reality, Field draws up schemas through which low-paid workers are expected to find extra cash for savings ("we will also encourage people on low incomes to save more through Individual Savings Accounts"), or for additional pension schemes to supplement the dwindling state pension ("we will introschemes which will give low paid workers the chance to save for a decent private secA similarly cynical approach means that the Green Paper stands as a new threat to people with disabilities, which again begins with acceptance of the Tory legacy -Incapacity Benefit, which introduced a controversial new All Work Test in an effort to reduce the numbers receiving benefits. Field, too, seems concerned above all that too many people are "passing" the test and The problem with the Green Paper is that "it writes off as unfit to work people who might, with some assistance, be able to return to work, perhaps in a new occupation. It is an all is not even a passing question raised over those unfortunate individuals who 'are deemed to "fail" the test and lose benefit, despite being clearly disabled and unable to work.
The Green Paper accepts the ruthless All Work Test, and also appears to accept on face value a report which suggested that two thirds of claims for Disabled Living Allowance had presented "insufficient evidence to support the made for life have allegedly been made to "people whose condition might have been expected to improve". (Chap 6, Other sections of the Green Paper rehearse the feeble New Labour arguments for charging fees to university Throughout the Green Paper, there is an overwhelming whiff of victim-blaming, an overtly moralistic, patronising advocacy of government's refusal to take any radical One clear, example of victim-blaming comes in a section dealing with reducing teenage pregnancies. We are told that "there is good evidence to show that education is the best defence against early pregnancy": however this is not practical education on contraception, but New Labour's vague and abstract education. "Young women with a good education -and thereby something to lose - are less likely to become pregnant early."
Pensioners are implicitly reproached for not having saved enough, and for living on there were 4.6 people of working age for every pensioner. Today there are 3.4 and by 2040 the ration will have dropped to just 2.4, even allowing for the equalisation of the retirement age" - (in which Labour is again endorsing the Tory plan to make women work five years longer).
bomb" is little more than a millions, paid work IS a life on projections the "contrimany pensioners are security funds for pensuffering as a result of spending their likely to be no none Domestic Product. There for draconian policies to deal Field's recipe is little more than a manifesto for inequality, a commitment to longIt is significant that in its attempts to give the policy statement a gloss of historical overview, the Green Paper should list the development of insurance-based welfare services, but omit the model of the National Health Service, which was set up fifty years ago to provide comprehensive services on the basis of need, free at point of use and funded from general taxation.
Rather than boosting privatised insurance systems, a genuinely radical policy would expand the NHS model, and look to progressive taxation as ways to ensure the future provision and improvement of wel-