Equality and New Labour
As the Labour Government gains confidence in office, the way is opened for a debate on how we tackle some of the tough issues we face in reconciling our traditional values with our modernising agenda.
In the latter days in Opposition, few Labour politicians chose to promote ‘equality' for fear of losing electoral support. We were worried that voters perceived our concept of equality as either steeped in political correctness or as simply taxing them, even though they were on low or middle incomes. We stood back from our traditional political terrain because of the seemingly popular effectiveness of Thatcherite values.
However, perceptions have changed fast and at last year's party conference Tony Blair was able to make equality a central theme of his conference speech. That, in my view, was both welcome and vital. The left is defined by its commitment to a more equal society. It's what distinguishes left from right.
So we need to think about how we can translate our aim for a more equal society into a relevant and contemporary set of policies and programmes. Our early period in government has been about establishing trust that we are competent and able to run a stable and successful economy. Now we can be more ambitious and focused. We can establish a new political discourse on equality and use it to construct majority support for the more equal society which is what Labour, both new and old, desire.
The underpinning context for the modern equality agenda is our belief that economic prosperity and social justice (a term we use to encompass equality) are not competing objectives, but are inextricably linked ambitions. We shall only achieve economic growth and strength if we build an inclusive society, which enables every individual to develop their full potential and so contribute to that growth.
Our competitive position will only be maintained or enhanced - especially in the new knowledge economy - if we make the most of our most valuable resource, the skills of people, and we can only achieve that if we make sure that everyone has an equal chance to give of their best.
At the same time, our notion of equality embraces the opportunity for individuals to compete on a level playing field, the opportunity to work and enjoy a decent income, and the opportunity to participate fully in society.
This is a comfortable thesis. It allows us to position ourselves as promoting both individual ambition and prosperity, whilst still tackling inequality. That appeals to middle Britain.
It is also a pretty convincing thesis. The old Labour mantra that income redistribution of itself creates equality was flawed, and has even less pertinence in the global economy. On the one hand, if we do not have a fiscal framework which entices today's promiscuous capital to come and stay in Britain, we shall not have the investment we need to create jobs and we shall not have the wealth to redistribute.
On the other hand, as the history of previous attempts has shown, redistribution of wealth alone will not deliver equality - either equality of respect and worth, or equality of opportunity and the ability to enjoy equal access to social and material goods.
All of this may be true. But we must always remember that for the left, social justice is the goal and economic efficiency the means - in part - to achieving it. So we still have more work to do to tell a convincing story on equality. I want to explore some key elements in the story:
- The link between poverty and inequality.
- Redistribution through public services.
- Redistribution of income.
- Discrimination and inequality.
- The new economy and equality.
- Quality and equality.
- Democracy and equality.
First, we know that inequality - however defined - is closely correlated with poverty. The legacy of a quarter of the population living at or below half the average income and of three million children growing up in poverty sets us a daunting task.
If children grow up in poverty they do less well at school and so will find it more difficult to compete in the labour market. If children are born into poverty, they are more likely to be ill and die early. And inequality breeds inequality, so the children of poor people are far more likely to be poor than the children of better off people.
So if we want to achieve greater equality, we must tackle poverty and that does require some redistribution.
Redistribution comes not only from the tax and benefits system. We can and are tackling inequality and redistribution through our public service programmes. By treating people unequally we are aiming for equality. Excellence in Cities, Sure Start, Health Action Zones, the New Deal for Communities, and the New Deal - these are all programmes, which redistribute and focus public resources on poor people.
What we now need to do is to ensure that these initiatives are coherent and complementary.
And we need to give them time and consistent resourcing to ensure that they do work. That presents any government with a challenge. The political cycles of elections always militate against giving a public policy time to work. But if we are serious about tackling inequality, we need to be brave and not just chase illusory easy wins.
We know, for instance, that if you do not sustain support for children over time, you can undo the advances achieved by intervening in the early years. So whilst high quality, early years health, care and education services enhance a child's opportunity, if that support disintegrates when the child gets to school, the advances made through the early intervention are quickly lost. Redistribution through the welfare state is therefore a vital tool to pursue equality, but this cannot be a quick fix and needs to be targeted and sustained.
As well as redistributing wealth by targeted public programmes we are and need to continue to tackle poverty through the tax and benefit system. It's an indictment of us all that we allowed the Tories, during a period of economic prosperity, to get away unchallenged, with a massive redistribution from the poor to the better off.
We now need to win the argument for tax and spend - but taxing fairly and spending efficiently. A modem redistribution principle is not about ‘punishing' the rich by curtailing ambitions and aspirations. It's not about crippling tax burdens on successful entrepreneurs. It is about recognising that in a society where some children are hungry all day, every day, where some people have no money for food or heating or shoes, some of us will have to have less for others to have more. It's not the politics of envy which characterised Old Labour, but the politics of need which we must promote.
We are talking about more targeted, means tested income support and this is a much more difficult message to sell, as we saw with the furore over the annual pension increase. We targeted the extra money on the poorest pensioners; the public (and the party) did not understand or buy the argument.
And of course a modern definition of equality is about more than income and wealth.
Our Welfare to Work agenda is a central feature of our redistribution agenda. Based on the mantra that ‘work is the best route out of poverty' we have a range of New Deals, we have the minimum wage and we have a growing number of tax credits to make work pay. These again are creative interventions, which both tackle inequality and support economic prosperity.
We are redistributing tax, but in a new and different way, contingent on the individual who is able to work getting a job. We are evolving a new instrument as we strive for equality, based on the hand up, not the hand out. But we must never forget that for those who cannot find this route out of poverty, whose levels of poverty are too great or too ingrained, the hand out is their only lifeline.
I have no doubt that focusing on employment and linking that to income distribution is right. You only have to meet the lone parent who tells you how her child jumped for joy when she went back to work because he would no longer need free school meals, to understand the impact getting a job can have on a family. Or listen to the disabled woman in her forties I met recently. She had been written off as unemployable throughout her adult life because of her visual and hearing impairments. To hear her speak of the sense of worth and self-esteem she enjoyed, when somebody finally worked with her to support her into work, helped me to understand that equality is not always about giving people money, but can be about enabling them to live independently of the state.
However, simply getting people into jobs is not enough. There is growing evidence from the States that poor and unqualified people who move into low paid jobs will not move out of poverty, but are likely to drift back into unemployment. This is confirmed by a recent British study of lone parents which found that among those lone parents who moved into work (and this was before the New Deal for Lone Parents was in place) a quarter stopped work again within a year and half drifted in and out of unemployment within five years. (Parents and Employment by Maria Iacovou and Richard Berthoud, 1999.)
Another recent study of the Welfare to Work programmes in California found that simply moving poor lone parents into poorly paid jobs does not lift the children out of poverty. The mothers hated their dead end jobs and became depressed which adversely affected the children. And because the jobs were low paid, the children were placed in low cost, low quality childcare, which also affected their life chances. (The Growing up in Poverty Project: University of California, Berkeley and Yale University.)
As we develop our New Deal programmes, we need to respond to these issues. Ensuring high quality and affordable childcare is one issue we must continue to address. But we need to do more to lift people out of poverty into sustainable independence of the benefit system. It involves more and better training, not just to basic skills levels, but to a level which enables the person to earn a wage which takes them out of benefit dependency, gives them career progression and helps them to pay for good quality childcare. A more expensive approach in the short-term perhaps, but more effective in the longer term in moving us towards greater equality. And an approach which supports our economic agenda, by strengthening the skills and qualifications of the workforce.
However, inequality in a modern world goes beyond poverty. There are new inequalities which are not solely linked to income and which were not so apparent in the post-war era, when men mainly worked outside the home and women mainly worked within the home, when we were not a multi-racial society and when disabled people were expected to settle for lesser rights. The disadvantage and discrimination people face must be central to an equality agenda for a modernising government.
Much faith has been placed on tackling these inequalities by outlawing them. But the impact on inequality of anti-discrimination legislation has been limited. Take race as an example. Twenty-five years of anti-discrimination legislation in race has not eliminated the disadvantage black people face in the labour market. A young Afro-Caribbean man is three times more likely to be unemployed than a young white man and a young ethnic minority woman is four times as likely to be out of work than her white counterpart. This cannot be blamed simply on the low qualification levels of these groups. Whilst it is true to say that Afro-Caribbean boys perform less well as a group at sixteen, they are far more likely to stay on in full-time training and education than young white men and by their mid-twenties a higher proportion have got a degree. Yet when they try to break into the labour market they face enormous difficulties, much of which is down to discrimination.
We do need a framework of rights in law to tackle these inequalities and we need to constantly revisit that framework, to ensure its continuing relevance. But regulation and legislation are not enough. Indeed, as in a growing number of public policy areas, Government action alone is limited in its effect. We have to develop new ways to spur change.
In the sphere of discrimination this is particularly tough because of the deeply and long held preconceptions and prejudices that people hold. These prejudices form a strong barrier to equality and need to be confronted. A key challenge for us is to find identify those levers, which are most effective in achieving the attitudinal transformation we need.
Political leadership helps and what we say and what we do can influence attitudes. That is why the words we use are so important; we can lead a change in mood and morality. Thatcher did it. So must we.
Also the Government leading by example in how it runs its services must impact on the wider society. We should use our muscle in the supply chain to encourage better equal opportunity policies in those organisations, which benefit from Government business. This isn't a question of political correctness. It is one of the few, effective levers available to us to foster equality. It's a little odd that when private sector companies are increasingly prepared to use their purchasing power to encourage equality, we fight shy of such practices on the somewhat spurious grounds that they would impede efficiency and value for money.
Beyond that Government can foster and support peer group pressure; business talking to business about equality and diversity issues is much more powerful than Government preaching to business. Communities tackling discrimination from within will have a far more lasting effect, than Government trying to impose solutions from above. So through funding streams, awards, accreditation schemes and campaigns we need to try with all the levers available to us to influence change.
Inequality arising from discrimination is a constantly shifting agenda. As devolution evolves, new discriminatory views develop. The Mayor for London argues that there is an inequitable per capita distribution of monies to Scotland at the expense of Londoners who pay out more in taxes than they get back in services. All this could ignite new intolerances. Parochial nationalism, be it in Scotland, Wales, London or the North East could lead to new divisions if we're not careful. The challenge is to establish a culture, which celebrates difference, embraces tolerance and builds on those things, which unite us.
The same goes for age. Age prejudice was not an issue 25 years ago when 84% of men over fifty worked. Today only 66% of the over fifties are in work; two-thirds stopped working involuntarily and over half are locked into benefit dependency. Yet in 20 years' time, 40% of the working age population will be over fifty, whilst only 17% will be under 25. If we do not challenge the new inequality of age prejudice, we will have a further one million jobless older people knocking on the benefits door.
And New Labour needs to recognise its contribution to this prejudice. Too strong a focus on ‘Cool Britannia', and ‘Newness' does not sit well with a wish to encourage opportunity for older people.
We need to refine our equality agenda to be ahead of the emerging pressures creating new inequalities. Tackling discrimination is difficult and not necessarily popular, as people so often express their fears and insecurities through prejudice. So we must lead in a bold and consistent way and resist the temptation of short-term political populism won by exploiting prejudice. By holding up our vision of a tolerant society that is enhanced by its diversity, we should strive to take people with us.
In the same way that new forms of prejudice emerge, so do changes in the economy present new threats and opportunities for equality. The revolution in information and communication technology can bring opportunities to disabled people who are now able to communicate more easily, be they people with a hearing or visual impairment, or those whose physical impairments mean the computer is the only way they can communicate with most other people.
Similarly, the ability to work effectively from home provides more opportunities for those who care for children or elderly, sick and disabled relatives.
But in the new economy, skills to use the technology are vital and unskilled and unqualified people can get driven further into poverty as manual jobs disappear and they are not competent to fill the new jobs in the economy. A constant vigilance by Government to counter the threats and grasp the opportunities is essential.
The Labour party has always believed that we could create equality through public services, especially health, education and housing. But we wrongly focused on the amount of money we spent and counted the number of services we provided. Far too little emphasis was placed on the quality of the public services and the outcomes for people for whom the services were provided. We were obsessed with the interests of the producer at the expense of the interests of the user.
So when we created Council housing estates to lift people out of poverty, we ended up with vast areas which locked people into deprivation and desolation. When we were obsessed with educational structures and the argument of comprehensives versus grammar schools, we did not think about how to raise educational achievement and standards in all our schools.
The quality of our public services and equality are interdependent objectives. Of course if you starve the public services of investment they will decay, but equally the challenges to create good quality services go far beyond spending more money. And if poor people are denied access to high quality services, they are denied access to equality.
How do we transform the culture of the public sector, to ensure that we focus on outcomes, not inputs, and that we prioritise the needs of the user over those of the producer? We are at the early stages of effectively measuring outcomes and need to develop better measures. We are in the early days of challenging the vested interests of the professionals and need to go further. We are just beginning to develop multi-agency working with the user at the centre. We are less concerned with who provides a service and more concerned with what works, but we need to do more. We are attempting to involve users more in the design and delivery of services.
But the Old Labour conviction that the state knows best and that central direction is essential to achieve equality dies hard. And with Trades Union membership now skewed on public sector workers, our battle to prioritise consumer interests in the public sector remains a struggle.
The quality of our public services is closely linked to our ability to open them to public account. It is only when users understand and know about their hospitals and their schools that they can demand different or better from the professionals. And it is only high quality services, which will support the quest for equality. So democratising our public services becomes an essential component of an equality agenda. Creating an Ofsted style body for the Health Service, which openly compares hospitals and primary care groups, should be on the agenda. Providing effective vehicles for user input into both the design and delivery of services is vital. And asking people in a properly constructed way what they want from their services is essential - even if this attacked as unnecessary spending on focus groups.
Equality is what binds new and old Labour together. Equality is a central part of our vision for a better society and should form a central theme in our programme for a second term. We need to debate and define what a modern definition entails.
And we need to beware. In our quest for a new equality we must not become responsible for creating further inequalities. A society built on each individual enjoying the opportunity to exploit their potential could quickly develop into a meritocracy that does not ensure the equal worth of all its citizens.
Equality may be a relative concept, a constantly shifting target, but pursuing greater equality remains a core aim. Now is the time when we should be innovative and radical in that endeavour. It's a time when we can and should take risks, for if we really do want to change the world for the better, we need bold and determined action to achieve that aim.
