Politics no longer provides the answer to the major problems we are facing, according to a new report from the independent think-tank Civitas. Writing in the current issue of Civitas Review, David Green argues that during the Blair years the strategy of big spending on health, education and welfare was tested to destruction. It has not produced the expected improvements in health and education, and benefit expenditure has created, not a more empowered people, but deeper welfare dependency. The Government promises to ‘deliver’ outcomes but David Green argues that the problem is not just incompetent ministers or a worn-out government, but that we have reached the limits of what can be achieved by political action.

The True Nature of the Political Process –

not Democracy but Concentrated and Exclusive Power

The consensus among all parties for many decades has been that our problems are best solved by enacting laws that require stipulated behaviour or that establish government agencies to provide services. However, there may be something about government or the political process as such that makes public-policy failure more likely. Politics invariably rests on the assumption that there is ‘one best solution’. We tend to romanticise the democratic state as an institution that reflects the will of the people, but it is primarily the institution in society that is entitled to use compulsion. As John Stuart Mill argued in the nineteenth century, ‘command and control’ systems tend to produce five main adverse consequences:

·       experimentation with alternatives is suppressed, which means that improvements are less likely to occur, the rate of growth of new knowledge slows down, and the ability to react to changes in external events is reduced.

·       there are fewer outside experts with the knowledge to criticise, hence errors can more easily persist and power can more easily be abused.

·       opportunities in the wider population for personal development are reduced, further curtailing the potential for independent oversight.

·       ordinary citizens become more likely to look to the government to solve their problems instead of to their own idealism, energy and skill.

·       the ambitious people in society become more likely to seek employment in the public sector, thus accelerating the process whereby independent expertise is diminished.

The alternative is for government to create the broad open spaces in which a plurality of competing providers can independently find better ways of serving customers.

David Cameron and Compassionate Conservatism

Society as a Membership Association

Those Tories who are concerned about the failure of public sector monopolies in health and education are anxious to differentiate themselves from market fundamentalists, but know that calling for a reduced role for the state in health and education is to invite being caricatured as uncaring. David Green argues that a viable alternative is the ‘membership state’, which is contrasted with the minimal state and the provider state.

‘What should the government do? How wide should its powers be? The English heritage of liberty is based on the idea of an independent community of people conceived as a kind of membership association that has founded a system of self-government to protect personal security, encourage open and democratic government, and provide for individual liberty under the law. Personal security is provided by assigning the government a monopoly of force, which must be deployed according to law understood in a particular sense. There is to be a “government of laws, not politicians” to prevent the arbitrary use of power; and the law must apply equally to all, to prevent favouritism.’ (p.14)

Failures of the Blair Government

There is a widespread perception that some problems, including high crime, falling education standards, unsustainable immigration, the low quality of the NHS, and rising welfare dependency are not being properly confronted by our political leaders. Government rhetoric embraces the terminology of markets – consumers, choice, competition – and the new language is reflected in some of its reforms. But political discussion of public services like health and education still seems stranded halfway between the age of collectivism and a more consumer-friendly alternative.

The Blair government’s approach to services such as health and education has been to treat voters like children. It fears that it will suffer at the polls if voters are told that you only get what you pay for, and so the government promises that everything is free, there is going to be much more of it, and what’s more there will be lots of consumer choice too. The consumer will be in the driving seat, with choice of school, choice of hospital and choice of doctor. The champions of new Labour know perfectly well that you can’t really have consumer choice without consumer payment, but they are reluctant to say it in public.

Welfare policy has been designed to create beholden voters rather than independent people. Tax credits are only the most prominent example of welfare policies intended to create a grateful electorate rather than free-thinking citizens. Now some 30 per cent of households receive half or more of their income from state benefits.

Combating caricatures of freedom

Even Conservatives who are concerned about the failure of public sector monopolies in health and education are slow to criticise the Blair government’s approach, because they know that calling for a reduced role for the state in health and education is to invite being caricatured as uncaring. The origins of this notion lie in the association of liberty with selfish individualism. To carry the debate forward it will be necessary to confront this caricature and re-state the traditional case for liberty. Historically liberty was the ideal of those who wanted to free human talent and energy for higher purposes in every walk of life. Today this tradition stands in urgent need of renewal. The point of life was not to pass the time with as little inconvenience and as much personal pleasure as possible. It was to do your bit to enhance the society to which you belonged, perhaps modestly by improving conditions in your own town or village, or if you were fortunate enough to have a special talent, to add to the advance of human civilisation in your chosen sphere. Some aspired to push out the frontiers of scientific knowledge, to vanquish disease, to build better bridges, or extend the best education to all. Others focused on discovering better ways of manufacturing goods or growing crops and still others on ending poverty in less fortunate countries. Many felt they had a vocation.

The membership state and social security

The underlying belief is that we should take personal or family responsibility for self-support throughout our lives, including provision against foreseeable contingencies like ill-health and certainties like getting older and death. If the government takes responsibility for such provision it treats people as perpetual children incapable of providing for themselves. It also reduces the quality of human life to the extent that fulfilment rests on facing up to and overcoming life=s difficulties. Everyone should be expected to save enough to avoid relying on the work of other people, but compulsion would be kept to a minimum. Such would be the principles consistent with a ‘membership state’ in which everyone was expected to do their bit to be independent, with the absolute assurance that no one will fall below the national minimum if things go wrong. Such a guarantee, if it is to endure, can only be based on a system of reciprocal obligation.

Freedom is not selfishness

‘More than anything else it is incumbent on defenders of liberal democracy to demolish the false characterisation of freedom as an excuse for selfishness. It is a rationale for creating a framework of laws, institutions, habits and beliefs that allow the finest human motivations to flourish and that permit every person to discover how much each can add to the improvement of the human condition. We should not romanticise freedom. Like any other human capacity it can be abused, and for many it means a life focused on the mundane effort of earning a living and raising a family, but it also ensures that no one with the ability or inclination is prevented from scaling the heights of human accomplishment.’ (p.20)

For more information ring:

David Green              020 7799 6677 (w)

Robert Whelan          020 7799 6677 (w)