Making Welfare Work: Reconstructing Welfare for the Millennium

by Field,Frank

• ISBN13: 9780765806260
• ISBN10: 0765806266
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-10-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The welfare system in the United Kingdom is broken. The number of claims has escalated & so, in consequence, have welfare expenditures. The social system does not encourage welfare recipients to become independent. Half the population of the United Kingdom lives in households drawing one of the major means-tested benefits. Research documents that means-tests paralyze self-help, discourage self-improvement, & tax honesty while at the same time rewarding claimants for being either inactive or deceitful. In Making Welfare Work, Frank Field challenges the current political orthodoxy, particularly its emphasis on the role of legislation alone in bringing about social improvement in a welfare state. Field argues that the impact legislation has on personal character is pivotal to human advance in a welfare state. Welfare reconstruction needs to address & channel the differing roles of self-interest, self-improvement, & altruism, which are among the great driving forces in human character. A successful welfare state must reinforce these important forces which influence our nature because to create an imbalance between these three motive forces will always undermine welfare's objectives. Field discusses in detail aspects of modern British society in dire need of change. These include the drug trade, benefit traps, permanent adolescence, the rise of part-time work, inequality in incomes, excluding the disabled, single parents, & the very elderly, for example. This clearly delineated, well-researched blueprint for success will be important reading for politicians & policymakers in all industrialized nations. Its author is well-positioned to revise & review the welfare policies of democratic societies.

Author Biography

Frank Field has been the Labour Member of the Parliament for Birkenhead since 1979. He has been a front-bench spokesman on education and social security, chairman of the Commons Social Services Select Committee and is currently the chairman of the Social Security Select Committee

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Diagrams	xi
Acknowledgements	xiii
About the Contributors	xv
Introduction to the Transaction Edition	1	(1)
The Fivefold Agenda	2	(1)
The Causes of Welfare Expenditure	2	(3)
Welfare and Behaviour	5	(2)
Contract Welfare	7	(2)
Universalism: The Goal	9	(2)
Welfare and Democracy	11	(3)
Joined Up Policy	14	(1)
How to Pay for the Future	15	(10)
Introduction	21	(4)
The New Barbarism	25	(16)
Ghetto Politics	25	(2)
The Disinherited Male	27	(1)
Destroying Self-Respect and Self-Improvement	28	(1)
The New Male	29	(3)
Permanent Adolescence	32	(2)
Cutting the Supply Routes	34	(1)
The Drug Trade	35	(1)
Inner City Apartheid	36	(1)
Outside the Ghetto	37	(1)
Policy Conclusions	38	(3)
The Winter of Our Discontent	41	(20)
Voters' Dismay	41	(6)
The Poor's Response	47	(7)
Politicians' Dismay	54	(5)
Policy Conclusions	59	(2)
The Flawed Vision	61	(16)
Welfare's Fault-Lines	61	(1)
Poverty Studies	62	(1)
Beveridge's Second Coming	62	(3)
First Thoughts	65	(1)
Excluding Women	65	(2)
Excluding the Disabled	67	(1)
Renting a Failure	68	(1)
Extending the Fault-Lines	69	(1)
Government Cuts	70	(1)
The White Paper Chase	71	(1)
Yet More Cuts	72	(1)
Policy Conclusions	73	(4)
Minimum Income Levels	77	(18)
A National Minimum	77	(1)
Charles Booth	78	(2)
Seebohm Rowntree	80	(4)
The Poverty Line's Political Impact	84	(1)
From Theory to Practice	85	(2)
The Beveridge Report	87	(4)
Policy Conclusions	91	(4)
Social Insecurity	95	(18)
Who Is Getting What?	96	(2)
Single Parents and Poverty	98	(2)
Poverty's Younger Face	100	(1)
Poor Law Revival	101	(3)
Half the Population on Means Tests	104	(3)
Cheating the Taxpayer	107	(3)
Policy Conclusions	110	(3)
The Disintegrating Socio-Economic Landscape	113	(22)
Today's Uncertain World	113	(1)
Revolution in the Job Market	114	(2)
The Rise and Rise of Part-Time Work	116	(1)
The Disinherited Male	117	(3)
The Pay Revolution	120	(2)
Inequality in Incomes	122	(1)
The Impact of Tax Changes	123	(1)
The Rise and Rise of Single Parents	124	(3)
Fraud	127	(2)
The Very Elderly	129	(2)
Policy Conclusions	131	(4)
A Stakeholder's Welfare	135	(70)
Two Destructive Forces	135	(1)
Advent of a Social Philosophy	136	(2)
The Pivotal Role of Human Character	138	(4)
Reasserting a Public Ideology	142	(1)
The Centrality of Self-Interest	143	(1)
The Pace of Change	144	(1)
The Strategy of the Reform Programme	145	(2)
The Key Political Commitments	147	(2)
The Politics of Reform	149	(3)
Stakeholder's Insurance Scheme Framework	152	(1)
Building Up a New System	153	(1)
A Policy of Inclusion	154	(4)
Insurance Cover Since 1948	158	(12)
A Broken-Backed Insurance Scheme	170	(3)
Transition to a Stakeholder's Scheme	173	(1)
Earnings Conditions	174	(1)
Qualifying Time	175	(2)
Contributory Year	177	(1)
System of Credits	177	(1)
Graduated Benefits	178	(1)
The Scheme's Finances	179	(3)
Care Pensions	182	(5)
The Stakeholder Corporation	187	(1)
Private Pension Stakeholding	188	(1)
Alternative Reforms	189	(1)
Stakeholder's Private Pension Corporation	190	(5)
Rent Payments	195	(2)
A Proactive Benefits Agency	197	(4)
Beating Fraud	201	(1)
New Demands	202	(1)
Taking the Debate to the Country	202	(3)
Bibliography	205	(4)
Index	209