Is David Cameron feeling his way to a winning political narrative? In a number of recent speeches he has begun to spell out a new debate about the size of the state. It is definitively post-Thatcherite. The battle lines are not the traditional ones of cutting public provision and leaving the private sector to fill the gaps. Cameron is instead seeking ways of offering collective provision which is not run and dominated by a central state.
The public appears cautiously interested. But, given the weakness of those bodies that once provided collective provision, say in welfare — poleaxed by good old Mr Attlee — provision of collective services by voluntary bodies sounds good, but is unlikely to provide any major innovations that voters would notice.
At this point, step forward Gordon Brown. He is arraigned for dithering, also for being an unreconstructed Stalinist and, perhaps worst of all, bereft of new ideas. To challenge David Cameron’s emerging narrative, the PM must set out his own radical stall quickly and decisively. The post-Thatcher question that needs to be asked is, ‘How can individual freedom be extended while at the same time protecting that degree of public provision which voters believe necessary for a civilised life?’
The great advantage the Prime Minister has over his Tory opponent is that he can begin the personalised revolution in public services before voters go to the polls, whereas the leader of the opposition can only issue yet more press releases. Here are three examples of the new politics which could be in full swing by the next election.
Example one is to allow individuals a say on when they draw on parts of their social security entitlements. As only a minority of the population at any one time will be responsible for raising the next generation, successive governments decided that the cost of raising children should be in part spread over the whole community. But tax credits and child benefit are paid over each of the first 19 years of a person’s life in roughly equal amounts each year. While this approach has everything to be said for it in terms of making its administration simple and easy, such a ration-book approach ignores how a family’s needs vary over their child’s lifetime.
One of the toughest periods for families is the early years of each child’s life. Many mothers feel driven back to work by sheer economic necessity and, whatever their views before the birth of their first child, they deeply regret leaving their baby to the care of others. I would be very surprised if the mother who described how she wept each day as she went to work was an exception. Likewise the mother who commented that every working mother she knew felt guilty about doing so during the first years of her child’s life.
So why don’t we have a grown-up debate on when families would like to draw a chunk of the support taxpayers provide for each family’s wellbeing? Child benefit and tax credits now amount on average to almost £100,000 of tax-free income for each child. For starters, why not let families take a quarter of this, i.e. £25,000, over, say, the first two years of a child’s life if a parent wishes to hold back from resuming their old job?
Individual freedom would be increased with no impact on public expenditure over the longer term. This would be an option with no one forced to participate. But the idea of welfare would begin to be revolutionised, with taxpayers drawing down part of their share when they most need it. And might not the freedom many more parents would have on deciding when they resume work also be in the best interests of nurturing their children?
Groups of families accessing their share of education expenditure is the second example of extending freedom while safeguarding collective provision. Thirty years ago, in 1978, the year before I became an MP, I edited a book for the Gulbenkian Foundation in which I advocated for Britain the Little Danish School model. In Denmark, 300 parents can take the state education budget for their children and set up their own school. One quarter of all Danish schools are now run along these lines.
The then boss of the Inner London Education Authority objected to the idea. Reactionary working-class parents would seize the opportunity to run schools with children sitting in rows learning their tables by rote and likewise how to spell. Thirty years later, even the progressives are signing up to this ‘reactionary’ model, but only after playing havoc with the education particularly of poorer pupils.
Here then is the third example that sets free our education serfs. After £40,000 of public investment, over half of all children do not gain the government’s minimum school-leaving attainment of five GCSEs at A* to C including English and maths. Over 30,000 young people gain no qualification at all — not a single GCSE in any subject at any pass grade.
I am struck by just how intelligent some of this group are. But a few have not been at school since they were 12. Many will have left by the age of 14. A strategy for this group has to be run alongside the plans the government has for increasing the numbers of young people in education and training up to the age of 18.
A school-leaving certificate testing basic English, maths and IT skills should be instituted. Many of this disenfranchised group would get down to some work if they knew that passing at 14 would free them from school and allow them to work. This group would then have the money that would be wasted on their non-attendance at school put aside as a training endowment. The education budget for a 14- to 18-year-old is £22,000. This sizeable sum could then be spent by the young people themselves on the training that they choose to advance their careers once they realised that being out of work is a tougher proposition than they once thought. But having control over their own budget would also help drive up training standards.
Here then is an alternative vision that does not so much respond to Cameron as ignore him. It is only part of what must become a wider tax contract giving individual ownership and control over state programmes. It is not too late for the Prime Minister to act along these lines and so demonstrate a new energy and creativity.