At a difficult time for the Tories, a shining white knight rides to the rescue. His name? David Willetts, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. And it’s pensions that have provided the Conservatives with their biggest hit of the campaign so far. Not only has Mr Willetts’ five point plan put his party ahead of Labour on this vital, yet easily fudged, issue – but Tony Blair has also been pressured into astonishing refusal to rule out the means-testing of the state pension.
It is difficult to exaggerate the damage that such a measure would do. Most obviously, it would impose a monstrously perverse incentive on those who do the right thing by saving for their old age. But worse still, it would divide the nation between the ‘gets’ and the ‘get nots’ – i.e. those that get something from the state versus those that get nothing apart from a tax demand.
Needless to say, most conservatives would like to see a smaller state. But we’re not libertarians, we see a role for the public sector – not least as an expression of nationhood, a sense that we’re all in it together. Moreover, there’s very few of us that are so secure in our prosperity that we don’t feel the need for a little gentle reassurance from the welfare state. If that support is withdrawn from the middle classes then sooner or later the middle classes will withdraw their support from the welfare state.
New Labour is aided in its ‘get not’ agenda by those free market fundamentalists who deride the middle class welfare state. They were out in force when Charles Clarke forced through Labour’s promise-breaking tuition fees. The freemarket fundies hailed the prospect of people paying their own way. But paying with what exactly? There was no middle class tax cut to accompany this particular rolling back of the middle class welfare state. Thus the net effect was to leave the middle classes with less of their own money than they had before. Ditto the abolition of mortgage interest tax relief, not to mention the end of tax breaks for married couples.
Where will it end? It would seem that the means-testing of the state pension is next. But how about means-tested healthcare? Or tuition fees for school children?
Meanwhile the state inflates with evermore goodies for the ‘gets’ – not least the growth of Scandinavian-style state childcare.
One day, the ‘get nots’ will wake up and tell Labour to get knotted. The Conservatives should be ready, but not with a devil-take-the-hindmost package of cuts, but with a programme of universal benefits that ensure civilised standards without the means-test and with every incentive and encouragement to work hard and save prudently.
Comments