IDS says Brown's policies are not helping the most excluded

Asked on Monday's World Tonight what modern compassionate conservatism was defined by, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley suggested that it was about tackling growing inequality of life expectancy and ensuring wealthy Britain met its responsibilities to excluded Britain.

Today's Scotsman frontpages evidence that that growing inequality is horrifyingly real.  It finds parts of Scotland where male life expectancy is lower than in Bosnia, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Iran and North Korea:

"Today, The Scotsman reveals the true extent of inequality across Scotland, in a devastating study showing the country's wealthiest suburb has a life expectancy of 87.7 years, while a boy born in the poorest area of Glasgow can expect to die at 54. A child born in Calton, in the East End of Glasgow, is three times as likely to suffer heart disease, four times as likely to be hospitalised and ten times as likely to grow up in a workless household than a child in the city's prosperous western suburbs."

Iain Duncan Smith, chairman of the Conservative Party's new social justice policy group, said that Gordon Brown's economic policies had failed to bring the poorest Britons into the mainstream:

"Gordon Brown has chased the poor with money, but this just takes people to a higher level of dependency that it is difficult to break out of.  You may as well hang a sign on some of these places, saying 'abandon hope all ye who enter'. In Easterhouse, we saw kids who had to get themselves to school and out of bed because their parents were laid out by drugs. This cannot be cured by money."

Fraser Nelson, author of the Scotsman article, has previously talked about Scotland's "decommissioned" people.  People who the state has decided are too difficult to integrate into mainstream society.  The decommissioned don't just lack marketable skills but may also often struggle with mental health problems, low self-esteem or a history of addiction.  David Cameron's emphasis on social entrepreneurship is a recognition that the risk-averse and bureaucratic state lacks the ingenuity to reach these most excluded of people.

Old Europe often likes to look down on the USA and the way mainstream America has separated itself from the underclass by putting them in prison or housing them in ghettoes (see here).  This Scotsman article and France's long summer nights of countrywide urban riots suggest that all "advanced" western nations have a big problem.

Comments

[James Hellyer]

Surely the Scotsman's story is a condemnation not of inequality, but of the effects of a high tax burden, over regulation, and socialist incompetence on the Scottish economy. It makes a pressing case for those things the Conservatives seem to have disavowed (unless they're Scottish) - like lower taxes which incentivise economic growth and allow people to keep more of what they earn, and radical public service reforms, which would allow everyone access to better services and opportunities.

I'm not sure this supports the new Conservative agenda.

[a-tracy]

Perhaps it's time for action in towns like Calton rather than hand wringing and pointing out the obvious.

I'd like to know how many of the properties in Carlton are privately owned and how many are Council or Housing Association? How many homes are above a band D category as a percentage of the whole housing stock.

I believe that the burden of social dependency needs sharing out better between the other wards (which won't be popular), Carlton then needs the housing %'s shifting in line with more prosperous areas even if this means knocking down poor housing and re-building new estates. No one township should have > 30% of the Council (H.A) Housing.

Public transport needs looking at to areas of high employment e.g. is it available? Is it low cost?

Compulsory attendance at training courses each day for unemployed people with low skills is essential.

[Ted]

a-tracy - careful remember what hapened in Westminster when the council did a bit of social engineering....

James - it's a damning judgement on the Scotish Labour Party's misrule but don't give up yet on a real tory alternative. We have some good minds in the policy reviews, I still think we will get radical ideas but couched in soft language - how can we get people back into employment rather than how can we cut disability payment costs. I took a gamble voting for DC, and expected a few months of upsetting news but in the end its still David Davis, Fox, Letwin et al and they aren't socialists.

[Goldie]

I am anxiously await the eminently conservative things that Cameron could say about these matters.

[Derek]

I would be opposed to any social engineering, but what is needed is a combination of carrot and stick, by offering incentives to those who are willing to work, and reducing benefits to those who are deemed to be capable of work but won't.

[a-tracy]

Does social engineering mean that it's ok to put 65% of the Borough's social housing in one town and then forget about it? Out of sight, out of mind.

In the past governments of both persuasions have been guilty of such acts this is how you end up with ghetto's and sink schools and 1* hospitals don't you think? So is it really bad that you need opposite social engineering to sort it out again? I'm prepared to listen to the reasons for an against but I'm not willing to put up with the continued status quo and the problems that this brings to areas that get left behind.