Immigration has been a contentious and controversial area of public policy in the United Kingdom since the Commonwealth Immigration Act ended most primary immigration in 1962. Community and political groups have campaigned against the restrictive policy of successive governments towards secondary immigration. More recently, Britain’s treatment of asylum-seekers, as part of its obligations as a signatory of the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees, has also attracted a great deal of criticism.

The 1996 Asylum and Immigration Act which withdrew social security benefits from many seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, arguably produced greater moral outrage, among a broad spectrum of liberal opinion, than any other policy pursued by John Major’s Conservative government. As this book goes to press, the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Bill will shortly receive its third reading in parliament, which will establish a system of cashless support for asylum-seekers in ‘designated’ accommodation around the country. Thousands have already demonstrated against Tony Blair’s New Labour government which promised to restore full social security benefits to asylum-seekers, on humanitarian grounds, when it was campaigning for office in 1997.

One institution which has received some media attention during this period is the appeals system that reviews administrative decisions on immigration and asylum made by the British government. This was established for immigration decisions by the 1969 Immigration (Appeals) Act, following the recommendations of the Wilson Report, and has been administered by the Lord Chancellor’s Department since 1987. Asylumseekers were given a right of appeal by the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Act. This appeals system is technically an administrative tribunal – one of over 70 that have been established since the Franks Report of 1957 – but most people working there prefer to use the term ‘court’ which seems appropriate, given the formality of the proceedings, and the importance of the decisions being made for the lives of individual appellants.

My use of the term ‘courts’, rather than ‘tribunals’ in the title of this book should not, however, be taken as endorsing the perspective of practitioners. During my fieldwork, some adjudicators – the current name for the professional group making decisions in the courts – were lobbying to be allowed to use the title ‘Immigration Judge’ to acknowledge the technical character of their work.

Introduction

To an extent ‘law and order’ policy has presented New Labour with one of its biggest challenges. Labour may have had to fight extremely hard to establish itself as a Party seen as capable of managing the economy, or as being held to be reasonably sound on defence, but particular difficulties applied when it came to policies on crime, policing and criminal justice. After all, it has had to compete with the Conservatives’ apparently natural status as the ‘Party of law and order’. Traditionally, the Conservative Party has been able to point to its ‘tough not tender’ approach to law and order as evidence that it, not Labour, is to be trusted with waging a war on crime. Conservative policies in the years running up to the 1997 General Election were notably more ‘tough’ in the accepted sense than at any time in the post-war period. At the very least, this presented New Labour with an uphill task.

Seen in this light it is difficult to deny that Labour has, by some standards, been remarkably successful. Labour managed to enter the General Election having at least neutralised the Conservatives’ identity as the natural Party of law and order. As the key elements of its crime policy began to unfold in the early years of office, it could claim not only to have gained the backing of senior police officers and senior prison managers (‘Editorial’, Prison Service Journal, May 1998) but also to have won over some of its former critics on the Left (see below). This was no mean achievement. On the way, spearheaded in opposition first by Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair and then by Jack Straw, the Party had decided to break from tradition and throw down new gauntlets.

Introduction

If there is one area where New Labour seems clearly distinct from the Old, it is public spending. It seems inconceivable that a senior Labour politician today would argue that government should ‘launch a massive programme of expansion’ to spend its way out of recession, as the Leader of the Labour Party did in the early 1980s. The apparent closeness that New Labour has to prominent figures in the world of business suggests an acceptance of and by the private sector unimaginable 15 years ago. This chapter examines the transformation – if transformation it is – with respect to any change in position by both Conservative and Labour towards public expenditure during the period. It then assesses the significance of this transformation for Labour's policy in government.

‘Rolling back the State’: Conservative policy 1979-97

Public expenditure

During the eight decades from the turn of the century to the year before Margaret Thatcher came into office, the share of the nation's income spent on the welfare state grew from 2% of GDP to 24% (Glennerster, 1998a). By the end of the succeeding two decades, it stood at just 25% of GDP – a far slower rate of growth than previously. Some important change had taken place. However, as Figure 2.1 illustrates, it would be a mistake to think of the arrival of Thatcherism as the decisive break – welfare spending fell sharply in 1976-79 in relation to GDP before rising again slightly in the early years of Conservative rule. It was the oil crisis of 1976, and the resulting International Monetary Fund intervention, that preceded a reduction, not the change in government.

Whatever the initial trigger for a downturn in welfare spending, there can be no doubting the Conservatives’ commitment to reducing it still further. The first White Paper on public spending declared: “Public expenditure is at the heart of Britain's present economic difficulties” (HM Treasury, 1979). Glennerster (1998b) identifies four possible reasons for this approach:

• • the levels of taxation required to finance public spending had become unsustainable;

• • as the real post-tax income of families fell in the immediate aftermath of 1976, public attitudes towards public spending and the taxes required to pay for it were unfavourable;

• • fiercer global economic competition and the need to sustain international trade meant limited opportunities to raise revenue from employers;

Introduction

If a week is a long time in politics, then 18 years can change politics altogether. When Labour left office in May 1979, the National Health Service was in what the jargon would call a steady state. The Royal Commission on the NHS had basically given it a good report card in terms of financing and structure. In their 1979 election manifesto, the Conservatives did not promise significant change, focusing their energies instead on the economy and related issues such as trade union power.

In their 18 years out of office, Labour's health policy became reactive to Tory policy. The fact that Labour was both ideologically and practically committed to a model for the health service which involved public financing and public provision meant that what had been a radical policy in 1945 was a conservative policy 40 years later (and none the worse for that).

This chapter addresses two main themes:

• • Is New Labour policy different to Old Labour?

• • Has there been a convergence between Labour and Conservative policy?

In the case of health policy, the two questions are arguably even more closely related than in other areas. Hypothetically at least, New Labour policy is different to Old Labour because Labour's new health policy is a direct inheritance from Conservative policy. In that sense, it does not so much mean a convergence between Labour and Conservative policy as either adoption or adaption by Labour of Conservative policy from the outgoing Conservative government. Labour's policy may be conservative as defined by Disraeli – first opposing change, then adapting it. In other areas of social policy, convergence may be a more accurate term as well as a convenient one. New Labour has adopted many of the tenets of the ‘new welfare state’, different objectives and different policies have been articulated, at the level of a different emphasis at least, in areas such as education and employment. However, in health New Labour strategy is to seek to ‘tidy up’ the consequences of the internal market, inherited from the Tories. This chapter first examines Conservative health policy since 1979. It then outlines Labour's evolving policy, including aspects of policy implementation, before moving to assess Labour's new healthcare state.

Introduction

Labour's first 600 days of office has seen significant moves in many parts of the welfare state. For example, in the area of ‘welfare’ Tony Blair (1998c, col 365) stated that in its 15 months of office Labour had:

• • reformed student finance;

• • brought in proposals to reform legal aid;

• • changed lone parent benefits;

• • introduced £3.5 billion for young people getting off benefit and into work;

• • proposed a fundamental reform of the Child Support Agency;

• • proposed the Working Families Tax Credit scheme, and action to get disabled people off benefit and into work;

• • put together the first ever comprehensive strategy on benefit fraud.

He claimed that Labour accomplished more welfare reform in 15 months than the Conservatives did in 15 years. Areas to be reformed in the forthcoming year included:

• • Disability Living Allowance;

• • Incapacity Benefit;

• • a minimum income guarantee for pensioners;

• • a single work-focused gateway into the benefit system;

• • asylum and legal aid (Blair, 1998c, col 368).

In its first Annual Report the Labour government claimed that it had been “a year of welfare reform” (Government's Annual Report, 1998). The government had set a ‘cracking pace’ in delivering its 177 manifesto commitments: 50 had been carried out, 119 were under way and on course and only 8 had yet to be timetabled. Despite contrary claims from the Conservatives, the five key ‘card’ pledges were being delivered (Jones, 1998).

In the debate on the Queen's Speech in November 1998, Blair (1998d, col 27) stated that in the previous Parliamentary session the government had proposed 22 Bills and delivered 52 Acts. In the shorter forthcoming Session, nearly 20 Bills were promised. He continued that the centrepiece of the Queen's Speech was the set of measures to improve the health service, schools, law and order and to reform welfare. Taken together, the measures – both the investment and the reform – amount to the largest programme of change in our public services for many years. He also pledged that the government would tackle subjects which were ducked when the Conservatives were in office (Blair, 1998d, cols 30-2).

As the contributors to this book show, Labour's period of office has seen substantial reform in many areas as shown by a number of White Papers, Green Papers, Parliamentary Bills, policy announcements and keynote speeches.

Introduction

In January 1988, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party endorsed The Charter against workfare (NEC, 1988). The Charter had been agreed by a number of trade unions and local authorities, laying out four principles for participation in government schemes to reduce unemployment. The most important was a commitment to make all initiatives voluntary:

Labour's rejection of workfare, an arrangement under which claimants must take work in exchange for social security benefits, was unequivocal.

Labour's approval of the voluntary principle was uncontroversial. The idea that benefit entitlement should be unconditional was at the core of Marshallian social rights of citizenship. This commitment to universal social rights was a benchmark of the Party's welfare programme between 1945 and 1992 (Marshall, 1964; Lister, 1997b; see Deacon, 1996, for a critical view). Labour ministers criticised the various schemes floated by the Conservatives during the late 1980s and early 1990s which attached conditions to receipt of benefit (King, 1995). For example, Robin Cook was blunt in defending the benefit rights of those who voluntarily left work: “Those people's families are entitled to the same diet, clothes and heating allowances as the families of other unemployed people” (The Sunday Times, 6 March 1988). He later criticised the “humiliating hoops” through which the Conservatives wanted claimants to jump by making benefit conditional (The Times, 23 November 1988). When the Tories edged towards workfare in 1992 and 1993, Tony Lloyd, a member of Labour's frontbench described such arrangements as “socially unacceptable” (The Times, 5 February 1993). These schemes were irrelevant to the needs of the unemployed and they were unfair: they would create a two-tier labour force. It was “demeaning”, claimed Frank Dobson, to demand that people “work for next to nothing” (Financial Times, 5 February 1993).

On 9 November 1995, Gordon Brown, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced an ambitious plan, called Welfare to Work, to tackle the problem of youth unemployment (Brown, 1995). Four options would be designed for those aged between 18 and 25 who had been out of work for six months.

Introduction

It would be rather surprising if the Labour government of Prime Minister Blair were not pursing policies that were significantly different from those being pursued by the last Labour government. The Labour Party was out of office for 18 years and there were important social and economic developments in the intervening period. To some extent, policies have to change with the times, no matter who is in government. However, times have changed, not least because of the actions of the Conservative governments while Labour was in opposition.

During the decade following the 1979 General Election, the Conservative governments of Mrs Thatcher transformed the political economy and the public culture in Britain (Marquand, 1998a). Whereas some areas of the welfare state demonstrated considerable resilience in the face of what Marquand has aptly described as ‘the Thatcher Blitzkrieg’, housing experienced major change. Housing provision and, even more, housing policy and debates were substantially transformed under the Conservatives. Any government coming back to power after 18 years in opposition, whether it was New or Old Labour, would have to ensure that its agenda responded to such fundamental changes.

Mrs Thatcher's first government rushed in to legislate for changes in housing policy that it knew it wanted to implement. New Labour instead opted for a series of Comprehensive Spending Reviews (CSRs), including one for housing, which inevitably delayed the point at which major new changes would be introduced. The outcomes of the CSRs are only now becoming apparent and many important issues have yet to be decided. As a result, this chapter can only provide a provisional survey of housing policy under New Labour. The chapter begins by briefly reviewing the post-war development of housing policy prior to 1979, the year when the Callaghan Labour government left office, in order to explain the Conservative inheritance. The next section presents a brief overview of the main features of housing policy under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The chapter then outlines the housing situation inherited by the New Labour government when it returned to office in 1997. Subsequent sections examine New Labour's housing policy aims and the outcome of the CSR for housing policy.

Introduction

The Labour Party manifesto of 1979 gave only three short pages to education, but by 1997 the title ‘Education, education, education’ headed the manifesto and education was declared to be the Party's first priority. The few paragraphs of the earlier document had evolved into a detailed programme of reforms. In the intervening years the successive Conservative governments had introduced what Gipps (1994) referred to as an “explosion of developments”, the most fundamental changes to the education system in the England and Wales since the Education Act of 1944. The introduction of a Parents’ Charter, open enrolment, the National Curriculum, the local management of schools (LMS) and the expansion of school inspection on an unprecedented scale had brought exposure to the education system which began with the ‘Great Debate’ instigated by James Callaghan as Prime Minister in his 1976 Ruskin Speech.

When evaluating educational policy the contribution of reforms to the development of a welfare state has been measured traditionally through their “promotion of wealth creation through preparation for economic production” and their promotion of “social justice and individual rights” (Pollard, 1997, p 364). From the 1940s to the 1970s wealth creation and social justice could be seen as the aims of the attempt to redistribute social goods on a more equitable basis which consisted in the first instance of a secondary education for all, comprehensive education and the raising of the school leaving age (Gewirtz, 1996). Inherent in the concept of social justice was the view that schools would produce equality of opportunity for children to achieve their educational potential regardless of their social grouping. During the 1980s and 1990s a crisis in confidence in the comprehensive system appears to have led the Conservative government to redefine equality of opportunity. Equality in educational achievement has given way to equality of access to provision with the development of the concept of ‘equity’ by the New Right (Brown and Lauder, 1997).

Comparing the Labour Party's manifesto of 1979 with that of 1997 reveals fundamental differences between the commitments given in each to the principle of equality of opportunity in education. There has been no reversal of Tory reforms with the return of a Labour government and yet it is not entirely possible to argue that the differences between the two Labour manifestos are the result of Labour adopting Tory policies.

Introduction

This chapter explores the changing nature of public accountability in the welfare state since 1979. The particular emphasis is on the position of the Labour Party in opposition as the radical agenda of public sector reforms progressed through the four terms of Conservative governments to its current position following its election victory in May 1997. Although this is a complex journey, the key theme of this chapter will be to identify and explain the shift from the traditional forms of public accountability associated with the social democratic period of post-war consensus on the welfare state to the more diverse mechanisms associated primarily with the new accountability of neo-liberalism and its associated managerialism. It would be rash, however, to claim that these changes have been wholly accepted and incorporated into New Labour thinking. However, there is much to suggest that the changes being made and proposed so far by the government indicate an attempt to absorb managerialism within a model of public accountability that has been revived principally through the ‘democratic renewal’ agenda with its emphasis on institutional reform, greater decentralisation and a focus on citizenship and participation. Whether this is convergence or the multiple realities of a post-modern public administration (a third way?) is a major area for debate (Fox and Miller, 1995). The chapter begins by defining key terms relevant to the subsequent discussion.

Defining accountability

The idea of accountability is an inherently ambiguous one. It is a complex phenomenon with a number of dimensions. There are innumerable classifications of accountability in the literature and each author tends to give a slightly different twist to apparently the same term. However, the view of John Stewart that the prime accountability in the public sector is “public accountability” since “the exercise of [public] power can only be justified by public accountability” (Stewart, 1995a, p 289) is accepted here. The legitimacy of public choice rests on consent and consent is tested and confirmed through public accountability (Ranson and Stewart, 1994). Stewart also stresses that there are two differing elements in public accountability, both of which are required if it is to be fully developed:

• • those who control public institutions should give an account to the public of their exercise of power so as to ensure discourse within the polity;

Introduction

Central to any discussion of the changing role of the State in relation to welfare provision is the concept of citizenship, both as a status attributed to individual members of society and as a social practice involving participation and governance. Citizenship is a fundamentally contested concept that has lately re-emerged as a subject of political discourse and academic inquiry. Prior to the 1992 General Election, Britain's main political parties vied with each other to establish different visions of a ‘citizen's charter’ (Dean, 1994, pp 103-4). Although such rhetoric did not feature so explicitly in the 1997 election campaign, the language of citizenship continues to lie at the heart of New Labour's project, and in particular, in its proposals for welfare reform. The welfare reform Green Paper, for example, envisages a forthcoming age in which “the new welfare contract between government and the people will give all our citizens the means to achieve their full potential” (DSS, 1998a, p 21). Meanwhile, there has been a daunting proliferation of literature on citizenship theory (for example, Culpitt, 1992; Roche, 1992; Turner, 1993; Oliver and Heater, 1994; Twine, 1994; van Steenbergen, 1994; Bulmer and Rees, 1996; Lister, 1997b).

This chapter will:

• • outline the competing traditions which underpin concepts of citizenship, the different ways in which notions of ‘social citizenship’ have informed modern welfare state regimes and the manner by which conceptions of citizenship were reconstructed within New Right thinking prior to New Labour's election;

• • analyse the significance of New Labour's communitarian agenda and the extent to which this represents an emerging new orthodoxy with regard to the basis of our citizenship;

• • draw on evidence from recent research in order to discuss the relationship between popular expectations of the welfare state and New Labour's political discourse and the possible implications of New Labour's approach.

Competing traditions of citizenship

Conceptual legacy

In its original meaning ‘citizenship’ denoted residence in a city, or more precisely, the status of the free men of that city. Citizenship implied freedom: the freedom reserved to a self-governing patrician elite, or a freedom ‘earned’ from feudal servitude. However, neither in the cities of ancient Greece or Rome, nor the early modern cities of Europe were women, slaves or servants counted as citizens.

Introduction

The issues of employment, labour market structures, training and industrial relations have been critical ones for the Labour Party throughout the whole of this century. They have been pivotal areas cementing the links between the trade unions and the Party, they have secured broader workingclass support through employment rights reform and have determined the general economic strategy adopted – be it Keynesian or neo-Keynesian. However, the shifts in Labour Party thinking since its last period in government in relation to these issues do appear to be fundamental and hence capable of unscrambling that trade union relationship, lessening working-class support and providing an alternative vision of the future from that of macro demand management. The main changes are exemplified in the 1996 Labour Party publication Building prosperity: Flexibility, efficiency and fairness at work and repeated in the recently published Employment Relations Bill (January 1999). Assessing what actual changes have been inaugurated since coming to power in the raft of proposals and reforms Labour has enacted will give some idea of the direction in which the government is going.

In general it appears that the Labour government has gone for a minimalist approach in relation to employee rights at work, to the regulation of business and to the involvement of trade unions in deciding and implementing policies. Deregulation will stay. Competitive flexibility continues to be a central plank. Many of the trade union laws will be kept firmly in place. On the latter Tony Blair said in the Foreword to the White Paper Fairness at work:

Such statements seem to give credence to the numerous critics (Gray, 1998; Coates and Barratt Brown, 1996; Davey, 1998) who point to a continuity with the previous government and the adoption by New Labour of key elements of the Thatcherite programme. However, this is not the whole picture. In addition to these affirmations there appears to be some discontinuities of policy especially in the area of job creation, training and Europe.