One of the first things Margaret Thatcher said when she came to power was that disabled people could not expect to be exempt from any necessary changes that were going to be made in the welfare state. Students of recent political history will be struck by the remarkable similarity with a statement made by Tony Blair in the row with disabled people and some of his own party over planned reforms in the welfare state.
But it would be a mistake to imagine that history was about to repeat itself, for two important reasons. First, unlike the Tories, who were either ambivalent towards or profoundly hostile to the welfare state, Labour is broadly supportive of it. Second, when the Tories came to power, there was no powerful and committed disability movement to defend the interests of disabled people.
Any attempt to force through cuts in cash benefits to disabled people is likely therefore to be a high risk strategy, even for a government with such a large parliamentary majority. In fact, without Tory support I doubt that such cuts could be forced through Parliament, and the damage to New Labour might well be irreparable.
The problem is that the Government, in rightly seeking to reform the welfare state, is listening to the wrong people. The ideas being promoted by a combination of blinkered civil servants, failed poverty lobbyists and reformed radicals are likely to lock disabled people further into dependency on the state rather than to empower them to become fully participating citizens in a new, vibrant democracy — with, as its centrepiece, not a plastic dome, but a modern welfare state.
A central plank in the Government’s strategy to reform the welfare state is its welfare-to-work programme which aims to reduce public expenditure by taking people off benefits and putting them into work, hence making more people net givers to rather than takers from society. Disabled people fully support such a strategy — though it would not apply to the majority of them, who are over 65.
As far as the nearly two million disabled people of working age are concerned, it would make more sense for the Government to put this part of its strategy in place first. If successful, it would take many disabled people off Incapacity Benefit and out of the poverty trap and hence reduce public expenditure on social security, which is precisely what both the Government and disabled people want.
Cynics might well suggest that attempts to cut benefits before implementing the welfare to work strategy are indications that the Government has little confidence in the success of its strategy. Such cynicism is unnecessary. As organisations of disabled people have been arguing for many years, strong, enforceable anti-discrimination legislation applying to all employers and across the whole labour market, will ensure that considerable numbers of disabled people take their rightful place in the workforce.
The Government could go further. It could set targets for all government departments and other state organisations (the NHS, local government, universities, etc.) in respect of employing disabled people. Additionally, in its dealings with the private sector it could stipulate similar targets as part of contract compliance. Finally, it could switch the grants it gives to the voluntary sector to organisations controlled by disabled people themselves; their record in employing their own puts the traditional charities to shame.
Such an integrated strategy would take hundreds of thousands of disabled people off incapacity benefit, hence reducing the pressures on public expenditure. Lest anyone thinks that this is over-optimistic, it should be remembered that within a few months of the start of World War II, 400,000 previously unemployed disabled people were incorporated into the workforce at all levels.
Cutting cash benefits to disabled people is a strategy doomed to failure for many reasons. To begin with, such attempts in the past have yielded only marginal savings, as Peter Lilley discovered. In addition, cash is not only good for disabled people but the economy as a whole; for example, Motability buys more cars every year than does Hertz or Avis, thus stimulating the motor industry. Finally, all the research evidence demonstrates that giving disabled people cash is the best way to reduce their dependency on others and the state.
It is understandable that the Government may want to free up more resources for education and health, but to proceed on the victim-blaming assumption that it is disabled people’s fault that they are living on benefits is to fly in the face of reality. That reality is that vast numbers of disabled people are socialised into dependency by parts of the existing welfare state. Special schools, day centres, residential institutions, social security payments to keep people in care all perform this role and could all be targeted instead of cash benefits which free people from dependency.
There are political risks to this too. The vested interests of some local authorities, often Labour controlled, who provide such dependency creating services, the special schools lobby, the alliance of the charities and the voluntary sector whose very existence often depends on keeping disabled people dependent would all have to be tackled. But a strong government committed to creating a modern welfare state would have a better chance of succeeding with this approach than by cutting cash to disabled people.
If such a radical programme of opening up employment opportunities and removing disabling welfare barriers were to be adopted, it would be something that disabled people and the Government could unite over. It could play a key role in producing a modern sustainable welfare state for the twenty first century. But if the Government continues on its current course, the welfare state may well become unsustainable and the consequences of that, not just for disabled people, but for all of us, will be unimaginable. In such a case New Labour’s legacy may really turn out to be a plastic dome instead of a modern welfare state.