Whatever Rachel Reeves may think, slashing benefits won’t build a better Britain
It might not have seemed like it today, but when Rachel Reeves became Chancellor of the Exchequer on 5th July last year it was a defining moment in history. Bringing with her bold promises of radical changes in economic and financial policy, Reeves was the first female chancellor in the 800-year history of the post.
The fiscal landscape into which was catapulted has presented profound challenges, and the Tory years since 2010 have been a catalogue of misery and relentlessly downward trends. We’ve had crippling austerity measures, the decline of the NHS, Brexit, Covid, the Russian-Ukraine war, soaring inflation and a grinding cost-of-living crisis. And of course, there was also that unexpected and elusive ‘financial black hole’ that the previous government was accused of leaving.
Whatever else the incoming Labour government has promised to sort out, it can do nothing without first reigniting the ailing UK economy. For Reeves this has always been about delivering economic policies that focus on the equality of women, and she’s made no secret of the fact that she believes delivering changes such as affordable childcare, equal pay and flexible working arrangements will free up almost half the UK’s productivity potential.
On this matter in particular Reeves has been oblivious to the fact that whilst women’s equality measures may be a noble aspiration, the one lesson we all learned from the Covid pandemic is that lockdown had thrown off the shackles of a lifetime of routine and tedious employment. Having felt and experienced the joy of quality family and personal time, the ‘new awakening’ enabled us to draw our breath and consider that there might actually be something more meaningful to life than just relentless, unrewarding toil.
Of course, for committed advocates of state socialism this kind of anarchic thinking is an existential threat of the most profound and dangerous kind as, when it comes to running a country, radical Left and oppressive Right strategies become essentially the same thing – the object of the state being to keep as many people in work as possible in order to reap the maximum possible taxation needed to make things happen.
The question of the quality (or not) of that work, or the satisfaction of doing it, hardly comes into the discussion – and we’re already seeing this imposition on the human condition being reduced to a narrative of enforced labour.
This was very evident in Rachel Reeves preamble to her Spring Statement this morning, the premise of all that was to come being that “Labour is the party of work” and “if you can work, you should work.” This may seem like logical rhetoric but the concept of “human work” is somewhat more nuanced – for instance we Catholics especially would draw a critical distinction between ‘useful work’ and ‘useless employment’, and we’d want to point out to the chancellor and others that work is only one aspect of the human journey through life, and not the prime purpose of it. We would also caution strongly against any temptation to see the active labour force as merely a fiscal commodity.
It is a strange irony of circumstance that for decades past Catholic commentaries on the nature of human work and social justice in employment have been viewed as somewhat leftist Catholic preoccupations, yet under the rare circumstance of a socialist government our concerns are suddenly seen as the unwelcome interference of right-leaning authoritarianism.
It is cited invariably that the modern origin of Catholic teaching on the dignity of human work begins with Pope Leo XIII’s landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which speculated that work actually could be something a little more rewarding than the depressing and relentless bare-handed toiling in the dust that Adam’s sin bequeathed to us. Leo’s proposition launched several generations of debate and consideration about the nature and function of work, culminating 90 years later in John Paul II’s profoundly insightful encyclical Laborem Exercens.
Interestingly, in language that would be familiar to any socialist economist, John Paul’s text offers a very detailed and considered framework that any government could use to develop meaningful, rewarding and financially positive employment strategies. Sadly, it’s a narrative that remains a long way from the present government’s attitudes to work, the public good and the dignity of the human person.
It is sometimes said that – in Britain at least – the problem is that whichever party you vote for, it’s the government that gets in – and this has certainly become increasingly true as the old, historic distinctions between parties have dissolved into the new uniform bureaucracy of government. In a poll published just this morning by the Institute of Research and Reforms International just ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Spring Budget Statement it was revealed that a significant public distrust now exists in the UK government’s ability to manage the country fairly and effectively. 2,205 UK adults aged 18+ were interview last weekend on their attitudes towards the proposed welfare and disability benefit changes in particular, and the outcome was that there was precious little confidence in this present government’s ability to get the country back on the rails.
Given what was announced today, the concerns of those polled seem to have been vindicated. There was a lot of bluster about the world having changed over the past few months, and economic factors that apparently couldn’t have been anticipated, but the bottom line is that somehow, somebody got the maths wrong – and it was most probably the chancellor. Late last night the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – which monitors the government’s spending plans – unveiled its latest economic forecasts and basically halved the government’s growth predictions for the coming year. It also torpedoed the chancellor’s calculations on the savings expected from severe cuts that are due to be made to disability and unemployment benefits.
The response of the government was predictable, and lamentable. If the swingeing cuts weren’t enough, then the poor would just have to be hit even harder. Quite how this is going to play out when there’s an increasingly desperate need to get the population engaged with economic recovery is way beyond my humble understanding, and one could be forgiven for thinking that there’s a strategy at work here for some in positions of wealth and power to extract as much capital from the population as possible before the edifice comes tumbling down.
Of course this is not the view of all legislators, and thankfully there are still those whose journey into British politics was driven by a heartfelt desire to create a more equitable and just society. Sadly though, the ‘pyramid of incompetence’ tends to favour and promote those whose narratives endorse rather than challenge the status quo.
In the present uncertain and divisive socio-economic climate, a far more effective strategy for growth and economic recovery would be to look first at how potential government policies are going to impact people on the ground and legislate for human benefit, rather than focussing exclusively on the potential ‘return on investment’ of often harmful and damaging budgetary cuts. Just taking today’s announcements as a case in point – Rachel Reeves is hoping that the benefit cuts announced will somehow pressurise vulnerable people into any kind of workplace, where at least they will provide some return to the Treasury through taxation of their wages.
In fact, more than three million people will be pushed into increasing hardship by these changes; 250,000 more people will be driven into relative poverty by the end of this government term, bringing the total in poverty to nearly 14.5 million, including 50,000 children. In the face of this, more than £1bn will be pumped into getting people back to work, especially many who are currently registered as disabled. It makes for pitiful – and morally unacceptable – reading that one of the criteria devised for deciding whether individuals will continue to receive the personal independence payment (PIP) is that people who are not able to wash half their body, or cook a meal for themselves will no longer qualify for this vital support payment unless they also have another limiting condition. Some 150,000 people are also going to lose their carer’s allowance, with all the implications that will have for social deprivation and hardship; and the list just goes on.
Such draconian and socially destructive measures have understandably got many Labour MPs deeply concerned, and even in Tory circles eyebrows are being raised that a party so rooted historically in social justice and the cause of the ordinary citizen should be acting so punitively and irrationally.
Traditionally, when governments set upon the most vulnerable of society’s citizens in this manner, charities and the churches tend to step in and fill the holes; indeed, it’s all too often something that governments actually rely on to offset the most socially disturbing of their policies. For agencies of social care, their often-undue reliance on government financial support also creates an uncomfortable alliance of conformity that can add to the false impression that although times may be tough, but we’re all getting through it.
In the past this may have sufficed, but the extent of the government cuts being proposed today have all potential to tip the social order in a way that no-one would wish for.
It behoves us to respond in practical terms whenever our neighbour is in need, but we must never forget that we also have an equal duty to call out injustices done to them, whenever and wherever it occurs. On this the Catholic voice must not be silent.
Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and public theologian