It's All About You: Citizen-centred welfare

Article

We propose that we need a welfare system that is based on the needs and circumstances of the citizen. The Government's Green Paper, "In work, better off: Next steps to full employment", published in July 2007, very tentatively edges towards some of the ideas and policies we have described. However, these tentative steps fail to live up to the rhetoric of its ambitions. There is an opportunity to plot a course for the next ten years to deliver a welfare contract that is more fair, simple and empowering. Such a system would be capable of placing the citizen at the centre and in doing so will move further down the road to full employment and social justice.

Despite rising employment, more than 3.5 million people are not in work and are claiming benefits, which is about the same as in 1997 when the Labour government came to power. At the same time, levels of benefits have not kept pace with rises in earnings and there is a strong correlation between a child living in a workless household and a child living in poverty. The Government will meet neither its employment aspiration nor its target to end child poverty by 2020 if it continues on current form.

Now is the perfect moment for a new approach to welfare. Sixty-five years after the publication of the Beveridge report it is time to retire old solutions (with enormous thanks and respect) and to tackle afresh the types of questions Beveridge was addressing: what do we want from the welfare system as a whole and how can we construct a system that is feasible, workable and affordable?

Related items

  1. Graphic depicting a stack of pound coins in the background and one sideways pound coin displayed on its side in the foreground

    The full-speed economy: Does running a hotter economy benefit workers?

    How a slightly hotter economy might be able to boost future growth.
  2. The outside of Rochdale town hall on a sunny day, with flowers in the foreground

    Making the most of it: Unitarisation, hyperlocal democratic renewal and community empowerment

    Local government reorganisation need not result in a weakening of democracy at the local level.
  3. West Midlands Metro Tram at Victoria Square in Birmingham city centre during 2022 Commonwealth Games

    Transport and growth: Reforming transport investment for place-based growth

    The ability to deliver transformative public transport is not constrained by a lack of ideas, public support or local ambition. It is constrained by the way decisions are taken at the national level.