W2B-013 Peace and justice-0.txt
Peace, with justice

The Commission on Social justice, set up by the late British Labour leader, John Smith, in December 1992, reported in late October. It had received some 450 submissions and held 12 outreach visits around the UK, as well at 16 full commission meetings and as many again of policy panels.

The commission's 400-page report was described variously as dry and dense, and rambling and thin. For some on the right, it represented an expensive wish list, while for the radical left it was a revolution that wasn't; the centre left, however, saw it as a solid basis for planning into the 21st century. The report received almost no coverage in the Northern Ireland media, demonstrating what a long road remains to be travelled in creating a 'new news' - as some broadcasters apparently call the post-ceasefires agenda.

No member of the commission expected it to have the impact of the Beveridge report, even though it was described as 'rethinking Beveridge'. The national and international scene is too complex and fast-changing for a single report today to have such enduring impact. Even more important, though, were the greater consensus in the 30s and during the war on how to develop a welfare society, the post-war expectation of low living standard and privation, and the tolerance of high taxation the war had established. By contrast, the problems the commission sought to address were the lack of consensus of the 80s and 90s, and the associated intolerance of high public expenditure and taxation.

That lack of consensus today owes everything to the huge growth in inequality over the last 15 years, primarily market inequality. The Beveridge welfare state proved ineffective in ameliorating, still less reducing or preventing, inequalities originating in the market. Even if the value of social security benefits had been maintained in relation to average earnings over the 80s and 90s, inequality would still have grown enormously. The lesson we should have finally learnt is that tax and benefit transfers alone can have only limited effectiveness, set against market inequalities. Cash benefits have not proved the answer to social injustice and exclusion and neither has that other hope of the post-war welfare state - the education system.

Once seen as providing the key to equality of opportunity, the education systems of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all failed to overcome the disadvantages experienced by many of family and class. Northern Ireland has both the best and the worst record within the UK - the best GCSE and 'A'-level results and the highest proportion of unqualified school-leavers. A quarter of the 1991-92 school-leavers in Making Belfast Work areas let with no GCSEs (18 per cent in Northern Ireland as a whole). One in seven and one in five young adults in the UK as a whole have problems respectively with basic literacy and numeracy. The UK is the only developed country, apart from Russia, still to have a school-leaving exam at 16. And it is not coincidental that the children of unskilled manual workers are one-tenth as likely to go to university as those of professionals.

Although many of the 'chattering classes', in their responses to the report, sought to defend 'free' university education, on grounds of equality of opportunity, the very different starts in life that people have mean some are very much less likely to benefit from 'free' higher education than others. Meanwhile, many are unable to benefit from vocational education and training due to unresolved literacy and numeracy problems, carried over from school into adult life. That is why the commission regarded extension of free education earlier into a child's life (universal nursery education for all three- and four-year-olds by the year 2000) and literacy and numeracy guarantees (with appropriate quality reading and numeracy recovery schemes for primary children) as more important public expenditure priorities than expansion of - partially free - higher education.

The problem of a minority of young people still leaving the education system at 16 requires, first, radical unifying of 14-18 vocational and academic education through a modular baccalaureate (as against the divided NVQ/GNVQ/A-level system) and, secondly, maintenance allowances for young people from the lowest income households in the 16-18 age group, whether they stay on at 'ordinary' schools or attend sixth-form or further education colleges. Without this, all the 'free' higher education in the world will fail to erode the increasing divide between people with no qualifications and those with some, in terms of adult life-chances and the capacity to exert control over one's life.

Post-18 vocational and academic education and training should be similarly addressed. The commission proposed a Learning Bank, with individual learning accounts - first, for all future 18-year-olds and long-term unemployed people and long parents on benefits, gradually extending to other vulnerable groups of the population, and finally including everyone. People would be able to choose the form of their entitlement - full-time, part-time, in a single three-year span or spread over any number of years in blocks - to suit them. This would level the playing field between the vocationally and academically oriented, between those from manual and white-collar backgrounds, between early and somewhat later developers, and between those who need to reconcile education with family commitments and those who do not.

Such a massive expansion could not be cheap or easy. But about 10 per cent of jobs in Europe are destroyed each year and, in such a world, the obsolescence of human capital is a serious threat. Basic literacy and numeracy, and second and third (and even more) chances of education and training will be as fundamental to social justice in the 21st century as unemployment, sickness and invalidity benefits have been in the 20th.

The commission proposed that state support would take the form of individuals being credited in their Learning Bank accounts with four-fifths of the average fees of a three-year course in higher education.

They would borrow the remainder of any fees needed and their income maintenance, the maximum for which would be higher than the current combination of grants and student loans. This debt would be repayable only if the person's investment in the education and training paid off - for example, when they reached average earnings - and repayment would be put on hold should their earnings fall below average again. Probably the most efficient and fair mechanism would be a surcharge on national insurance contributions.

The failure of the UK education and training system has not only been the enduring class differences in qualification and occupational levels but also the inability to produce internationally competitive skills and qualifications. This, in turn, is related to the growth of long-term unemployment and low-wage, insecure and unprotected employment, which, combined with more restricted access to social security benefits, have led to a 17 per cent fall in the real incomes of the poorest 10 per cent of the UK population between 1979 and 1992 - when average incomes rose by 36 per cent.

At the 1994 Conservative conference, the employment secretary, Michael Portillo, triumphantly proclaimed the'success' of Britain's deregulatory employment and social policies: "Work has changed, changed, completely and changed forever," he said. Mr Portillo's'success' has been low job growth and deteriorating wages and security of employment, at least 40 per cent of which is now part-time, casual or self-employment, mainly in the non-tradeable - that is, non-international - sector.

These are issues in which Northern Ireland has a strong stake. More than a quarter of its registered unemployed have been jobless for more than three years; in MBW areas, this rises to a third. Northern Ireland has also the lowest manual wages in the UK and probably a higher proportion of employers offering work premised on the availability of social security benefits to top up low-wage, insecure, casual or part-time employment.

The wage system, as much as social security, is an expression of social relations and this is most evident in the non-tradeable sector. This has long been recognised in Japan, where a high-productivity tradeable sector has been used to expand job opportunities at reasonable pay in the 'home', non-tradeable sector. Here, the commission proposed minimum wage legislation; employment protection legislation to apply after six months employment instead of two years, to part-timers as well as full-timers; and gradual replacement of family credit and income support, which depress rates and labour supply, by a modern and more comprehensive social insurance system, including part-time benefits. These aim to redress the balance between the tradable and non-tradeable sectors, clarify the responsibilities of employers vis-&\a-vis the state, and reassert the social nature of employment in such services as parks, caf&/es, bars and private households.

The failure to recognise and value work in the non-tradeable sector has not only affected most people's quality of life but has helped long-term unemployment to accumulate. To tackle exclusion from the labour market, the commission recommended a Jobs, Education and Training programme. JET would seek to create a high-quality, active, customer-oriented Employment Service. The aim would be to put education and training for the long-term unemployed people who wish to move into self-employment, to offer lone parents additional help with childcare, and to develop intermediate labour markets - combining training and education with not-for-profit employment - particularly through the use of benefits as wage subsidies.

Such UK-wide programmes, however, tend to be less effective in the most disadvantaged regions beset by multiple disadvantage. There are many area-based examples of good practice and innovation - some in Northern Ireland - but most are inhibited by short-term, inadequate and often restrictive funding criteria. Overall, too much money is still being spent on property-led, city-centre development, and too little on people-led, community development.

The commission proposed funding of Community Development Trusts of locally-elected people from small areas - about 5,000 households or 10,000 people - so that communities could influence regeneration. Initially, these would cover the 250 most disadvantages areas of the UK, and the programme would have a lifetime of ten years. This would reach 2.5 million people, probably a quarter of the unemployed and proportionately more long-term unemployed. Each CDT would be granted £ 100 per resident per year, up to a maximum of £ 1 million. In addition to these funds, CDTs could draw on wage subsidies to develop intermediate labour markets. Their success would be judged by improvements in the quality of life and environment of their areas. There would be an employment spin-off but that should not be the principle measure of performance, and certainly not the sole criterion for funding.

The commission's proposals reject the Fabian notion that governments know better than citizens what they need. Accommodation to the world of rapid and complex social and economic change, as well as participative democracy, require devolution of political power - implicit in the commission's proposals on community regeneration and the Learning Bank. But neither the social and economic policies the commission recommended, nor such associated devolution, conforms to the non-interventionism (in the market) and centralism (in formal politics) of recent Conservative administrations.

Indeed, more and more power has been drawn to Westminster and this must be reversed - through devolved political assemblies in the four components, and ultimately all the regions, of the UK. Yet, whether or not Scotland and Wales achieve devolution, an assembly in Northern Ireland may occur. And it might be permitted to adopt more interventionist economic and social policies: the UK government has itself been much more interventionist in the region.

As it should be. To build an inclusive society in Northern Ireland, through such social and economic policies as proposed by the commission - as well as through the formal political process - must be a prerequisite of peace with justice.
