Failing the social justice test
As George Osborne observed yesterday, when New Labour came to power in 1997, they stood on a platform of promising to deliver both social justice and economic efficiency. This objective arose, they said, out of Old Labour delivering social justice while neglecting the economy and the Tories delivering economic efficiency at the expense of social justice. Yet despite their intentions the Government have failed to deliver either.
We have a huge and growing budgetary deficit, an all time high trade imbalance and rising record national debt interest payments. Gordon Brown as Chancellor never saved for a rainy day, so making any recovery that much more difficult.
At the same time, Labour has also failed to address the deep roots of poverty such as educational failure, family breakdown, drug abuse, indebtedness and violent crime. The Government’s strategy for tackling these problems has been to rely on means-tested benefits. This is ultimately unsustainable. By treating the symptoms of social breakdown and not the causes, the bills of social failure have risen, not fallen.
As a result child poverty is rising, the number of people in severe poverty has risen by 600,000 since 1997, poverty amongst working age people without dependent children is the highest ever and Britain has the lowest levels of child well-being and social mobility in the developed world.
These problems are now widespread. They are just as likely to occur in rural areas as urban areas. Suffolk’s current housing problems are an example of this.
Suffolk has seen huge increases in the numbers of families waiting to be housed. The number of households on the Social Housing Waiting List has increased by 37% since 1997 from 12,503 households to 17, 145.
It is truly a terrible indictment of the Government. Less and less an Englishman’s home is his castle, but in reality more and more an unattainable aspiration.
Andrew said on April 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm:
right on the money, it is as you say