Recent UK social policy and the role of social enterprise
Prof. Jo Pritchard MBE
Laba diena
• Evolution of UK Social Policy – the Welfare State
• Recent Welfare System changes
• Universal Credit
• The role of Social Enterprises
• Examples of social impact
Overview
Development of support for Welfare State
• ‘Poor law’ evolving and changing over 350 years – finally abolished in 1948
• 1942 – Beveridge report – ‘National Insurance’ – assumption of family allowances, national health service, full employment.
• 1944 Commitment to full employment through Keynsian policies
• 1944 Education Act: free universal secondary education
• 1945 Family Allowance Act.
• 1946 National Insurance Act
• 1946 National Health Service Act.
• 1948 National Assistance Act. This contained the abolition of the Poor Law, and set out a new legislative framework for provision for people in need, including residential care.
• 1948 Children Act, which established local authority departments to receive children into care.
Key issues
poverty
ill-health
poor housing
insufficient education
unemployment
UK’s ‘Welfare State’ of 1948
• a guarantee of minimum standards, including a minimum income
• social protection in the event of insecurity
• the provision of services at the best level possible
Cradle to Grave Security State run insurance system
6th August 1946:
A mother and her family drawing her family allowance at Vicarage Lane Post Office, Stratford, East London, on the first day the allowance was paid.
Family Allowance
Funding the ‘Welfare State’
1950s ‘stop go’ funding approach to slumps and booms
1970s ‘Thatcherism’ refusal to support lame industries - Planning and Control of
public spending by Treasury – reduce government, lower taxes
1990s ‘New public management’ – agencies, managers and quazi markets
2010s Recession, ‘big society’?
2013 Welfare reform – universal credit introduced
2019 Austerity ending? – ‘dual’ labour market – zero growth – central government
tightly restricts local spending
Robert Wilde
Universal Credit – continuing Welfare Reform
Rewarding work
Encouraging responsibility
Making work payHelping those
who need it most
Supporting aspiration
Universal Credit –2010 objectives the current system is too complex
there are insufficient incentives to encourage people on benefits to start paid work or increase their hours
make the benefit system fairer and more affordable
reduce poverty, worklessness and welfare dependency
reduce levels of fraud and error
Income Support
Housing benefit
Child Tax credit
Employment and support allowance
Universal Credit
Job seekers
allowance
Working tax credit
Universal Credit• What's gone wrong?
• Universal credit has been in the headlines again and again since it was first announced in 2010.
• The project cost many times more than originally predicted and has taken far longer than expected.
• The National Audit Office, which oversees government spending, said that the universal credit programme was "driven by an ambitious timescale" and that it had suffered from "weak management, ineffective control and poor governance".
• The Resolution Foundation has warned that cuts to the benefit have weakened its core purpose - to make it more attractive to work than to receive welfare.
So changes have been made ……..
The welfare state works well but …..
• Financial crisis
• Environmental crisis
• homelessness, • debt, • widening gap in healthy years, • a need to change to protect
our planet, • social injustice, • loss of faith in the banks and
in big corporates
Needs more than just the Government
There is a role for others ..
The Great Acceleration
Projected Impacts of Climate Change
“Inequality has become a defining issue of our time…philanthropy alone cannot be our response. Global sustainability and the nature of the economy will be shaped by entrepreneurship and the terms on which we create and do business with each other.”
Prof Muhammed Yunus, Nobel Laureate
‘Think Global, Trade Social’, British Council and Social Enterprise UK
Lord Victor Adebowale
City AM 24/10/19
The inconvenient truth is that the profit motive which once spurred the industrial revolution is now a barrier to progress.
The problem isn’t so much the state but business which is not able to drive growth and therefore a better society.
Failure of business economy with low investment, stagnant productivity and squeezed living standards
Need to reform business - promoting models which can combine dynamism with long termism whilst respecting both people and planet.
Run out of planet so it is unsustainable to carry on growth as before
Social Enterprises
“These are real businesses. But they are doing business differently.”
Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012Establishing ‘social value’ principles in public procurement
Enterprising charities
Entrepreneur-led
Community led
“Spin outs” from the public sector
Community Shop – a social enterprise
Transforming lives by:
1. selling good quality food at affordable prices
2. helping individuals with life skills
3. cooking and eating together
Thurrock Lifestyle Solutions – a social enterprise
Transforming lives of people with learning disabilities
Change Please- a social
enterprise
Transforming lives of homeless people through selling coffee