Ed Miliband has, according to the Guardian, embraced IPPR's new report, launched today and entitled 'The Condition of Britain'. I was, therefore, duty bound to take a look.
IPPR's recommendations are (from their own press release via the Guardian) (and in full here):
Families - raising children and nurturing relationships
· A month off for fathers when their child is born, paid at least the minimum wage, plus paid time off for fathers to attend antenatal appointments
· A guaranteed full-time, year-round affordable childcare place for all 1-4-year-olds, including a free 15 hour entitlement for all 2-4-year-olds
· All staff working with two-year-olds to hold at least a level 3 child development qualification, and 30 per cent to hold an early years degree
· Child benefit to rise with prices for under fives but frozen for older children
· A separate work allowance for second earners in universal credit
· A lifetime entitlement to one course of couples counselling for all adults and an end to marriage notice fees
Young people - enabling secure transitions into adulthood
· A youth allowance for 18-21-year-olds in education or looking for work, rather than access to out-of-work benefits
· A youth guarantee for 18-21-year-olds, with access to education, training or help to find work, and compulsory work experience after six months
· Half of young people aged 16 or 17 taking part in National Citizen Service by 2020
· Young adults brought under the remit of youth offending teams, rather than adult probation services
Working life - promoting work and rewarding contribution:
· An independent National Insurance Fund to restore the link between contributions and entitlements
· A higher rate of JSA and access to support for mortgage interest for those who have paid into the system
· A Work Programme focused on the long-term unemployed and people recovering from a health condition
· A locally-led ‘New Start' supported employment programme for people with a long-term health condition or disability
· Sick pay recovery for small firms hiring people from ESA, plus greater back-to-work engagement during sickness absence
· An independent Affordable Credit Trust to endow local affordable lenders as alternatives to high-cost payday lenders
Housing - mobilising local leadership to build more homes:
· New powers for towns and cities to bring forward land for development
· Financial incentives for councils to reduce housing benefit spending by meeting affordable housing needs more efficiently
· New powers for councils to set the level of housing benefit in the private rented sector
· Control over housing capital budgets for combined authorities who want to shift from ‘benefits to bricks'
· In time, enabling combined authorities to take control of all housing spending in their area, with responsibility for meeting affordable housing needs
Crime and exclusion - putting people and places in control:
· An entitlement to ‘restorative justice' to give a voice to victims of crime and antisocial behaviour
· Neighbourhood justice panels in every area to mobilise local volunteers to help tackle low-level crime and antisocial behaviour
· A new locally-led ‘Troubled Lives' programme to address the root causes of deep social exclusion
Older people - living well together in an ageing society:
· A right to adjustments in working arrangements for people providing a significant amount of unpaid care
· An entitlement to means-tested support for older people with ‘moderate' care needs
· An independent review to consider how the national insurance system could protect people from high care costs in old age
· Backing for older people who want to establish a ‘neighbourhood network' in their local area to help tackle loneliness and isolation
What can I say? Where is the big idea? Either this press release really undersells the ideas or they just aren't present - unless the small state is the theme.
The stuff on housing is useful, I admit - but not transformational. And that's it, to be honest (bar a disastrous dedication to an NIC fund, on which I will blog separately). Some of rest might be portrayed as negative in my view.
If this is the agenda then it is one of 28 tinkerings on the edge of relevance. No wonder Ed Miliband is not sure he will make it to government.
Surely Labour can do better than this?
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“Surely Labour can do better than this?”
They can’t and wont. Richard-its time to let go of your nostalgic allegiances and move on, you are wasting your useful energies on them. They had rendered themselves irrelevant years ago. Campaigning and fighting kleptocracy and debt peonage has NO political party to represent it (Greens, yes but no chance of more than 3% of vote)-continuously droning on about the fact that Labour SHOULD be this party is a waste of your time. My own sentimental allegiance to Labour was let go of in the 90’s and I was right to do so.
Simon – just to say I agree 100% with your critique of Labour, but I don’t think Richard spends his time backing Labour – does he? Certainly not in recent years. The Greens are moving up to 5% in some of the recent polls – a slow increase but it’s definitely happening…
Howard
You raise an interesting point about whether I back Labour or not. I am not aware that I do. My work is dedicated to the relief of poverty. When any party does something that achieves that goal I am happy to say so. I’m equally willing to criticise when parties fall short, and Labour has done that, often, of late.
I and not a member of the political party, and believe my work to be without party political bias. At least, that is my intention.
No one to think I’m on a pro-Labour thread at the moment
Richard
I take your point Howard. I’m a similar age to Richard and I sometimes wonder whether we (erstwhile supporters of Labour) just can’t let go of the hope that Labour will respond to the true challenges of today.
Sorry Richard, if I unjustifiably attributed this to you! I have a number of friends who just won’t give up their nostalgic memories of a more vibrant Labour Party-I’m not sure it ever existed in reality. Ralph Miliband always thought that the Labour Party never really challenged the embedded class system, yet look at the anodyne waffle his son is dishing up for us at a time when the electorate is probably ready for something courageous!
Ralph Miliband may have been right
“· A Work Programme focused on the long-term unemployed and people recovering from a health condition
· A locally-led ‘New Start’ supported employment programme for people with a long-term health condition or disability
· Sick pay recovery for small firms hiring people from ESA, plus greater back-to-work engagement during sickness absence”
More persecution of the sick and disabled – just what the country needs! Nothing about where these imaginary jobs are going to come from. in the real world, people are discussing the rise of the robot and its consequences, witness http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/our-work-here-done-visions-robot-economy. What’s the point in voting for any party in a political system entirely out of touch with the real world?
Indeed Bill -if anything we need a cultural shift to a society where there’s more genuine leisure and cultural activity, education (lifelong) rather than the chase -your-tail debt peonage-it’s possible but not with an elite that want’s it the way it is.
They’re parasites, not elites.
Correct, Bill I’ve still not fully expunged that word from my vocab.
The big idea’s actually bottom of p51/to of p52 and repeated at more length in Chapter 10 specifically in respect of ‘troubled families’. It’s not as fully developed as I’d hoped at this stage ie. the accounting for the investment, but at least it’s there.
“The big idea’s actually bottom of p51”.
That’s a classic! Good luck in pushing it up the agenda to get it front & centre for the manifesto!
Richard asked a question, and I give him an answer. It is not good that IMO that it drawing forward investment on the basis of future savings from preventative successes were not mentioned yesterday, but Labour is not yet convinced of the maths or the accounting framework, on which a report will come out from IPPR in September. In part this is because Labour only got proper pre-election access to Treasury resources in March under the convention introduced by Major.
I happen to agree about the desirability of deficit spending, but Labour has taken the view that this has to be delivered somewhat under the radar and sold as social investment – something I and colleagues have worked hard to make sure is developed by IPPR and which will start to move centre stage when Labour is confident it can be defended in overall fiscal neutral terms
You prefer to take the piss. Oh well.
Do you work for IPPR?
If so you need to be explicit, I think
I think that the problem is not in the data – it is in the lack of willing to talk proinciples
I notice a number of your commentators, such as Ivan Horrocks or Andrew Dickie, as indeed you do, bemoan the lack of a bigger vision, perhaps as encapsulated by the Courageous State – I must admit, the excerpts you provide above don’t exactly fire the blood. It’s possible Labour are so scared of things being seized on and misrepresented by the Right wing press that this timid approach is all they’re capable of.
May I ask, given a choice between them eking in to power with the limited vision outlined above or campaigning on a bigger theme and losing, what would be your preference?(and I appreciate that this assumes they would lose with a big idea approach – I know you’d argue they would not)
I believe on a bigger theme they would win
There is a massive audience of disillusioned people out there begging for someone from a major party to speak for them
Labour is not right now. It could
It has to take the risk, in my view
I have told them
I may disagree with you on a number of issues, but I agree they need a more radical approach and it has to be worth the risk – otherwise they simply become ‘coalition lite’ and ultimately I think people are more likely to vote for the genuine article than a pale imitation.
This is not just pathetic: it is in parts positively evil.
Have you looked at the proposals for 18-21 year olds?!
These people turn my stomach
Indeed- the Labour Party have fully signed up to the vilification of benefit claimants as part of the perceived vox populi. The craven cowardliness staggers the senses.
Richard
No, I don’t work for IPPR. I agitate in the Labour party and shove my nose in wherever I can, badgering Jon Cruddas when I get a chance, and I doorstepped IPPR last couple of times I was in London, having badgered Graeme Cooke at conference a year or two back. There are a few like me. with whom I have a loose connection, who have sought to influence esp arond family support and child protection plus childcare (which I work in). I don’t know how much these efforts have created p51/2 or if they’d have been there anyway, and I’ll never know that, but thinking it might keeps me going.
Sorry if it came over different.
To be clear, I don’t support the overall IPPR direction. But that battle is lost for now. There are though different ways of creating upfront spend, and I think it’s ethical to explore and argue for those while also arguing the wider case. It’s all on my blog.
Thanks
Will look at blog http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/