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

Ačiū

Jo Pritchard

jmpritchard6@gmail.com