Labour MP urges family-state pact
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.(First Edition)
A LEADING Labour MP has delivered a scathing attack on Labour's traditional 'top-down' approach to welfare, saying the last Labour government created an 'excessively statist, faded and jaded project, over-dependent on paternalistic, bureaucratic and over-professionalised mechanisms'.
Malcolm Wicks, MP for Croydon North West and a former director of the influential Family Policy Studies Centre, calls in a Fabian Society discussion paper, The Active Society: Defending Welfare, published today, for a move towards partnership between citizens and families and the state.
Mr Wicks writes: 'Social policies for the responsible society, far from representing a rather soft, top-down do-goodery, are about fostering a mature, even tough-minded relationship between the citizen and the state.'
A radical Labour government should recognise the need for partnership between the family and the state as the practical means of recognising and realising a humane balance between the rights and responsibility of the citizen.
The paper argues that a modern system of home and family-based welfare provision would save the state pounds 30bn a year. And it defends universal benefits such as child benefit as a more successful and economically efficient way of targeting poverty than means-testing.
The pamphlet makes a pre-emptive attempt to influence future policies in advance of a report to be published later this month by the Social Justice Commission, set up by John Smith to propose social and economic policies for the future.
The Active Society: Defending Welfare; Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, SW1H 9BN; pounds 10.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments