Brown sets out 'fairness agenda'

PREVENTION rather than cure is the best way to ensure a fairer society and a more efficient economy, Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, said yesterday, writes Patricia Wynn Davies.

Arguing for poverty and lack of opportunity to be 'attacked at source' in the workplace, Mr Brown said in a Fabian pamphlet that socialism could not be confined to dealing with society's casualties.

The pamphlet, Fair is Efficient: a new socialist agenda for fairness, is based on the premise that policies for fairness and prosperity go hand in hand, and challenges Tory thinking that inequality of wealth is the price for economic growth.

It says: 'Persistent unemployment and falling relative wages for poorly skilled and educated workers are the twin sources of rising poverty and lack of opportunity, reinforced by discrimination in the workforce and the welfare system against women and ethnic minorities. But these sources of poverty in Tory Britain in the 1990s - high unemployment and rising in-work poverty due to falling relative wages for unskilled workers - are also the reason why economic growth has been so sluggish by historical standards.'

Spelling out a three-pronged 'fairness agenda', Mr Brown said Labour would cut unemployment with a series of immediate measures; boost earning power through a 'skills revolution'; and shape the welfare state to encourage pathways out of poverty rather than benefit dependency.