A New Vision for the Welfare State

The UK public services design consultancy Participle have published a manifesto calling for an overhaul of the Welfare State. They called their vision Beveridge 4.0, a reference to the UK social reformer Sir William Beveridge, who in the 1940’s put forward a set of ideas that shaped the Welfare State. Beveridge wanted to tackle the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness on the basis of co-operation between the state and the individual. He suggested that public services such as health and education should be universally available and for the most part free and funded by general taxation. Other services such as social care should be rationed according to need, determined via strict eligibility criteria and assessment by professionals, while financial benefits such as pensions should be paid according to contributions made by individuals through a National Insurance scheme.

This type of system has served the UK (and other countries) reasonably well in the last 50 years, but according to Participle has some key weaknesses that Beveridge recognised in a third report (“Beveridge 3.0”) published towards the end of his life. His fear was that he had missed and limited the potential of the citizen. Participle develop this theme, arguing that the modern welfare state reproduces inequality, creates dependency, copes badly with the changing nature of modern society and is becoming increasingly unaffordable. In their view reform should be based on five principles:

1)                  A focus on releasing capabilities rather than meeting needs;

2)                  A shift from targeted provision to provision that is open to all;

3)                  A focus on resources in a broad sense rather than just finances;

4)                  A move from centralised institutions to distributed networks;

5)                  A focus on social networks rather than isolated individuals.

So what does all this mean in practice? As far as I can see, it means moving away from providing financial support or standardised services to individuals and instead focussing on improving people’s social networks and so encouraging and enabling community self-help. This certainly seems to highlight a vital and neglected area, but in our current world this looks more like a supplement (or counter-balance?) to the existing system than a replacement of it. Social networks have become impoverished in today’s developed world societies and we do now have some great tools for rectifying that, but I fear that we are likely to need individual-focussed safety nets for quite some time to come. It is also worth recognising the extent of the challenge that Participle are posing to the established bureaucratic approach.  Instead of telling the individual this is what you are entitled to have, Participle advocate a focus on what the individual is trying to achieve. This seems liberating and empowering, but it could also be seen as intrusive – what right does the state have to ask me what my dreams are? Similarly, how do you deliver more tailored support that reflects the full individual and their social networks while still guaranteeing equality of provision? I think it is great that Participle are trying to come up with new very different types of solution, but changing the paradigm is not going to be easy! It will also be interesting to see to what extent their approach ends up being about recreating and reinforcing geographical communities (where face-to-face (offline) can support online) and to what extent it creates new kinds of virtual communities that work even where there is little or no physical contact. Do have a look at their argument in full and share your reactions to it.