The Path to Power

and who act as neighbours to those in need.

Rome never seemed so close to Grantham.

The outcome of today’s ‘culture wars’, as they have been called in the United States, is still in doubt. As with so many other developments, the conflict of ideas and attitudes, which shows no sign of abating on the other side of the Atlantic, is bound to spill over into Britain and Europe. And with good reason. For it is as necessary for conservatives to win the battle of ideas in social as in economic policy.

Without this the likelihood of even limited initiatives succeeding is remote. But there must be such initiatives in the other three areas of social action — crime, welfare dependency and family break-up — with which I began.

CUTTING CRIME

When we turn to our second area, crime, recognizing the scale of the problem is an essential start. But rejecting the counsel of despair that ‘nothing works’ is almost as important. Since 1979 there have been large increases in the resources available to combat crime, including 16,700 more police officers and twenty new prisons. Yet far too often, critics of conservative criminal justice policy are allowed to get away with the argument that since crime has continued to rise, in spite of large increases in police numbers and prison capacities, some other unspecified but more liberal approach should be tried. This is, of course, a non sequitur — unless the critics are seriously arguing (and hardly any even of them would go so far) that extra police numbers and more prison facilities either have no effect or actually result in increased numbers of criminal offences. It is far more likely that crime would have risen still higher if these extra resources had not been provided.

The limited evidence available, supported by common sense, suggests that most professional criminals make recognizably rational calculations, weighing the likelihood of being caught and the length and discomfort of the sentence on the one hand against the perceived benefits (material and psychological) of crime on the other.[98] It would have to be shown conclusively that this was not the case before the traditional penal approach and remedies were abandoned. Moreover, Ernest Van Den Haag, a criminological expert in the United States, has made the following persuasive and significant observation:

Whenever the risks of punishment fall, the crime rate rises. The rise in crime since the 1960s is a response to the decline in the risks criminals run, to the rise of their prospective net profit. Crime now pays for many more people than before. Between 1962 and 1979 the likelihood of a serious crime leading to arrest fell by nearly half. The likelihood of an arrest leading to conviction fell more. The likelihood of a serious crime leading to imprisonment fell altogether by 80 per cent… Per 1,000 serious crimes there were ninety people in prison in 1960, but only thirty in 1990.

As he concludes: ‘one may wonder why crime rates did not rise more’. [99]

I would not wish to suggest that more police, stiffer sentences and increased prison places are the whole of the answer to increased crime. There are certainly modest but real benefits to be derived from both more effective crime prevention and better-targeted policing. But the fact remains that the most direct way to act against crime is to make life as difficult as possible for the potential and actual criminal. This cannot be done cheaply. Increasing the number of police officers on patrol, providing the most up-to-date technology to assist detection, building and refurbishing prisons are bound to require continuing real increases in spending on law and order services.

Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today’s political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order — as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice.

CURBING WELFARE DEPENDENCY

Third, as with formulating an effective conservative approach to crime, so with welfare dependency. We have both to combine forgotten traditional insights with modern techniques and up-to-date research. In an earlier chapter I have described the system inspired by the Beveridge Report and its merits.[100] Beveridge argued for a safety net of universal benefits largely based on and funded by social insurance, with means-tested benefits providing the remainder. The scale and complexity of Social Security nowadays means that a ‘return to Beveridge’ is hardly practical. We can, however, apply the perspective of Beveridge to our present difficulties. First, his Report made the assumption that if the state intervened too much it would reduce the willingness of individuals to provide for themselves — he was a great believer in thrift and the insurance principle. And enlarging the possibilities for individuals to insure themselves against sickness and old age is highly desirable today. Second, he was extremely conscious of the need to see the large extension of benefits he proposed soundly financed. Third, Beveridge described his objective as being the elimination of ‘five giants on the road of reconstruction’: ‘Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness’. It is significant that his giants are moral, not just material; they reflect behaviour and not just circumstances. Reassuringly, we find that such an analysis fits in very well with the conclusions reached by American writers on welfare policy today.

If it is the financial burden of welfare spending which is the main concern, universal rather than means- tested benefits may be the main target for savings. If the wider ‘dependency culture’ is the focus, we are likely to be more wary of means-tested benefits, since they reduce the incentive to seek work and practise thrift. Nor will we be concerned with Social Security and tax only. Some means-tested financial benefits may also make recipients eligible for linked in-kind benefits such as free prescriptions, free school meals and cold-weather payments. If the recipient were to lose the original benefit, therefore, he would automatically be compelled to lose others, often a considerable financial sacrifice.

Moreover, a welfare recipient is likely to find himself and his family experiencing the most run-down local authority housing and the worst local authority schools in a disorderly and crime-ridden environment. The terrible paradox of the dependency culture is, therefore, that it offers people very considerable financial incentives to lead lives of idleness, squalor and despair. And we should especially honour those brave people who make the effort. But it is up to government to help them by removing, or at the very least scaling down, the temptations.

Some piecemeal measures to erode the dependency culture have already been taken. The 1988 introduction of Family Credit, paid to working families on low incomes, was an important step in dealing with the worst effects of the ‘unemployment trap’ (where people are better off out of work) and the ‘poverty trap’ (in which people lose benefit as their income increases). Alongside the Youth Training and Restart programmes, already mentioned, this has helped alleviate some of the problems of welfare dependency. It has dissuaded people who are fit and of working age from dropping out of the workforce. Whether it would be worth developing further initiatives such as Workfare is an open question. In principle, those who are ready to make heavy demands on society should be equally ready to fulfil some obligations to it. But US experience suggests that Workfare can be both expensive and frustrated in practice by bureaucratic obstruction. In these circumstances, probably the most important task is simply to curb public spending in general and welfare spending in particular, while reducing regulation and taxes, so as to make it more worthwhile to work and earn.