Is there a silver lining to the High Court decision on the Independent Living Fund?

Following an application for Judicial Review of the decision to close the Independent Living Fund, the High Court has ruled that the Government carried out an adequate consultation and had not breached the public sector equality duty.  The applicants are appealing – Disabled People Against the Cuts has full information about all of this here.

The High Court judgement does appear, however, to lay down a marker to the government as to under what circumstances it would be in danger of failing to meet its Public Sector Equality Duty.  The judge recognised that ILF users will be “significantly disadvantaged” if they have to rely solely on existing local authority provision. He went further and said that something more is expected of government in order to protect ILF users and, in particular, to fulfill the government’s obligations under the UN Convention of the Rights of Disabled People.

He stated that if the forthcoming legislation on social care, or the Code of Guidance on transferring responsibility for ILF users to local authorities, “does not arrive in time or turns out to be too anaemic in content to enable the Convention principles to be brought to bear in individual cases”, then there would need to be re-consideration as to whether the Public Sector Equality Duty had been fulfilled.  He also said that this would also be the case “if the level of Treasury funding for disabled people generally or for this class of ILF users in transition back to [local authority provision] in particular is so austere as to leave no option but to reverse progress already achieved in independent living”.

While it is disappointing that the application relating to closure of the ILF was refused, the judgement does seem to contain a clear warning to government that it could be subject to successful legal challenge if there is evidence of a reversal of the progress achieved in recent years towards independent living for disabled people.

Before the ILF was closed to new applicants in December 2010, its funding was available to disabled people (between the ages of 16 and 64) with the highest level of support needs.  From its messy origins it had evolved into a highly efficient and very much valued source of funding (by both local authorities and disabled people) for the small proportion of people who need more support than the average user of social care services.  In order to qualify for support people had to be in receipt of the highest rate care component of Disability Living Allowance and to have support needs which were in addition to the level of funding available from their local authority.  These are people who, in previous generations, were consigned to institutional care. 

The largest group of ILF users (almost a third) are people with “severe learning disabilities” and around 6 in 10 have some form of learning disability.  According to the ILF, about one third are using their ILF grant to enable them to live in supported accommodation often with 24 hour care.  The ILF told the Dilnot Commission that

“Many of these people have previously lived in residential care or long stay hospitals….Local authority representatives have

told us that supported living placements for this group are becoming harder to finance since the ILF stopped accepting applications.”

Local authorities are facing a funding crisis and were clear, in their response to the government’s consultation on closure of the ILF that they would not be able to support people at the same level that the ILF had. There seems to be a general acceptance – within central and local government alike - that this may well lead to some people having to live in institutional rather than community settings.   

For others, while they may continue to be able to live in their own homes, there is an assumption that, although ILF funding enabled them to do things that non-disabled people take for granted such as engage in voluntary or paid work, leisure and education activities, local authority funding is only likely to be available for basic needs, such as help with getting up and going to bed, going to the toilet, and so on.  Whether people have to move into institutional care, or experience ‘institutionalisation in the community’ it would reverse a trend towards independent living which has been evident since the 1960s. 

Documents disclosed to the Court during the Judicial Review reveal that Esther McVey, Minister for Disabled People, asked her officials for information on how ILF users might be ‘protected’ after 2015.  Officials responded that the Treasury would not be sympathetic to a DWP bid to maintain funding and that the only course open to the Department was to develop a Code of Guidance on how independent living outcomes could be maintained once people are transferred to local authority funding.  However, as it was made clear that transitional funding was only going to be available for the financial year 2015/16 and it is very likely that people’s support will be reduced after that.

It’s difficult to see how progress on independent living will not be reversed in these circumstances. 

We need to document what happens, not only to people who currently use ILF funding but also those who would previously have been able to apply for it.  And challenge the government if there is evidence that people with high support needs are not being able to choose where and with whom they live, and do not receive support to enable them to participate in work, voluntary or leisure activities and in family and community life. 

Perhaps now is the time to start thinking about how we gather such evidence.

Satirical Elegy on the Death of ‘Lady’ Thatcher

Guest post by Mick Sullivan

With full acknowledgement to Jonathan Swift’s ‘Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General’: 

‘Lady’ Thatcher! - what, dead!
Of old age too, and in her bed!
And could that ‘mighty warrior’ fall,
And so inglorious, after all?
Well, since she's gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake her now;
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
She'd wish to sleep a little longer.
And could she be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we're told?
Fourscore and seven is pretty high;
'Twas time in conscience she should die!
This world she cumber'd long enough;
She burnt her candle to the snuff;
And that's one reason, some folks think,
She left behind so great a stink.
Behold her funeral appears,
No widows' sighs, or orphans' tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of her hearse.
But what of that? her friends may say,
She had those ‘honours’ in her day.
True to her profit and her pride,
She made them weep before she died

Come hither, all you empty things!
You bubbles rais'd by finance kings!
Who float upon the tide of state;
Come hither, and behold your fate!
Let pride be taught by her egress,
How mean a thing's a ‘Baroness’;
From all her ill-got honours flung,
Turn'd to that dirt from whence she sprung.

- and for her ‘children’ (or ‘grandchildren’) in the present coalition cabinet – in particular Messrs Osborne and Duncan-Smith – I recommend Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ as a source for further ideas on cutting welfare:

Disabled people challenge government over closure of the Independent Living Fund

Last week, five disabled people who receive support from the Independent Living Fund went to the High Court to challenge the government’s decision to close the Fund.  Their challenge relates to the government's consultation last year on the closure of the Fund – and there does seem to be a yawning gap between the responses to that consultation and the government’s conclusions. In particular, it would appear that the DWP’s response to the consultation mis-represented the submissions made by local authorities.

The DWP stated that “Most local authorities and their representative bodies expressed strong support for the proposal in principle”.  Yet, looking through those submissions – from both individual authorities and from organisations such as the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services – it is hard to see much evidence of ‘strong support’.

Even those authorities that said they did support the principle of closure usually attached qualifications to this support. Indeed, the government acknowledged, in response to a Freedom of Information request about the proportion of responses supporting the proposal, that: “The overwhelming majority of respondents chose to provide longer responses with many expressing mixed feelings about the proposals or laying out conditions on which they would support it.” 

Most local authorities’ responses (and those of their representative bodies) made the assumption that the closure was going to happen anyway.  Many responses said not enough information had been provided or details of how the transfer would work. Some referred to the advantages of there only being one system for allocating support but all referred to potential problems of closing the ILF, primarily the likely reduction in funding available to individuals. 

Most focused their attention on what mitigating action could be taken, with the primary suggestion being “The obvious mitigation is compensatory growth in the government support for adult social care services” (Association of Directors of Adult Social Services/Local Government Association).  Of course the reverse is happening – by 2015 social care in England will be have been cut by £8billion – a real term cut of about a third of the total budget for social care. 

Disabled People Against the Cuts have reported that, during the two day hearing last week, further information emerged from the DWP which indicates that the transitional funding to local authorities – which is not ring-fenced but which could be used to support current ILF users – will be limited to one year.

As I pointed out in my last blog about this issue, the people who are currently funded by the ILF are those who in previous generations would have been consigned to institutions.  Is this what will happen again – as the National Association of Financial Assessment Officers (the people who carry out the means-test to determine whether disabled and older people should be charged for their care) told the government “some councils may determine that residential care would be a less expensive option than a high cost home care package. 

Guardian columnist, Zoe Williams, writing about the court case last week, asked perhaps the most pertinent question – “What's your plan for these people whose lives we apparently can't afford?”

What will the closure of the Independent Living Fund mean for disabled people with high support needs?

Last year, I wrote about the history of the Independent Living Fund and why we need to defend it.  At that point, the Fund was closed to new applicants and in July last year the government consulted on closing it entirely and transferring the over 19,000 current ILF grant holders to local authority funding.

In response to that consultation, the Minister for Disabled People announced that “In April 2015 the ILF will close and from that point local authorities in England, in line with their statutory responsibilities, will have sole responsibility for meeting the eligible care and support needs of current ILF users.”

A Judicial Review has been granted of the government’s consultation process and is due to be heard on March 13^th.  Disabled People Against the Cuts are organising a vigil outside the court in London. 

Since it was set up in 1988, the ILF has enabled people with the highest levels of support needs to live in their own homes and to have choice and control over the support they need to go about their daily lives. Some people who receive ILF grants talk about what a difference it makes to their lives here. 

The ILF is something of an anomaly in that it is a national system of allocating resources, whereas most other support to disabled people is delivered via local authorities, and this is a reason given by the government for abolishing the Fund.  Nonetheless, since 1993 ILF users have had to qualify for a certain amount of support from their local authority before they can access an ILF grant so a more accurate representation is of the ILF as a way of providing a ‘top up’ to local authority resources so that those with the highest support needs can have access to opportunities for an ordinary life.

The overwhelming response to the consultation from disabled people currently receiving ILF funding was summed up by the government: “ILF users tended to believe that local authority assessments of care needs were excessively budget driven and the ILF applied a more needs based approach. Users said they feared that the local authority may reduce the care package they currently receive or would not fund the type of activities that the ILF does.”

In response, the government stated that “All disabled people, including those transferring from the ILF, will continue to be protected by a local authority safety net that guarantees disabled people get the support they need.” 

The nightmare facing many people who are currently supported to live in their own homes is that they will, at best, be left with just ‘life and limb’ support (the ‘safety net’ that the government refers to) or, at worst, be forced into residential care.  That this is a realistic fear is evident from the local authority responses to the consultation.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government Association were in no doubt that most people would receive less support than they currently get: “As ILF recipientstransfer into the LA system in 2015, and are subsequently reviewed against the FACS criteria, the value of the personal budget calculated through the Resource Allocation System (RAS) will generally be at a lower level than the initial  ILF/LA budget”

The government’s own Impact Assessment acknowledged that “some users may not receive the same level of support or be able to use their funding in the same way as they currently do”, while the National Association of Financial Assessment Officers (the people who carry out the means-test to determine whether disabled and older people should be charged for their care) told the government “some councils may determine that residential care would be a less expensive option than a high cost homecare package. “

There is a long history of local authorities operating informal ‘caps’ (linked to the cost of residential care) on how much they will pay to support someone living in their own home.  This has primarily affected older people and there are fears that – with ever-tightening budgets – such a practice will also now increasingly be applied to people under the age of 65.  Local authorities are always very careful in the language they use to describe such policies as they would be acting unlawfully if they ‘fettered their discretion’ by applying a blanket limit on the amount of money to be spent on supporting people to live in their own home.  Thus we see the example of Worcestershire County Council consulting on a ‘Maximum Expenditure Policy’   while insisting that this does not mean they will impose a ‘cap’ on expenditure.  George Orwell would have loved such an example of ‘doublethink’ (i.e. simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct).

The majority of people who receive funding from both the ILF and their local authority receive support costed at over £500 per week.   These are people with the highest levels of support needs who, in previous generations, would have been consigned to institutions.  The ILF has been particularly effective at enabling people with ‘complex needs’ (a combination of physical and learning disabilities) to live in the community, supported by their families.

Much of recent public debate about social care has been focused on older people but disabled people of working age in fact account for an increasing proportion of the total expenditure on social care.  Although they account for only a third of total service users, “there is evidence that there is a growing number of LAs where .....expenditure for people aged under 65 is approaching the levels of expenditurefor people aged over 65”.

Currently, social care for disabled people of working age is under-funded and many people do not have their basic needs met. Local authorities will experience a 28% cut in their overall budgets by 2015.  Are we now going to see a reversal of the trend – experienced over the last 50 years – of a move away from institutional care for people with the most significant impairments?

If local authorities cannot envisage being able to continue funding the levels of support needed by current recipients of ILF grants, what chance is there for people with high support needs in the future to receive help to enable them to live ‘ordinary’ lives in their communities? 

(1) Blackmore, T. 2013. Local Authority Social Care Expenditure: A discussion paper, Disability Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. 

PIP - Foolishness personified

My last blogpost argued that neither the Conservative government which introduced Disability Living Allowance in 1992, nor the current Conservative-led Coalition government, which is replacing it with Personal Independent Payment, paid much attention to evidence when developing these policies.

On the other hand, in the 1970s the initial versions of these ‘extra costs’ benefits were informed and motivated by research evidence.  As Tania Burchardt says, “The development of extra costs benefits appears to be one of the relatively few areas where social research has had a direct impact on policy”

Two areas of social research prompted the introduction of Attendance Allowance by the Conservative government in 1971 and Mobility Allowance by the Labour government in 1975.  Surveys by the Office for Population Censuses and Surveys identified larger numbers of disabled people than had previously been thought, and the significant costs faced by disabled people (1). There was also increasing evidence about the negative impact of means-testing benefits - the low take-up, the high costs of administration and the ‘poverty trap’ created for low income households (2). This helped to persuade the 1970-74 Conservative government and the 1974-79 Labour government that the new Attendance and Mobility Allowances should not be means-tested.

It is interesting that both Attendance Allowance and Mobility Allowance were introduced during times of worsening economic conditions.  In particular, it is perhaps surprising that during an economic crisis which resulted in significant public expenditure cuts in return for an IMF loan in 1976, the Labour government brought in a new extra costs disability benefit which it estimated would significantly increase the numbers eligible for help with mobility.  Less than 50,000 people qualified for the three forms of help which were replaced by Mobility Allowance – the three-wheeler ‘trike', the small cars, and the Personal Car Allowance.  In contrast, the government estimated that 150,000 people would qualify for the new Mobility Allowance (3).

When Mobility Allowance was first introduced in 1975, it was paid at £4 per month but over the next three years it increased to £10.  This was partly to enable the payments to be enough for the new car leasing scheme, Motability, launched in 1978.  While this was set up with finance from the main banks, working with the car industry, the organisation also received government grants towards the cost of administration and to subsidise expensive adaptations.

So, at a time of significant economic crisis and large reductions in public expenditure, there was all-party support for, not only increasing the amount spent on disability benefits but also for introducing a scheme which resulted in many thousands of disabled people having access to a car.

In retrospect, we can see what a wise decision this was. Because not only did this benefit disabled people but it also benefited the wider economy.

By 2009, Motability was estimated to support 21,080 jobs; contribute £2 bn to the UK’s GDP; and £468m in tax receipts every year. It accounts for 10% of new cars and 2.5% of used cars sold every year.

 

In the current economic difficulties, however, the government is taking a very different approach – one which, far from generating demand in the economy and protecting the living standards of disabled people, is reducing the numbers who are helped with additional costs and in particular who can have access to a car.

The DWP estimates that 420,000 fewer people will be awarded the enhanced rate of the mobility component of the new Personal Independent Payment than were eligible for the equivalent rate of Disability Living Allowance.

 

In a Briefing to the All Party Parliamentary Disability Group on January16th, Motability stated “We recognise that a significant number of our current customers will lose their eligibility to use the Scheme as a result of their PIP reassessments”. 

Motability's website makes clear that “If you are an existing DLA recipient who has not received the Enhanced Rate of the Mobility Component of PIP, you will not be eligible to use the Motability Scheme” and “The leasing agreement will end” and “Motability will arrange with you for the vehicle to be returned”.  

 

Not only will this have a devastating effect on individuals and their families, but it will have a significant detrimental effect on the economy.  Using analysis from 2009, Jane Young has estimated that there will be losses of:

• 5,692 jobs (from 21,080 jobs to 15,388 jobs in Motability-related industries)
• £544 million contribution to GDP (from around £2 billion to £1.45 billion)
• £126 million in tax receipts.

Can anyone doubt that the introduction of Personal Independence Payment – which is entirely fueled by a desire to reduce the money spent on supporting disabled people’s additional costs – is one of the most foolish policies ever pursued by a government?

(1)  Harris, A. 1971. Handicapped and Impaired in Great Britain, Office for Population Censuses and Surveys.

(2) e.g. Lister, R. 1974. Take up of Means-Tested Benefits, Child Poverty Action Group.

(3) Beard, A. 1998. Motability: The Road to Freedom, The Book Guild.

Disability policy 1990 and 2010 - an evidence-free zone.

If anyone doubts that evidence has little part to play in influencing government policy, they only have to compare the origins of Disability Living Allowance in 1990 with the circumstances of its demise in 2010, when the government published its proposals to replace DLA with Personal Independence Payment.

In 1990 we had a Conservative government who wanted to reform disability benefits.  Their White Paper, The Way Ahead, identified that there had been large increases in the numbers successfully claiming the two additional costs benefits – Attendance Allowance and Mobility Allowance – over the previous ten years: a sixfold increase in Mob A recipients between 1978/9 and 1989/90;  and threefold increase in AA recipients.

A national survey of disabled people had also identified that the additional costs that they incurred were only a fraction of the amount paid to those qualifying for these benefits. AA was £20.45 and £30.60 per week and Mob A £21.40, whereas a government survey found that average extra costs ranged from £3.20 for people in severity category 1 to £11.70 in severity category 10. Disability organisations had challenged these figures but the government response was that their challenge related to people with highest needs and took into account care needs which should be met by either local authority services or the Independent Living Fund.

So – did the government respond by cutting the amount of money spent on these benefits?  In the same way that the current government aims to cut today’s budget for additional costs disability benefits by 20%?

On the contrary, the Conservative government of 1990 proposed to replace Mobility Allowance and Attendance Allowance with a new benefit, Disability Living Allowance, which would be extended to larger numbers of people, increasing the amount of money spent.

Unlike the current government, the 1990 government recognised the demographic reasons for the increase in numbers claiming disability benefits: although “there is no reason to suppose an increase in the incidence of disability at all ages” there are, they said “more old people and they are living longer” and this “will have contributed to the rise”.  And, they said, there was greater awareness of the benefits so more people were claiming.

In contrast, the current government argued in 2010 that the 30% increase in the numbers receiving DLA since 2002 is ‘inexplicable’, concluding that “The complexity and subjectivity of the benefit has led to a wider application than originally intended”. Their focus was on those of working age, arguing that DLA can act as a disincentive to seeking work and the June 2010 Budget announced their intention of reducing the numbers of 18-64 year olds receiving additional help by 20%.

In fact, as Declan Gaffney has shown, only 8% of additional working age claims cannot be easily explained.  All the rest of the increase is explained by either demographic factors (primarily that recipients keep DLA after reaching retirement age) or by the rise in under 20 year olds receiving the benefit because of mental ill health or learning difficulties (probably because of increased awareness of the benefit).  Moreover, the number of new claims amongst 18-64 year olds has in fact been falling since 2002.  In addition, evidence that disability benefits do not cover disabled people's costs of living has not figured at all in the government's policy deliberations.

Whereas the current government argues that too many people are receiving help with the additional costs associated with impairment and disability, the 1990 Tory government felt that not enough people were being helped.  Their White Paper argued that the OPCS surveys showed that there were people under pension age with “moderate to severe disabilities and corresponding costs, but who fail to qualify for AA or Mob A.”   The new benefit, Disability Living Allowance, was therefore intended to encompass people who were ‘less severely disabled’ for whom “the government believes more help is needed”.

In contrast, the current government believes that help should only be available to “those that need the greatest help”.  The lower rate of the care component is therefore abolished and anyone who can walk more than 20 metres will be ineligible for the higher rate of the mobility component – with very significant consequences for people who can currently lease a Motability car using their DLA. 

How do we explain these differences in approach?

One important factor is the role played by the Treasury.  In 1990, the Chancellor was persuaded to agree to the new benefit by offering up savings in the form of abolishing the Additional Pension element of Invalidity Benefit and the Reduced Earning element of Industrial Injury benefits.  This was in spite of the fact that the calculations set out in The Way Ahead make clear that these savings did not, in the short-term, come anywhere near the additional expenditure that the new DLA would cost (although they were more significant in the longer-term).  The argument which won the day was the government’s case that disabled people of working age needed more support than they were currently getting.

In contrast, the proposals developed during 2010 to replace DLA with PIP, were motivated by the Treasury’s demand that each government department offer up substantial savings on current budgets. The arguments made about ‘inexplicable increases’ in DLA recipients, the case made for a more ‘objective’ assessment to determine eligibility were merely fig leaves for the prime motivation – to cut the budget by 20%. As Maria Miller, the then Minister confirmed to the House of Commons on 18th October 2010, “One factor being considered in developing options for the new assessment is the need for reform of disability living allowance to deliver savings of 20% of working age expenditure”.

In this context, it is likely that the recent change in the proposed criteria for eligibility for the mobility component of PIP – the reduction from 50m to 20m in terms of ability to walk – has come about because someone has calculated that this reduction in eligibility is necessary in order to make the savings required.

But the most important lesson from the comparison of government proposals in 1990 and 2010 is that in neither situation were their policy decisions based on evidence.  In 1990, the government ignored (albeit probably faulty) evidence that the additional costs of impairment/disability were less than the value of the benefits received. And in 2010, the government ignored evidence that the increase in DLA recipients was almost entirely explained by demographic and other reasons – and that there is no evidence that people have been awarded DLA who didn’t need it; on the contrary there is evidence that disability benefits do not cover people's costs of living.

In both instances, policy was driven by political intent – in 1990 the government wanted to show that it was extending more help to disabled people; in 2010 the government wanted to cut the amount of money spent on supporting disabled people.  As someone once said, everything else is just noise.

Beveridge would be saying 'It's the economy, stupid'

It was good to hear Jose Harris on Radio 4’s marathon programme on the welfare state yesterday morning.  She supervised the early stages of my PhD in 1977.  I was researching the origins of minimum wage legislation – not our current version but the Wages Boards which were introduced by the 1909 Trades Boards Act and abolished by the Conservative government in 1993.  Winston Churchill, as President of the Board of Trade, made the case for the 1909 legislation, saying, “It is a national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions”.

The campaigns leading to this first intervention by the State to secure a minimum level of wages were focused on women’s ‘sweated labour’ and were often dominated by the trade unions’ argument that men’s wages should be a ‘family wage’ which supported women in their role as wives and mothers. However, the most influential players at the time were in fact a small group of employers who firmly believed it was not in their own, nor in the wider society’s, interest to have large numbers of people living at subsistence level.  This was not so much because they feared social unrest but because they feared the long-term damage that subsistence wages and very poor working conditions were doing to society.  Low wages created an inefficient unhealthy workforce and unfair competition from employers who had no interest in the general modernisation of industry.

This group of mainly Quaker employers, led by George Cadbury and his newspaper the Daily News, won the argument against those who they saw as irresponsible ‘laissez faire’ employers whose actions might lead to short-term gains but which would be accompanied by increasing poverty and long-term economic disadvantage.

My thesis was that it was the influence of these employers that led to the State intervening to prevent unfettered economic forces from driving down wages to poverty levels.  And I thought of this when listening to the three hour programme on the welfare state yesterday morning.  It was admirable of the BBC to devote such time to the issue but – like almost all the current public debate on welfare reform – there was very little mention of what is arguably the most important one of Beveridge’s five pledges; the commitment to full employment. 

This commitment was crucial because without it the other four pledges become financially unsustainable.  Full employment requires the State to take responsibility for what kind of economy we have instead of leaving it to market forces. Beveridge recognised this and his 1944 report Full Employment in a Free Society proposed, as Jose Harris describes in her biography:

A totally new kind of annual budget, which would use taxation, borrowing and deficit-financing to determine the levels of public expenditure, business investment and consumer demand.

After more than 30 years of governments taking less and less responsibility for our economy, the viability of our welfare state is determined not by what we want for ourselves, our families, our communities, but by the demands of global capital which in pursuing the lowest production costs abdicates responsibility for the long-term social consequences of low waged, low tax, low regulation economies.   

It was the demands of global capital which created high levels of unemployment in areas previously dominated by industries which moved production elsewhere in pursuit of lower wages.  The same economic forces are leading to an increase in insecure, low paid work.   These are the factors which create long-term unemployment and reliance on benefits, not individual characteristics of ‘malingering’ and ‘dependency’.

Unfettered global economic forces particularly affect those who employers would not choose to employ unless there is a shortage of labour supply.  And it is therefore the behaviour of employers and investors that should be the focus of government policy, rather than the hounding of people who have no option but to depend on benefits for their survival.  

I think Beveridge, if he were alive today, would be pointing out that:

- high levels of secure employment, at wages sufficient to sustain a reasonable standard of living, are incompatible with the way our economy is currently configured

- a progressive taxation system is incompatible with both the economic reality of, and the ideology associated with, the requirements of global capital

- it is these factors which make a welfare state, based on universal principles which delivers social and economic rights, economically unviable (not the creation of a ‘dependency culture’).

Or to paraphrase an American president he would be saying ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, not the welfare state that’s the problem.

Most crucially, I think he would be demanding that we recognise, confront and reform the dysfunctional ways in which our economy is currently configured, and that he would insist that such a challenge is necessary if we are to have a society which supports people when they need it, rather than the ‘sink or swim’ kind of society which we are rapidly becoming.