Opinion & Commentary
Open up debate on welfare
The welfare state is like milk. It makes us healthy. It’s good for children. Its benefits are beyond question. Or so says James Bartholomew’s mother-in-law.
Bartholomew, a British journalist and author, was in Australia recently as part of a worldwide (and whirlwind) tour researching his new book, the sequel to his influential 2004 debut The Welfare State We’re In.
His message to his mother-in-law, and others like her, is that the welfare state is not as benign or benevolent as they believe. Instead, he argues that the welfare state, particularly in Britain, has systematically harmed those it was intended to help the most: the poorest members of society.
Bartholomew estimates that 10,000 people die prematurely in Britain every year because of the inadequacies of the National Health Service. Lung cancer sufferers in Britain are half as likely to survive five years past their diagnosis as in France. British heart disease patients are less likely to undergo surgery than patients on the continent. Poor people are often those who miss out on adequate health care: people who can’t afford to go to private hospitals and don’t have the capability to advocate for themselves.
This mediocrity is not just confined to health care. A century after the introduction of free primary education, one in five British people is functionally illiterate. One in four students does not score above a ‘D’ grade in the secondary school exams. State schools, excluding the few that serve the elite, are the worst performers. One-third of the British population relies on a welfare benefit of some kind.
Bartholomew concedes that the systems in place before the introduction of state-run health care, education and welfare weren’t perfect. But he is convinced that the centralised systems that replaced them are not much better.
A chance encounter with Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who demanded Bartholomew provide solutions to the problems he had diagnosed, prompted him to search for ways to improve the welfare state.
Midway through that journey, Bartholomew’s preliminary findings are a mixed bag.
No country has found the panacea to their welfare state ills. Nearly all of them are getting it wrong in some way. Developing countries are themselves increasingly becoming welfare states, creating a new global welfare village.
Functional illiteracy across OECD countries is 17.8%. In France, social housing has become a major source of corruption. Local mayors often allocate apartments, which are intended for the poor, to their business associates, mistresses or friends.
Poland may have given up its communist credentials but the socialist hangover continues with many former soldiers and police taking up early retirement at the age of 35 and teachers’ unions negotiating 18-hour work weeks.
And in China, a developing country with a slowly developing welfare state, a whole industry has sprung up to enable sick citizens to pay others to wait in overnight hospital queues on their behalf.
Despite these disheartening discoveries, Bartholomew has also found some encouraging examples of how welfare states can be improved.
Sweden, once a socialist paradise, is at the forefront of introducing competition and choice into education and health care. By some estimates, one-third of Swedish students will attend independent ‘free-schools’ within 15 years.
In the Netherlands, competition between public and independent non-profit hospitals is driving efficiency and giving consumers greater choice.
In Switzerland, the localisation of welfare benefits, which are administered by local cantons, is helping increase employment and drive down welfare dependence rates.
And here in Australia, individual superannuation accounts might help us avoid many of the pension problems being experienced overseas.
Bartholomew is convinced that, in a democracy, we will always have a welfare state. The desire to help others is too strong, and punters will always vote in a safety-net for themselves. But this does not mean we should continue repeating the mistakes of the past.
To undo many of the big-government welfare mistakes of the 1970s, Bartholomew believes we must be willing to have an honest public conversation about the pros and cons of the welfare state. It is not enough for policy wonks to talk to each other. The whole community must become involved.
The benefits of the welfare state should not be beyond reproach, even for true-believers like Bartholomew’s mother-in-law.
Jessica Brown is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. James Bartholomew addressed the CIS last week.
