Rising inequality and the spectre of a forgotten Britain
Support for vulnerable people looks likely to be eroded over the next decade, without the nation appearing to care
There is a growing gap between social need and the public resources available to spend on it. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
In the midst of great wealth, we are creating a forgotten Britain. Our society's tectonic plates are shifting, and the consequences for the most disadvantaged will be profound.
Firstly, we face a growing gap between social need in this country and the public resources available to spend on it. We should not kid ourselves that the era of austerity will be limited to the current parliament. In the short term, the cuts are likely to get worse not better. In the long term, our ageing population means the demand on a range of social services is set to outstrip supply.
Secondly, the cuts are being implemented in the context of a growing democratic deficit. The government is devolving power to a local level, but greater power is not being accompanied by greater accountability. Local media is weak, only a third of us vote in local elections, and quangos such as the Audit Commission that once interrogated local decisions have been pared back or abolished.
Thirdly, our society is one in which the "haves" live increasingly parallel lives to those of the "have nots". The cabinet stands accused of being divorced from normal people, but the truth is that the fractures run deeper. Too many businesses are cut off from the hard reality in their own backyards. And across the board, charity leaders talk of public attitudes hardening, with greater suspicion of anyone who relies on public-funded support, be they disabled, mentally ill or unlucky enough to be raised as a child in a "feckless" family. As one charity CEO put it, we are becoming a less civilised society.
The result is that the worsening plight of swaths of our society flies under the national radar. The homeless, victims of domestic violence, those with mental health problems, the elderly and alone, children in broken homes – the support for these people looks likely to be eroded over the next decade, without the nation they are part of appearing to notice or care.
How do we avoid the spectre of a forgotten Britain becoming reality? The political class must rediscover its urgency on public service reform. A brutal logic is at play: if you remove billions from public services but leave them unreformed, the people who rely on them suffer. The government has simply not lived up to its rhetoric here. For all the criticism of its rush to reform the NHS, in too many places what we see is glacial-paced gradualism (see reform of the probation service or social care). The people who depend on our public services will pay the price if we combine reduction in resource with a timid adherence to the same old way of doing things.
We must also plug the scrutiny deficit. The government's promised army of "armchair auditors" has not come to pass. Charities could fulfil the role given the right support – for instance, if we had better access to public-sector information. There is a role for businesses in all this, too. All the major parties are now asking how the private sector can be encouraged and supported to play a bigger role in tackling social problems. Over the next decade we need to turn those questions into a step-change in the way businesses engage with communities.
Great fiscal, constitutional and attitudinal changes are unfolding around us. This is not about individual ministers or policies – these shifts are bigger and longer-term than that. As a society we need to respond, with a reformed state, a civil society able to hold the government to account and remind us all that we do not travel alone in this life, and a private sector engaged in the communities around it. Otherwise we are at risk of creating a forgotten Britain whose existence we would come deeply to regret.
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