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Big Opportunities for Big Improvement: Changing the History of Social Security in Scotland

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History is being made in Scotland right now. Although many haven’t noticed.

Westminster is currently devolving a number of powers to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act 2016. This includes a portion of the social security budget, accounting for £2.9 billion or 15% of the total £17.5 billion spent every year. The new social security system will deliver 10 of 11 key benefits to over 1.4 million people in Scotland, including Carer’s Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and Sure Start maternity grants (Discretionary Housing Payments will continue to be paid by Local Authorities).

If you’re not on benefits, or don’t live in Scotland, then perhaps this is of little interest to you. But from a historical standpoint, and a humanitarian perspective, remarkable things are happening at Holyrood that will have a massive impact on the most vulnerable portions of Scottish society.

As a welfare state, Scotland (and Britain) is committed to the collective welfare of its people, so that no citizen falls below the minimum standards in income, health, housing and education. In other words, it’s like a social safety net.

Collective welfare in Britain began in the 1830s. Although Victorians distrusted the poor, believing poverty was their own fault due to wasteful habits, laziness, and poor moral character, England introduced the New Poor Law Act in 1834. However, it only offered assistance to able-bodied persons if they entered a workhouse, were put to work and thus “submitted to harshness” (I’m not even kidding, that exact phrase came from this textbook: Baldock, Mitton, Manning and Vickerstaff, Social Policy, 4th ed, 2007, p. 29). Workhouses were not happy institutions, we must remember. Instead, these able-bodied persons were meant to experience a lower standard of living than even the poorest labourer. The rationale was that it would discourage all but the destitute able-bodied from turning to the Poor Law, whose only choice in life was either the workhouse or nothing. Pretty grim!

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Abject poverty of Glaswegian children in the 1850s, photographed by Thomas Annan, and taken from No. 46 Saltmarket, an old close in Glasgow.  Image from the National Galleries of Scotland via www.sath.org.uk

Over a hundred years later, during the Second World War, economist William Beveridge (1941) wrote a ground-breaking report on social policy. After surveying wartime housing schemes, Beveridge famously declared that Britain commit itself to attack five giant evils: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.  Some would argue that this was the pivotal moment when modern welfare measures were introduced. (For a marvelous documentary on how the bombings during the Blitz revealed the conditions of Britain’s poorest class, and inspired lesser-known journalist Ritchie Calder to confront the long-term housing and poverty crisis in Britain, see BBC’s Blitz: The Bombs that Changed Britain).

The creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1946 was one of the largest reforms of modern British society. By amalgamating local authority hospitals with voluntary hospitals (many of which had already been organised during the war), and by promoting the NHS as a service based on clinical need rather than ability to pay, the British public warmly welcomed the new health scheme. Despite this, social security in Britain faltered. In the 1960s, critics such as Peter Townsend, brought attention to the fact that many pensioners were in poverty because of inadequate pensions. Meanwhile, National Insurance (NI) was given based on contributions, which often left unemployed women (ie. homemakers) excluded from the system. By the 1970s, means-tested systems were introduced to rectify social security shortcomings, which meant that low pensions, for example, were increased in line with prices or earnings, whichever were greater.

By the 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared that excessive public expenditures were the root of Britain’s economic issues, as the delivery of public services were “paternalistic, inefficient and generally unsatisfactory” (Baldock, Mitton, Manning and Vickerstaff, Social Policy, 4th ed, 2007, p. 39).

Tell Sid 1986 British Gas _BD_54_ 5

The ‘Tell Sid’ campaign from 1986, which that encouraged people to buy shares in British Gas. ‘If you see Sid, tell him’ ran the slogan, and around 1.5million did at a cost of 135p/share, in a £9billion share offer, the largest ever at the time.

The real issue, of course, was to avoid welfare recipients from becoming too dependent on state benefits. Echoing her Victorian ancestors, Thatcher and her advisers thought that “generous collective provision for unemployment and sickness was sapping some working-class people’s drive to work.” Measures were introduced to lower taxes and decrease state intervention and instead increase market forces with private investment. Major utility companies for gas, electricity, telephones, British Airways and British Rail were all privatized.  The assumption was that this new system would use competition to promote efficiency, and be motivated by public demands. This, it can be argued, was when the welfare state in Britain changed substantially. Or, this is when it went downhill.

An Example: Thatcher’s “Right To Buy”

Affordable housing, for example, was undermined by the unprecedented cuts in maintenance and subsidization under Thatcher. The “Right to Buy” scheme was introduced in 1980 so that long-term council tenants could purchase their council home at a discounted rate. As over 55% of Scottish people lived in council homes in 1981, this was a useful scheme to help many families become more independent.

But, crucially, this scheme removed thousands of homes from local councils’ resources. Without more affordable housing being built, and large reduction in subsidies from the federal government in 1981, Right to Buy only led to higher rents, longer waiting lists, and created a major housing crisis that lasted for decades.

By November 2012, a Scottish government consultation revealed that the majority of councils, and many tenants and landlords wanted the Right to Buy scheme abolished. In 2013, the Scottish government announced it would end this scheme in order to “safeguard social housing stock for future generations.” By 2016, the Right to Buy scheme was terminated in Scotland.

Education, healthcare, social security, all experienced cuts under the Thatcher period. And, with New Labour in the late 1990s, more changes sought to eradicate the “postcode lottery” effect of the NHS services by introducing national standards and centralized audits and performance reviews. Focus was also placed on employment; “welfare-to-work” epitomized the belief that work was the surest way out of poverty. As Chancellor, Gordon Brown promised to eradicate child poverty through a system of tax credits (a mission he still fights for, especially in Edinburgh where child poverty stands at 35% in some areas).

When Death Comes Knocking… Is Devolution is the Solution?

In addition to Scotland’s current housing crisis and child poverty, policy researchers are now drawing attention to another impending crisis on the British horizon: death.

In 2017, a comprehensive 110+ page report called “Death, Dying and Devolution” (hereafter called DDD) by the University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research outlined the impact of death in Britain. Its findings were unsettling: Over 500,000 people die in Britain each year and over 2 million deal with death’s emotional, financial and practical consequences every year.  That is one in four or six Britons every year. A further 1 million people provide care for someone with a terminal illness every year, but only one in six employers have policies in place to support this population.

This means that family members (estimated 58% women) must assume the caring role with very little compensation (as you will see shortly). Disabled or injured people receive small sums to support themselves, forcing their family and support network or local authorities to pay for their housing and basic utilities. And, shockingly, unregulated funeral services plummet many families into something called “funeral poverty”!! Read on!

The findings in the DDD report is meant to be a radical wake-up call to policy makers about Britain’s approach to death. The alarming deficit in policy response and legislation, the report argues, is compounded by poor infrastructure and strategising, resulting in fragmented care, escalating and unregulated funeral costs, and massive inequalities experienced by dying and bereaved people due to their geographic location. However, the DDD report singles out Scotland as the only nation to have developed innovative, progressive policies in respect of end of life care. Notably, Scotland’s goal is to provide palliative care to all who need it by 2021 – the only nation to actually set a deadline.

Fortunately, it is not all doom and gloom. The process of devolution is the perfect opportunity to tackle many of these problems. The report claims that “In light of the projected rise in the UK death rate over the next 20 years, with devolution comes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to (re)address the neglect of death as a public policy issue, repositioning death as a central concern of the welfare state,” (p. 6).

Soc Secuity Bill

The Social Security bill has just passed through stage one of a three-step parliamentary process. Find the latest updates on Twitter @SP_SocialSecur 

Let’s now return to the Social Security Bill being discussed in the Scottish Parliament…

As part of the legislative process, the Social Security Committee, comprised of multiple Members of the Scottish Parliament, has been given the task to oversee the new social security system.  This committee decided to make a Social Security charter (which would be quicker to implement than legislation) and submitted it for the public to scrutinise in the summer of 2017. You can see the charter here.

This is where it gets interesting.

Numerous charities responded to the public consultation with their concerns, criticisms and viewpoints. After the Social Security Committee received these reports, it will then amend the charter, seek more evidence from private citizens and charity directors as required, and in general, improve the legislation. (“Part one” of a three-stage legislative process is due for completion by December 2017, “part two” will begin in January 2018).

To the credit of the Scottish Ministers who drafted this charter, it’s somewhat vague and simplified, which is “normal” for such legislation in its infancy. For example, it’s impossible to say precisely how much a Carer should be paid, but merely to state whether a Carer should be paid more or less than the current benefit.

And to the credit of these charities’ policy researchers who drafted these perceptive responses, they have sunk their teeth into this charter and have ripped it apart…

Carer’s Allowance. This is currently less than the current jobseeker’s allowance (£73.10/week) and comes with a list of restrictive conditions. To qualify for Carer’s Allowance under the current system, you must provide care to someone who already receives Disability Living Allowance (this can be a major problem due to delays in assessment or confusing terminology about “terminal illness,” for example).  Assuming the person under your care successfully receives DLA, then to receive your small £73/week “compensation”:

  • you must provide 35+ hours/week caring,
  • you must NOT earn over £116/week,
  • you must NOT receive a pension (45% of all carers are aged 65+!)
  • you must NOT study 21+hrs/week or be under age 16.
  • If you care for two people (say an elderly parent and your child), you cannot double your benefits.

Although the new Social Security Bill suggests Carer’s Allowance should be raised to the current jobseeker’s allowance, Motor Neurone Disease Scotland argues “this rise does not go far enough: Many carers are forced to give up work to care for their loved one on a full time basis – they are not looking for work.” And even if Carer’s Allowance was increased to the equivalent of jobseeker’s allowance, this “new rate would only recompense carers at the rate of £2.00 per hour based on a 35 hour caring week” (Carer’s Scotland Consultation Response, 2017). And, remember, if they work part-time to compensate for this egregiously low compensation, they cannot make more than £116/week, or else their Carer’s Allowance is terminated.

Disability Living Allowance. The actual amount provided to people with disability is surprisingly little. The lowest DLA rate (for those requiring some care) is £22.10/week. The highest DLA one can receive in Scotland is £82/week (assuming they require constant 24/7 care). If mobility is challenged or non-existent, then the highest mobility allowance is £58/week. But is that enough to cover most disabled peoples’ expenses (transportation costs to medical appointments, rent, food and other daily expenditures)? Really?

Funeral Poverty. The average cost of a funeral in Britain was £3,897 (DDD Report, p. 82). Applications for assistance take four weeks on average to process, and the rules regarding eligibility for the applicant often does not “take into consideration the nature of contemporary family relationships” that may not be straightforward nuclear families (p. 81). But Scotland has admittedly taken great strides towards regulating the funeral industry by pushing for licensing the Burial and Cremation Scotland (Bill) 2016.

Let’s just imagine a desperate situation to illustrate funeral poverty: a young family mourning the loss of a terminally-ill child. Currently in Scotland, independent funeral directors provide free of charge until the age of 16 (while the Co-operative Funeral Care extends this to the age of 18). These include embalming, a coffin, a hearse to transport the child, personnel to conduct the funeral and the use of a funeral home (where available), in addition to overhead administrative requirements. However, this does not include cremation (or burial), the headstone, or burial plot. As cremation is currently a less expensive option than a traditional burial in Scotland, some families (according to a leading Scottish children’s charity) are forced to choose a less expensive cremation despite their religious beliefs or the wish of the terminally ill child.

So what?

Exposing the bare bones of Scotland’s current social security policies might seem like an insensitive and rude awakening. But we currently live in a world where gaps in care are compensated by families, friends or charities. Often, these carers and support networks are rewarded with heartlessly small compensation. And although those amazing charities help where they can, they should not be responsible for filling the gaps in care. Even large government donations to charities sadly fuels the “postcode lottery” effect of what services these charities can provide across the country, contributing to inconsistent care and, ultimately, health inequality.

The welfare state exists so that the poorest and most challenged citizens in a community can be supported. Historically, huge strides have been taken in the last 100 years towards administering social security to British people – from Lloyd-George’s National Insurance Act (1911) to Lord Beveridge’s Five Giant Evils (1943) to the founding of the NHS (1948), Thatcher’s sweeping reforms in the 1980s and then New Labour’s Welfare-to-Work  – and we hope these strides are taking us towards a better, fairer and more equal society.

The new Social Security Bill in Scotland is one step in a longer national history towards social justice and a healthier society. Devolution might seem like a complex, tricky business but one can hope the outcome will be transparent and simple to access. For all we know, devolution could irrevocably change the history of social security in Scotland! Ultimately, this new legislation offers big opportunities for big improvement.   According to Social Security Secretary, MSP Angela Constance, “once all the benefits are devolved, we will make more payments each week than the Scottish government currently makes each year.” With the first payments planned to roll out by mid-2018, this ambitious and complex infrastructure could (potentially) improve the desperate circumstances of Scotland’s most vulnerable citizens.

To keep up to date on the latest meetings or voice your opinion, see the Social Security Committee website or Tweet them @SP_SocialSecur 

Opportunities in Oral History Research: Guest Blog with Dr. Jane Judge

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Have you ever asked a friend about “what happened!” on his/her latest date? Or listened to an interview with your favourite actor about their upcoming movie? Or asked your mother how on earth she baked her Yorkshire puddings so golden, puffy and gorgeous, while yours simply collapse in on themselves?

Believe it or not – so long as these events occurred in the past – then you’ve just conducted the impressive method of “oral history,” albeit very informally.

Oral history includes both the process of collecting testimony from living, breathing human beings, as well as the product itself, the narrative of past events.  

And although oral history, as both method and output, is the latest trend among historians, it can’t actually be confined to the study of history alone. Key witness testimonies in high-profile murder cases rely enormously on oral history.  Medical practitioners exploring the effects of new drugs, treatments and therapies rely enormously on oral history. Social workers and psychologists helping survivors of traumatic events often rely on the memories produced through oral history. As oral historian Lynn Abrams argues, “oral history has become a crossover methodology, an octopus with tentacles reaching into a wide range of disciplinary, practise-led and community enterprises” (Oral History Theory, 2010, p.2).

Although oral history is a vastly rewarding and highly deployable tool for nearly any discipline or purpose, it also comes at a cost. Professional scholars must often submit enormous ethics approval applications to their institutions or governments before even approaching a potential human subject for interview. Many aspects of interviewing can be volatile, emotional, and even dangerous (for example,  Dr. Erin Jessee’s fieldwork included gathering testimonies from Rwandans convicted of genocide while they were detained in Rwandan prisons!) And what happens to the interviewee if researchers ask unsettling questions – is there post-interview psychological support for the subjects (or even the interviewer) for example? These calculations of risk are absolutely essential to the ethical responsibility of any oral history project. And, of course, the goal is to cause minimal harm, which is often the general outcome (And for Dr. Jessee’s helpful tips about about managing risk, her advice here).

Despite some risks, oral history remains an invaluable tool.  Findings can influence new policies and initiatives, while researchers can harness its power as a versatile method to record history in action, bolster an organisation or government’s ethos and contribute to an initiative’s influence. In this sense, oral history can be one of the most dynamic instruments in a researcher’s arsenal, and profoundly utilised by multiple interdisciplinary stakeholders.

Dr. Jane Judge, a postdoctoral researcher in early modern history at the KU Leuven in Belgium, recently experienced the exhilarating power of oral history. Although the majority of Jane’s historical research has permitted her into fabulous dusty old libraries and national archives housing original sources with elaborate 18th Century handwriting, Jane has not been required to conduct interviews with real, living humans – until now!

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Dr. Jane Judge in her natural habitat of Leuven, Belgium.

Jane currently volunteers at the Fulbright Commission in Brussels, which is an independent body that, along with the US Embassies to Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as the Belgian and Luxembourg governments, administers the US State Department’s  Fulbright Scholarship Programs for Belgians and Luxembourgers going to the US, as well as Americans coming to these two countries. Since 1948, the Fulbright Commission in Brussels has connected and supported over 4,000 students, researchers, and teachers, while promoting international educational exchange and mutual understanding. 

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The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually.  Approximately 370,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the Program (over 4,000 through the Belgium Commission) since its inception in 1946. For more information, visit www.fulbright.be 

Recently, Jane has been tasked with gathering stories from alumni of the Fulbright Commission in order to record and promote the program’s overall mission for the 70th anniversary celebrations that will take place next year. The idea is to highlight that it is the people that make Fulbright what it is as they engage in immersive experiences abroad and make human connections. This means that she has met over 15 very interesting people–and plans to meet at least 15 or 20 more–who, at some point in their lives, benefited from a Fulbright grant and the program’s international networks, financial support and scholarly community. 

In Jane’s quest to gather data from real human beings, various unanticipated surprises allowed her to discover a few crucial things about oral history, interviewing techniques and the value of human input. After musings over some of her most interesting findings, we both thought it would be highly appropriate to share some of these gems in a guest blog! Here are Jane’s discerning observations about this often-tricky but fruitful research method:

Before you began interviewing, what perceptions did you have about oral history in general? 

Jane: My perception of oral history generally was that it was messy, fraught with ethics issues and required intensive training to do well. As far as the Fulbright project itself, I didn’t have much choice in doing interviews. Because of the many stakeholders in this Fulbright Commission (there are commissions around the world implementing the Fulbright program in their locations), the office here already knew they wanted to focus on alumni and not the nuts and bolts history of the program. So, I didn’t really chose oral history, it chose me. That being said, the archives here are very rich, containing midterm and final reports from every grantee, as well as commentary from the offices here on American grantees that came to Belgium and Luxembourg until the 1980s. The project could have been done by just going through these and piecing together stories, pulling out interesting anecdotes. Given my background, that was much more in my wheelhouse and so I was a little apprehensive about doing interviews, especially with my rather negative preconceived notions about oral history. But I decided to see it as an opportunity rather than a challenge–an opportunity to learn and enact a new methodology, to travel throughout Belgium, and to meet lots of new people in new fields!”

Can you comment about the interview process – who, where, when, how?

Jane: Sure. The who should be fairly obvious at this point—Fulbright alumni! (Haha.) The first thing I did was go through the archive of somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 alumni that past interns have digitized and picked out people who had dynamic profiles, represented diverse backgrounds, fields of study, and programs (undergraduates, graduates, research scholars, teachers, visiting professors, and newer summer programs). To the list that I compiled, we also added some notable alumni and some who had volunteered or been quite active as alums in the past. These included people from walks of life as diverse as being Deputy Prime Minister for Belgium or a Spanish Linguistics teacher. We have been in touch with alumni from every decade of Fulbright’s 70 years so far, so that’s quite exciting.  

As for the interviewing itself, I started with in-person interviews with people here in Belgium. Funnily enough, the first interview was actually an American alumna and her husband who happened to be here on holiday, but the others have all been Belgians that had Fulbrights to the States at one time or another. I go to them, meeting them either at their homes, offices, or a quiet comfortable cafe they know, at a time that’s mutually convenient. I record the audio of our conversations with my phone, so that part’s pretty straightforward, easy, and compact! We set the interviews up by first having either the Executive Director or the Program Director for Students get in touch via email, explaining the anniversary and the project, and then I follow up with an email about logistics. If they are up for being interviewed, I take it from there as far as setting up a time and place. For the Americans and Luxembourgers (and one very busy Belgian), I will and have done the interviews by phone or internet call. The interviews themselves are pretty organic. We want to cover their personal experience, how Fulbright has impacted their lives, and what they think the program can continue to offer. So I start by just asking them to introduce themselves and explain their relationship to the program (how are they “a Fulbrighter”?) and then I really let them go, guiding them if there’s dips or when we need to get back on track.

Were there any challenges in the interview itself that you had not predicted? If yes, how did you overcome them? 

Jane: I wouldn’t say there were challenges in the interview, as such. Everyone’s pretty enthusiastic and already very willing to talk about their experiences. The only things I could think of would be technical. One of the interviews took place over lunch, for example, so I worried that it wouldn’t record clearly in the cafe–this didn’t end up being a problem though, and the recording is crystal clear. I have had some trouble with the recordings of Skype interviews, but that’s, again, technical. With those interviews it’s also harder to have an official start and end of the recorded interview, since people feel like they’re chatting with me and so sometimes they start asking me questions about my experiences!

In your opinion, what was the best thing about interviewing your subjects?

Jane: Oh, by far hearing first-hand stories. I love the narrative that comes out of it. In much of my past work, I’ve had to piece together the story from snippets I’ve found in the archives. Here, I get to ask a question and then sit back and listen to a whole answer.

What would your top tips be to anyone about to conduct an interview?

Jane: Definitely get in touch with a modern historian (if you’re not one yourself), preferably someone who is already a trained oral historian. Check out the wonderful (credible!) resources available online, especially the Oral History Association and the Southern Oral History Program at UNC Chapel Hill. You were my first port of call, Chelsea, as a trained historian who was a member of the OHA, and you came through with aplomb. Definitely the best decision I made before embarking on this research adventure.

Would you ever volunteer to do it again?

Jane: Absolutely. I’ve had a complete blast doing these interviews. Even the transcriptions, though sometimes tedious and always time consuming, are fun. Since these people have fascinating stories to tell about travel, research, and all kinds of different experiences, it’s a pleasure to interview them and even to then relive that through transcription.

Finally, as a historian, what do you think that oral history achieves that archival research cannot? 

Jane: Follow up questions! This is by far my favorite part of oral history to this point. When you’re working in an archive, you can pose pointed questions, go searching through piles of papers people might never have wanted to see the light of day, and uncover secrets unabashedly. However, you cannot ask a single follow-up question or check with your subjects/sources that you are interpreting them correctly. In my own research into 18th-century revolutionaries, this means that there’s never any certainty that the way I interpret how some reacted to a given decree, for example, is the way they actually felt about it. With oral history, I can follow up when someone says or writes something that’s not entirely clear. I can ask them to connect dots and even answer an explicit question, rather than trying to figure out what they were implying later when I’m trying to write my analysis.

So what?

Jane touches on a great many qualities of oral history research that traditional archival research does not possess: listening to the “whole answer” rather than piecing together small fragments of history from a dusty archive, or understanding some of the emotional reactions behind certain people’s experiences, or verifying your own analyses of history by asking follow up questions, or even anticipating and minimising risks when interviewing in a café – these diverse observations demonstrate what we can gain from oral history and the multiple opportunities oral history presents to those wanting to learn from people who experienced the past.

How about a round of applause for Dr. Jane Judge’s perceptive analysis of her oral history experience? Many thanks, Jane!

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Surely Belgium’s world famous frites (or frieten in Flemish) are one of the best reasons for Fulbrighters to study in Belgium?

 

(Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the authors, and does not reflect any official opinion of Fulbright, EdUSA, or the US State Department or other groups or individuals).