‘The Pragmatist’s Solution to Poverty’: The Heath Government’s Tax Credit Scheme and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1970s

Sloman, Peter

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwv042

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…24 Rather than statutorily abolishing it, a better strategy was felt to be to 'allow it to wither away'25 through the introduction of the Conservative's Tax Credit proposal. Had it been introduced, it would have replaced the personal tax allowance and alleviated the 'poverty trap' (Sloman, 2016). This suggested approach can be read as continuing what had been happening since the 1960s when the NJCLA was used to calculate levels at which assistance was wage-stopped and other benefits were introduced that either supported only low paid workers (family income supplement) or poor people generally, including those in wage-labour (domestic rate and rent rebates).26…”

Section: The Administrative Burden Of the Wage-stopmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Grover

2024

Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

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Before the introduction of the household benefit cap in the UK in 2013 the previous mechanism there limited the income of social assistance recipients was the wage stop, operating for four decades between 1935 and 1975. Similar to the benefit cap, the wage stop reflected and reproduced concerns with incentivising unemployed people to labour. This raises questions about why the wage stop was abolished in the mid-1970s when worries about unemployment continued, particularly its intersections with out-of-work benefits. It is widely argued that the abolition of the wage stop was a consequence of lobbying by the Child Poverty Action Group. Drawing upon records held at the UK’s National Archives, this article argues that this is an over-simplified explanation that, first, ignores concerns with the wage stop that pre-dated the Child Poverty Action Group’s criticism of it, including concerns within the assistance boards with its administration. And, second, while by the mid-1970s there was (albeit ambiguous) concern with the impacts of the wage stop, there was a shift in approach that emphasised the supplementation of low wages with social security benefits, rather than forcing social assistance below the assessed needs of households, as being a preferable means of ensuring the incentive to take wage-labour.

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Section: The Administrative Burden Of the Wage-stopmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Grover

2024

Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

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“…Such plans to streamline welfare and the tax system were popular within the Conservative Party, which would allow them to reduce administrative costs by abolishing the PAYE method of taxation in favour of the flat rate. However, Cockfield’s plans were unable to command the bipartisan support needed to be introduced, and were later abandoned by the subsequent Labour government (Sloman, 2016).…”

Section: A ‘Trojan Horse’?mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Left will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’: The dialectics of universal basic income

Hogg

2022

Critical Social Policy

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Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in basic income proposals. While this is not an entirely new phenomenon, what is different about the current discourse is the Left’s wholehearted embrace of what has traditionally been seen as a conservative social policy in Britain. It is my contention that UBI is potentially a dangerous policy for the Left, in that it risks undermining the – admittedly imperfect – welfare protections already in existence. This paper draws on Marxist political economy in order to demonstrate how the emancipatory potential of UBI has been somewhat overstated by some of its Leftist supporters, while a discussion of the neutrality of the State is important in considering how this ‘shape-shifting social policy' is likely to be implemented in practice.

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“…The Inland Revenue embraced this proposal because it was coming under pressure from ministers to reduce administrative costs: tax credits would make it possible to abandon the complex coding work associated with PAYE in favour of a flat-rate deduction from pay for most workers. The Treasury minister Patrick Jenkin was ‘enormously impressed’ by the scheme's ingenuity, and Joseph saw ‘very great attractions from the social security point of view’ in reducing dependence on means-testing (Sloman, 2016b).…”

Section: The Third Wave: the Rediscovery Of Poverty And The Heath Govmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By the time Labour returned to office in 1974, the fiscal outlook had deteriorated and Treasury officials warned that even a scaled-back version would pose ‘a very significant budgetary problem’. Denis Healey duly scrapped the scheme, retaining only the child credit proposals – now paid in cash to the main carer – under the title of Child Benefit (Sloman, 2016b).…”

Section: The Third Wave: the Rediscovery Of Poverty And The Heath Govmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universal Basic Income in British Politics, 1918–2018: From a ‘Vagabond's Wage’ to a Global Debate

Sloman

2017

J. Soc. Pol.

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The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has moved rapidly up the British political agenda in recent years, with support from the Green Party, the Royal Society of Arts, and left-wing writers such as Paul Mason. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has set up a working group to examine its implications, and four Scottish councils are hoping to launch pilot schemes. Contemporary British interest in UBI forms part of a lively global debate about automation, inequality and precarious labour, but it also draws on a long history of proposals for tax-benefit reform within UK social policy. This article identifies five waves of enthusiasm for basic income in Britain over the past century and highlights patterns of continuity and change. It shows that interest in the proposal has been greatest at times of pessimism about the future of the labour market, though concerns about the ethics and affordability of unconditional payments have always been difficult to shake. Advocates of UBI have also struggled to reconcile the technocratic approach of its Conservative and Liberal supporters with the transformative ambitions of the radical left. It remains to be seen whether the recent growth of left-wing support for UBI will improve its prospects of implementation.

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‘The Pragmatist’s Solution to Poverty’: The Heath Government’s Tax Credit Scheme and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1970s

Abstract: The 'rediscovery of poverty' in mid-1960s prompted a wide-ranging debate over how the British government could best support low-paid workers and their families.

Cited by 12 publications

References 6 publications

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

‘The Left will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’: The dialectics of universal basic income

Universal Basic Income in British Politics, 1918–2018: From a ‘Vagabond's Wage’ to a Global Debate

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