Faith in Britain

An approach which upholds social justice must be based on responsible economics. We must reclaim our responsibility for addressing poverty and unemployment. The polarities of market place economics and those which place the State at their heart are both wrong. The community is a better starting point.

Such an approach would therefore mean welcoming the Social Charter, investing more in work and training, encouraging the wider implementation of profit sharing and involvement of employees in their companies, and a renunciation of the old lie that the only purpose of economics is to produce more. The emphasis should surely switch from maximisation - often a synonym for injustice and selfishness - to sharing; and from naked materialism to qualitative enrichment of each person's life.

Our perception of money must also change. In Chapter 9 I will be looking at the issue of debt in more detail, but it is worth saying here also that it is not money which is at the heart of all evil, but our love of it. In other words, we should see money in much the same way as we see water, air, or the countryside: as something which is there to enhance the quality of everyone's lives, not just a few.

Encouragement of Credit Unions, restructuring of the housing market and mortgages, and restrictions on the use of interest, would all help tame the excesses which unlimited exploitation of money can produce. I have no desire to see a return to welfarism and agree with Frank Field's conclusion in Inequality in Britain5 that 'Today the traditional welfare state not only fails to combat poverty but all too often operates as a ceiling, making it impossible for the poor to escape from their poverty.'

With our emphasis changed to a personalist and community approach we would no longer be preoccupied at Budget time with obsessions about by how much we might expect standard rates of income tax to be cut. We might instead wish to reflect specific concerns - for instance, the need to give more incentives to the low income groups and those in the 'black' economy to come into the tax system - by cutting the standard rate of the lowest wage earners. A system of tax credits to replace a whole host of benefits might also help reduce dependence, enhance personal status, and more effectively target help to those who most need it. It would certainly be easier to adopt the current populist Labour Party approach of promising uncosted across-the-board concessions, such as free TV licences for all pensioners, but it would stretch belief. It is simply not credible to argue for a fairer Britain and then introduce a proposal that would give every hereditary peer over the age of sixty-five a free TV licence, as well as those who really do need help - it will be a decision made at the expense of the genuinely poor.

If we take a rifle shot rather than scattergun approach to politics we might well wish to simultaneously cut and raise certain taxes. For instance, we might wish to weight taxes to ensure that parents who remain at home with their children are no worse off than the parents who return to work. Maybe taxes should also be