Policy World Interview: Hugh Bochel
Below is an interview I conducted with Hugh Bochel, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Lincoln about his book, ‘Welfare Policy Under New Labour: Views from Inside Westminster’ - co-authored with Andrew Defty. The interview appeared originally in Policy World.
Policy World: Hugh, thank you for talking to Policy World about your new book ‘Welfare Policy Under New Labour’. The book itself is based on extensive interviews with MPs and Peers and offers us a fascinating picture not only of the role that Parliament plays in the making of social policy but also documents the views of Parliamentarians themselves about welfare policy and, indeed, the welfare state. Before we talk about some of the detail of the book, could you begin by telling us a little about the history of the project? Some of your earlier work explored the role of Parliament in welfare policy and the new book clearly builds on this.
Hugh Bochel: I was very lucky to have done some work on parliament with Peter Taylor-Gooby in the mid-1980s, effectively at the height of Thatcherism, when we interviewed nearly one hundred MPs. Unsurprisingly, at that time there were major differences between Labour MPs, who generally tended to favour high levels of state spending on welfare and (fairly) redistributive policies, and Conservative MPs who wanted much more minimal, safety net provision, and tax cuts (with consequent reductions in public expenditure). It has always been in my mind that it would be good to be able to repeat that piece of work again, partly because of the changing debates about welfare, but also because I think that until relatively recently the ‘policy’ side of social policy had perhaps had a relatively low profile.
Policy World: So the new book, in effect, represents the picture 20 years on from the earlier study: you asked many of the same sorts of questions in order to both document the views of Parliamentarians on welfare policy now and to compare them with the views of a previous generation of Parliamentarians?
Hugh Bochel: Yes, we wanted to try and make some comparisons between the position at what was a very similar stage of the Blair governments with that of the Thatcher period. And, where general beliefs and attitudes are concerned we were able to do that. Compared with the 1980s Labour MPs had clearly moved towards the centre, driven at least in part by a perception that the public were unlikely to support tax increases to pay for welfare and for many of them this was reinforced by the election defeats of 1979 to 1992. The same was true of Conservatives, who had moved towards the centre, believing that the public would not support tax cuts, again reinforced by consecutive election defeats. It was interesting in some respects, that pre-Cameron, we were picking up some indicators from Conservative MPs that there existed a more liberal, socially-responsible leaning - saying things like ‘There is such a thing as society’ – and this was even among some of the party’s frontbenchers, but given the more right-wing leaning of the party, some of those people felt that they were the only ones; they did not talk to their colleagues about these things. It was only when we looked at the responses to a number of interviews that we became aware of it, and that was probably before the Conservatives themselves did!
Policy World: It is interesting that you say that: I am not sure why, perhaps because the focus of debate tends so often to be on the government, but I wasn’t expecting the story of the Conservative Party to feature so strongly in the book. In the end, the story of its journey seems as important as Labour’s to me, because you seem to be suggesting that both Labour and Conservative MPs have shifted towards the centre somewhat: you even suggest that a new welfare consensus may be emerging. That is quite a bold claim and one that many of the MPs you spoke to seemed uncomfortable with too!
Hugh Bochel: Well, the book is about Parliament, rather than the government, and there are arguments for and against concentrating on one or the other of those, but yes, the Conservatives in Parliament have certainly shifted substantially too. I think that the reasons for the movements of MPs and parties are interesting - there is not one simple explanation, so it is a combination of ‘lessons’ from elections (especially defeats), perceptions of what the public want and will accept, turnover of MPs, and so on. We have tried to be a bit careful about a new consensus, although other people have certainly used the term to describe what is happening in terms of policies and approaches, and many of the pressures may be the same as those observed in Parliament. There is, among many MPs, certainly a relative commonality of views that there is no real public appetite at present for tax cuts or for tax increases, and that in itself limits policy options significantly. There is also considerable agreement among MPs of all parties that the state needs to play an active role in helping people who are in need, particularly to help people out of poverty and to some extent into work. But it is a limited consensus: there are many Labour MPs who continue to favour a redistributive approach to welfare with a significant role for the state; there are also many Conservatives who favour tax cuts and a smaller state; and there are also similar divisions within the Liberal Democrats on these topics. If there is a consensus it may therefore be about what the role of the state can or should be at present, rather than about long-term ideals and deeply held values. There is also, as you say, a general consensus among MPs that there is not a new consensus on welfare!
Policy World: The divisions you found within the parties were very interesting: for one of your questions about who should be responsible for providing welfare, the Conservatives were equally divided three ways between favouring the private sector, public-private partnership and a more general mixed economy of welfare! Am I right in thinking you found that while there seems to be more consensus between parties than in the 1980s, the parties themselves are actually more divided internally than during the Thatcher era?
Hugh Bochel: Yes, that is more or less the case, perhaps reflecting the pressures that the parties have been under since the 1980s. The number of rebellions against the government since 2001 has been one symptom of this, although we found even Labour loyalists, for example, disagreeing on the direction of government policy, so that it is too simplistic to try and draw a clear line between ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Labour MPs, or to portray rebels as ‘the usual suspects’ on social policies. Similarly, while the majority of Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs are content to follow their Leader’s positions for now, should they enter government, it would appear that there is also the potential for their internal divisions to emerge on welfare issues.
The changes to the House of Lords appear to some extent to have encouraged MPs to rebel, since with no party now having a majority there, MPs know that they can knock bills back and forth between the two Houses, and there was some evidence of attempts to coordinate opposition on some legislation. Again, this may well set precedents that future governments may have to deal with.
Policy World: The role of rebels and rebellions has had quite a lot of attention recently, partly because of Phil Cowley’s book ‘The Rebels’. Cowley is quite forthright in his criticism of simple views that Parliament has become subservient to strong party leaders, pointing to the increasing frequency of rebellions under New Labour. As well as exploring MP’s policy values, you also asked them to reflect on their means of influence. Voting against the government certainly featured, but less formal means of influence often seemed to matter more to MPs.
Hugh Bochel: Absolutely - MPs made the same point back in the 1980s, that they use all sorts of means to influence government - and governments frequently do not even raise the possibility of legislation if they feel that they may not get it through parliament. Rebellions normally take place when other attempts have failed. However, for academics that is very frustrating. We can identify a range of mechanisms that MPs can and do use, but it is almost impossible to say how much these get used or what their impact is. And this is, of course, further confused by the other influences - the media, pressure groups, public opinion, and so on. We need to try and come up with means of taking our analyses a stage further so that we can start to get to grips with these problems.
Policy World: MPs from all parties seemed to be very positive about the role of select committees. People often don’t realise that these committees were only established as recently as 1979. Select committees would have been in their infancy when you conducted the mid-1980s. Would it be right to describe them as a success story or are their merits exaggerated somewhat? I know that some of the MPs you spoke to felt there were still considerable weaknesses in the system.
Hugh Bochel: The Departmental select committees were introduced in 1979 and in many respects they have had a very good record of scrutinising the work of government - they have produced some excellent reports based upon good quality evidence. The change to make Chairs of the committees to some extent a career path - as opposed to moving into ministerial office - has probably also been a helpful reform, although overall the turnover of members means that it is difficult for MPs to develop real specialist knowledge of the areas of work of the committees.
However, there remain some problems with them. Even though more of their reports are now debated - including in Westminster Hall - there is no requirement for this. Also, to have any impact, their reports really have to be unanimous, which some people have argued encourages them to choose topics upon which they are more likely to agree, so some of the more contentious policy areas may not be examined. And, when government is apparently trying to be more joined-up, it can be hard for departmentally based committees to scrutinise such activities.
Policy World: MPs are, of course, representatives of the people. You also explored the extent to which changes in MP’s views have matched changes in public opinion. There were no easy answers here: you did find some evidence that there had been a ‘hardening’ of public attitudes on welfare to accompany the shift of MPs to the centre, but express caution about interpreting the data here.
Hugh Bochel: Well, we did not, of course, do a survey of public opinion, but there is some evidence of a hardening in the work that others have done (but no clear agreement on this). In some ways this uncertainty feeds into MPs views, both because of their representative role and their wish to get (re)elected. There is also some concern among MPs that the attempted solutions of the past have failed - so some Labour MPs believe that universal benefits, for example, did not remove poverty or reduce inequality, and have therefore shifted to favour selective or targeted benefits; similarly, some Conservatives feel that the individualism and market mechanisms of the 1980s and 1990s failed to achieve what they wished, and have consequently come to support some greater role for the state. Having done the research in the 1980s it was at times slightly surreal having Labour MPs called for selectivity and Conservatives for universal provision, although the particular contexts in which they were doing so obviously need to be taken into account. Also, our system obviously means that we elect MPs to be representatives, rather than delegates, and it would be unrealistic to expect them to reflect public opinion on everything. And if we, the public, want more spending on public services, but want to pay the same or less in taxation, we are making politician’s jobs difficult!
Policy World: Finally, I wonder if I could ask you to speculate a little on what your findings might imply about the future social policy in the UK. We have talked already about a possible new cross-party consensus on welfare that is emerging. As you said earlier, this is a limited consensus and, in many ways, a fragile one. However, I was interested in some of the analysis you undertook that compared the views of well established MPs with those of recently elected MPs. If I understood this correctly, for all the parties the values of the latter group appeared to be less sympathetic towards the traditional welfare state than the former. Only one of the Labour MPs elected after 1997 that you spoke to was in favour of a return to universalism and many of the recently elected Conservative MPs had a clear Thatcherite edge. Do you think we will see this tentative new welfare consensus harden as this new generation of MPs starts to replace the older generation - or should we avoid reading too much into this?
Hugh Bochel: I think that this is a difficult area to try and predict, but you are correct in identifying the apparent position - that the more recent cohorts of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs are perhaps more favourable to an active rather than a universal welfare state, whilst the Conservatives do appear to be more favourable to a basic safety-net role for the state. However, the numbers are rather small here and so this should be perhaps seen as indicative. It might not be too surprising if more recently elected MPs tended to reflect ‘traditional’ party positions - after all, for the most part they are still selected by ordinary party members - and it may be that with time in Westminster their views will change somewhat. However, this is an area about which we know relatively little, so this is largely speculation. Where any ‘consensus’ is concerned, there are also likely to be many other influences, and the views of MPs can only ever be one part of this.
