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Religion and the rise of socialism: the ethical origins

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Religion and the rise of socialism: the ethical origins of the Labour Party

John Smith Memorial Lecture

Rt. Hon. Lord Hattersley of Sparkbrook Held on 12 July 2004

Published by the Smith Institute ISBN 1 902488 81 4 © The Smith Institute 2005 THE SMITH INSTITUTE

Contents

Introduction Lord Haskel of Higher Broughton, Chairman of Trustees, the Smith Institute 3

Religion and the rise of socialism: the ethical origins of the Labour Party Rt. Hon. Lord Hattersley of Sparkbrook 5

Vote of thanks Wilf Stevenson, Director of the Smith Institute 23

Biography of Rt. Hon. John Smith QC MP 26

Recent publications 30

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Introduction Lord Haskel of Higher Broughton, Chairman of Trustees, the Smith Institute

Lord Hattersley was an MP for over 30 years and served in a wide range of departments, both in government and in opposition. He was also deputy leader of the Labour Party for 10 years from 1983 and throughout this time was a close friend and colleague of John Smith in the House of Commons, and he worked closely with him during John’s career. They worked particularly closely when Roy was during John’s period as shadow Chancellor, from 1987 to 1992.

I gather that we are very lucky to catch Roy. He is between two festivals. Yesterday he was at the Buxton Festival and tomorrow he is to be guest of honour at the Dartington Festival, where I understand that over 600 people have paid to hear him speak. Now, when I heard this I did wonder whether we should have in fact booked the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre and charged for seats. But we had already accepted the kind offer of the Chancellor to hold the event in these splendid rooms, and of course it is right that we should be here at the very centre of government.

Now, Roy is going to speak about religion and the rise of socialism – the ethical origins of the Labour Party; and I was wondering how to introduce this, but then yesterday I read the exchange of views that he had with the Archbishop of Canterbury in yesterday’s Observer. Roy, you seemed astonished by the Archbishop’s view that politicians are answerable to God as well as to the electorate. In spite of what you refer to as your atheist ignorance, you seemed concerned about the implications of this doctrine, so perhaps we will learn why – and a lot more – from your lecture this evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Roy Hattersley.

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Religion and the rise of socialism: the ethical origins of the Labour Party Rt. Hon. Lord Hattersley of Sparkbrook

Simon, Elizabeth, all Smiths, great and small: there are few more unrewarding political pastimes than speculation about what might have been. And inventing what lost leaders might have said or done about events which follow their deaths – especially when their invented opinions are used as sticks with which to beat their successors – is a disreputable business. So, in these contentious days, I confine myself to saying only two things about John Smith. The first is beyond dispute and has been confirmed by every psephologist who has examined the 1997 election: had he lived, John would certainly have led Labour to victory.

I make my second assertion with as much confidence as my first. John would have become a great Prime Minister who steered a steady course which was always guided by the principles of . John Smith was a moderniser – but a Labour moderniser, and we all must remember that he was the man who fought the first battle, and won the battle: the battle for one member and one vote.

John the good friend I find it hard not to think of John first as a friend and then as Labour leader. When I was invited to give this lecture, I remembered some of the debts I owe him. When Mr “Tiny” Rowland sued me for libel, he nominated Robert Maxwell as his peace negotiator. I nominated John. Maxwell retired hurt on Rowland’s behalf after two days.

At the beginning of the 1983 leadership election, John announced, without consulting me, that I would gladly serve as ’s deputy – this was a stratagem to demonstrate my ecumenicism. I rather feebly reminded him that one of our friends – unlike me – actually wanted the job. John replied, “Give me five minutes with him.” The mutual friend withdrew. When, during the campaign, I had a private row with – which swiftly became public in terms which were not to my advantage – John toured the television and radio studios explaining that the headlines were all a fuss about nothing.

Then, on the day before the votes were cast, the one major union which had balloted its members and had been mandated to vote for me approached me with a request. Historically, they were always on the winning side: they supported Attlee against Morrison, Gaitskell against Bevan; would I release them from their obligation so they

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could be on the winning side again? Feebly, I was prepared to agree. “Let me talk to them,” said John. They voted for me. But I think he owed me that favour, because had it not been for him I am not sure that I would have even contested the leadership.

Our mutual friend, Lady Goudie, brought me a message: “John Smith says he will vote for you whether anyone else does or not.” In fact virtually nobody else did. But at least, with John in mind, I became one of those leadership contenders – Jim Callaghan in 1963 and Tony Crosland in 1976 – who insist that our votes should be judged on quality, not quantity, and I think of this lecture as a chance to pay tribute to him.

Now, Simon, the modern Labour Party – like the Nile in flood – can trace its origins back to many tributaries. And, as with the Nile, there have been long and bitter arguments about its true source. Tonight I do not propose to play the part of John Hanning Speke and insist that one theory of where it all began is superior to another. Clearly the idea of social democracy – as distinct from the institution called the Labour Party – predates, by many years, the first Independent in Bradford in 1893 and the meeting of the Trade Union Representation Committee in 1900. I claim no more than that Christian socialism – at its most significant in the decade before the First World War – added to the flow of progressive thought in one important particular. It concentrated radical opinion on the morality of markets – an issue which the modern Labour Party would do well to ponder.

Christianity and socialism Before I examine the ideas of a galaxy of distinguished churchmen – Charles Gore, Henry Scott Holland and William Temple – I ought to make clear that I am a member of the atheist tendency within Christian socialism. Some of you may think that it is unreasonable for me to even claim an affinity with an idea that I do not altogether share. But my views are no more alien to the nest in which, cuckoo-like, militants perched 10 years ago – or, for that matter, no more alien than the philosophies of some more modern infiltrators, whom I do not propose to nominate this evening.

I aspire to share the Christian socialists’ ethical position. But I cannot accept the miracles and mysteries which were the bedrock of their moral view. It is worth mentioning – if only in passing – that Christian socialism often marched hand in hand with “modernist” Christianity, which sought, in Scott Holland’s words, “to remove unacceptable dogma in order to strengthen the faith of a scientifically minded generation”. Christian socialism was in the forefront of the battle for making both theology and ideology simultaneously

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responsive to the characteristics of the time but also true to the deepest convictions of a basic principle. That is a combination of obligations which I think should inspire the Labour Party: the basic principles made acceptable to the circumstances of the time. Today I want to examine whether it has achieved that objective in its attitude towards one particular issue. My concern is the ethics of the market economy.

What I shall call the conventional view of the established church on that subject was set out almost 100 years ago by Bishop Hensley Henson in a lecture entitled “Christian Morality”. Christian morality was a condition which he insisted was entirely personal and could not be applied to collective or social life. Christians, he argued, must live exemplary lives. But they must not imagine that the same rule could be – could be, not should be but could be – applied to the market economy, which was essentially amoral. The principles set out in the Sermon on the Mount were not appropriate to so impersonal an institution. Hayek, 80 years later, said almost exactly the same thing. I quote:

It has, of course, to be admitted, that the manner in which the benefits and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would, in many instances, have to be regarded as very unjust if it were the result of deliberate allocation to particular people … but to demand justice from such a process is clearly absurd.

Bishops Gore, Holland and Temple did not agree. First and foremost they held the view – incontrovertibly, in my opinion – that rational adults must take responsibility for the anticipated consequences of their actions. Devotees of free enterprise cannot argue, with any moral conviction, that their object is a system which is more efficient for the economy as a whole but that the inevitable consequences – poverty for some, excess riches for others – are unintended byproducts for which they should be held not to account.

The Christian socialist recognised that markets unavoidably widened the gap between rich and poor. Most of them were egalitarians. But that is a subject for another lecture on another day. The Christian socialists, about whom I want to talk this evening, argued that markets are inherently corrupting in that they depend on competition which – far from being invariably mutually beneficial – certainly encourages, and probably requires, one individual to take advantage of another.

They might have added – though they did not – that markets only operate when some rules of conduct are observed. Competition in a free economy requires the acceptance of contractual obligations, respect for the truth, and restraint when the creation of a monopoly

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might benefit a single trader but would destroy the market itself. Markets are necessarily, if they are to survive, governed by ethical considerations. The argument is about which rules socialists ought to choose.

The question of motivation The Christian socialists were clearly motivated by altruism as much as by the view that the Bible provided textual evidence to confirm that the free enterprise system – at least when left unrestrained – was contrary to the will of God. Even TH Green, one of the few philosophers that British socialism can claim as its own, advanced his more intellectually rigorous views against a background of compassion. The so-called freedom of contract – an essential element in the market’s operation – was, he insisted, not so much intolerable as impossible in a society characterised by disparities of wealth. Mr Gladstone’s Land Act – his second Land Act, in fact – was, Green argued, right to allow the government to intervene in the relationship between landless peasants and their absentee landlords. There can never be a truly free bargain between the powerful and the weak.

In fact Adam Smith said more or less the same thing about the relationship between masters and men. During a dispute, he said, employers live on their capital; employees starve. But that is a part of the Adam Smith philosophy which is usually ignored by the .

The ethical/Christian socialist view on markets contributed, as a result of these origins, to the strange process which, 100 years ago, made Labour become (or appear to become) the public ownership party. The obvious and natural alternative to free enterprise seemed to be the state provision of goods and services. The Christian socialists represented what Tony Crosland called “the aspiration towards a more fraternal and co-operative society” achieved by “substituting for unrestrained competition and the motive of personal profit some more social organisation and set of motives – co-operative undertakings or social ownership”. Crosland described all the influences which contributed to that hope for the future.

The contribution of competition and the profit motive [he wrote] was equally offensive to Robert Owen (because it militated against human happiness), the Christian socialists (because it ran counter to the Christian ethic), Ruskin and Morris (because it bred ugliness and commercialism and debased the quality of labour), and the ILP, because it denied the brotherhood of man.

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He might have added that there were one or two Marxists who had a strong view about the exploitation of what they called “surplus value”. But Tony Crosland was inclined to treat Marxists (as he treated most things with which he disagreed) as a joke. He preferred to cite RH Tawney – according to him, “the magisterial authority on these matters” – as proof that an opposition to markets, and the profit motive which guides them, was the bedrock on which the Labour Party had been built.

Labour and free enterprise Now we often forget how total Labour’s opposition to free enterprise once was. By the 1960s, few men and women of influence really believed in Part 4 Clause IV of the 1918 constitution – though the idea had a brief second coming in the early 1980s. But between the wars men and women who became part of that essentially moderate Attlee administration believed literally and absolutely in the “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The only argument between moderates and extremists was how quickly that ideal situation could be brought about.

The author of the 1918 constitution – Sidney Webb, a Fabian gradualist, who was often excoriated for wanting to work through the Liberal Party rather than against it – wrote an article for The Observer, which many people do when they think they have been misunderstood, which made absolutely plain that although his prescription allowed a Labour government to choose “whatever form of common ownership … and whatever form of popular administration and control of industry may in any particular case command itself, the free market”, he said, was “anathema to socialists”.

In The Acquisitive Society, published in 1921, Tawney argues for industry to be organised on the basis of what he called “professional standards”, with captains of industry seeking moral esteem rather than profit. I think we can rightly identify that as the high-water mark of ethical socialism – as well as the apogee of optimistic idealism. Ten years later, in his more satirical mood, Tawney wrote that if the establishment really believed in the free enterprise system, the government of 1914 would have divided the defence budget between individual members of the British Expeditionary Force and told each member to privately organise and compete his way through France and Flanders. I quote that flight of fancy with some trepidation. I do not want to put ideas into this government’s mind.

Tawney, it must be admitted, was prone to sudden fits of rhetorical excess. His more sober judgment, published in 1949 under the title The Christian Demand for Social Justice, is the basis of much of the prescriptive part of this lecture. I take my text exactly from that

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essay. Writing about public enterprise, he insisted this:

Whether in any particular it is desirable or not is a question to be decided in the light, not of resounding affirmations of the virtues of free enterprise or of socialisation, but on the facts of the case.

To me, that pragmatic judgment seems self-evidently sensible. For much of my life in the Labour Party, which now goes back for more than 50 years, I was told that Tawney’s empiricism was unacceptable because it did not acknowledge the innate superiority of public enterprise. Now, I find that some ministers, some ministers – exhibiting their philosophy in deeds rather than in words – reject the Tawney formula because of their clear obvious conviction that private enterprise contains inherent advantages which public enterprise lacks. I stubbornly persist in my belief in the mixed economy, and I propose this afternoon to speculate about how the boundaries between the two sectors should be divided. Certainly the old definition, accepted for so long by both parties, no longer applies.

The role of the market Fifty years ago, everyone of influence believed that the public utilities should be state owned. Now virtually nobody does. Thirty years ago, the idea of introducing the market into higher education, or allowing private companies to run state schools, or creating competition between health service hospitals, was regarded as the preserve of cranks. Now it is official Labour Party policy. Nobody in their right mind wants public ownership to be reinstated as an article of faith – either something that we genuinely believe or, as was more often the case in recent years, something about which we feel we have to counterfeit support. I remain of the view which I set out in a book 25 years ago and which was, at the time, regarded as right-wing heresy: “A substantial market sector is essential both for the promotion of efficiency and the maintenance of a free society.”

However, the examples of that lead us to a very complicated conclusion. The need for a private sector was made very clear by Professor Alec Nove: describing the penalties of replacing markets by some other sort of resource allocation, he directed his criticisms towards the Soviet system. “The economic mechanism fails to respond to user require- ments and generates far too much unintended and not unavoidable waste,” he said. He went on, quite rightly, to insist that in the Soviet monolithic, centralised economic regime the centralisation of economic power was always replicated by centralisation of political power, and politicians who were just as unresponsive to the wishes of the people as was

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the manufacturing and distribution process. Commissars, whom we now think of as a political police force, were initially charged with the task of regulating output and determining prices. Professor Nove, let it be noted, was discussing the economics of feasible socialism. Still, the expression of such opinion was once regarded as evidence of extreme reactionary views. Not, I think, now.

Because I did not regard public ownership as the best way to manage manufacturing industry, I was a dissenting voice in the Cabinet’s decision to nationalise shipbuilding and aerospace. But to make judgments about where public enterprise is appropriate is not, I fear – I fear I am quoting from myself again – “to invest markets with the moral significance and supernatural power which the messianic wing of the neoliberal movement proclaims they possess”. That I wrote 25 years ago; no longer just the neo- liberals hold that view about markets.

Of course, I accept that 25 years is a long time, and since I wrote those words the global economy and the revolution in information technology which supports it have changed – or should have changed – our perception of economic management. Controls which governments could have exerted in 1980 cannot be applied today, and I certainly do not want to give the impression that I regret the arrival of the global economy. For one thing, to do so would be as foolish as regretting the snow in winter. For another, the global economy offers the prospect of the economic growth which is essential for the realisation of the aims which social democrats share.

Revival of capitalism But the change which the global economy has brought about has made it all the more necessary to define where the boundaries between public and private enterprise lie. And the task is made more urgent by the way in which, over the last half-century, – at least progress as normally defined by social democrats – has, in some ways, not only been halted, it has been reversed. ’s “socialist ratchet” was, I regret to say, a myth. The clock has been turned back. If you doubt it, listen to this – Tony Crosland writing 50 years ago:

The characteristic features of capitalism have all disappeared – the absolute rule of private property, the subject of all life to market influences, the domination of the profit motive, the neutrality of government, typical laissez-faire division of income, the ideology of individual rights and the view that the trade unions are in some way a maligned force in our society. All those views [said Tony Crosland 50 years ago] have disappeared.

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It would be a very rash member of this audience who would make that claim today. That is because capitalism, as Crosland never tired of reminding us, is a hardy plant. Far from containing the seeds of its own destruction, it possesses the ability to withstand both unfriendly environments and severe pruning. And once planted, it spreads. If we need evidence of that, we have only to direct our attention to the Departments of Health and Education & Skills. Both have found it expedient to take advantage of private – that means market driven – assistance. Having done so, they now conclude that it will be difficult – perhaps even impossible – to fulfil the programmes of improved and extended services unless they subscribe to the basic principle of the free market system, a deregulated labour market. By embracing the market, both departments have become dependent on a two-tier labour force. The market is the leylandia in the economic forest. Once it takes roots, it spreads irresistibly unless positive action is taken to hold it back.

Now, an examination of both the propriety and the efficiency of a two-tier labour force must await my attempt to define where the boundaries between the two sectors – one driven by the market (that is to say demand) and the other driven by social policy (that is to say need) – should be drawn. Everyone agrees that it must be drawn somewhere. Michael Novak, a leading philosopher of the New Right, has reservations about the notion of the common good. He says, “the common good is undesirable because the implication of the phrase is generally intended to have as its operative meaning, redistribution”. Even though he holds that view, he is explicit about the need to draw a boundary between the public and the private sectors. He says this:

Markets have limits. They are not an all-purpose tool. They do not accomplish all the necessary social tasks … Markets are not a law unto themselves, but operate under both moral and civil law. Thus, for example, there are many things which should never be bought or sold: the truth, public office, objects consecrated to divine use, the human body.

Learning from extreme example The last exclusion – the market in body parts – is not acceptable to all Novak’s neoliberal colleagues. Richard Titmus in The Gift Relationship wrote of the potential market for eyes and then described (in intentionally contentious terms) the dilemma which (if it is possible to hypothesise) they would create for health service eye banks.

One such bank, the South Eastern Regional Eye Bank, had 448 eyes donated in 1965 – a number which has since then been steadily rising. Because the supply of donated eyes is much less in other countries without a national health service than it is in Britain, 73 of

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the 448 corneas were exported (as free gifts) to India, Jamaica, South Africa, Singapore, Turkey, Hong Kong and other countries. Should human eyes, bequeathed by donors or given by relatives to unknown strangers, be treated as consumption goods and sold to the highest bidder? These statistics are not just theoretical questions, as the United States and other countries have shown in recent years in the expanding area of organ transplantation.

Yet, indeed, the neoliberals are explicit on the subject.

Since society is willing to pay people to put their lives and health at risk in hazardous occupations, it is difficult to see why it should be thought objectionable to risk impairment by the sale of tissue … Justice Candozo said that each had property rights over his own body, but a conspiracy of physicians had greatly reduced the value of those rights … Decision making by doctors therefore means that the aggregate utility of body parts is less than it would be were it maximised.

I am not insensitive to the internal logic of the argument which surrounds that contention. Take, for example, a starving Bengali in Dacca with absolutely no income or capital. If he discovers that his daughter suffers from a potentially fatal (but nevertheless curable) disease which he cannot afford to have treated, would it be wrong of him to sell one of his kidneys to a rich western European with renal failure and use the money to save his daughter’s life? It might be argued – indeed, I might argue myself – that such a sacrifice would be simultaneously altruistic and heroic. Yet Titmus would insist – rightly, in my opinion – that to do so would be to act against “the general good”. He explains why markets are intolerable in some areas – whatever the basis of the sale, whatever the purpose of the sale – in his basic subject of the study of blood transfusion.

The commercialisation of the blood and donor relationship represses the expression of altruism, erodes the sense of community and lowers scientific standards. It limits both personal and professional freedom, sanctions the making of profits in hospitals and clinical laboratories, legalises hostility between doctors and patients, subjects critical areas of medicine to the laws of the marketplace, puts immense social cost on those least able to bear them.

That is Titmus setting out – in stark language – the hard facts about the market relationships which characterise other transactions than the buying and selling of blood. The market works – not as automatically and beneficially as its advocates pretend, but well enough –

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because of the rules which govern its existence. Participants seek to maximise their own advantage. Sometimes they take the long view of that objective, and therefore forgo short-term benefit in the hope of long-term gain. But, as its other name makes clear, it is essentially a competitive rather than a co-operative enterprise. The ethos of private enterprise is embodied in the statutory obligation placed on company directors, the legal duty to maximise the return on their shares.

I repeat that in some areas – some areas of economic activity – that is certainly necessary and probably beneficial to the nation as a whole. But it is entirely inappropriate in the provision of public services. The market creates losers as well as winners. Sometimes it will provide the undoubted benefit of a reduction in marginal cost. But one crucial fact remains: the commercial relationship is incompatible with a provision of those things which are most important to the individual. It requires the providers – teachers, nurses, doctors – to work according to rules which are the antithesis of the public services ethic and ideal.

Protecting the market This foundation is built on the conviction – personified by John Smith – that economic realism and social responsibility can go hand in hand. The first part of that equation, in my view, obliges us to defend and extend markets in their proper sphere. That demands that we do more than avoid the temptation to impose unnecessary controls, or make extensions to the public sector which are no more than brief expedients. It obliges us to create the institutional framework in which – for the appropriate industries – markets and competition flourish.

It is my view, for what it is worth, that government competition policy is far too weak – particularly in so far as it affects media expansion and acquisitions, which raise fundamental questions about power as well as efficiency. A couple of years ago there was much talk about dealing with monopsony, the process by which major retailers pay (because of their control of the market) too little for the goods they buy and then charge far too much for them when they are sold in supermarkets. Nothing has been done, apart from the always ineffectual exhortations to remedy the conspiracy against consumers.

The absence of markets in the capitalist system does not have such a direct or desperate effect on democracy as it did in the Soviet system. But it does carry the same economic detriments. Where markets are appropriate, they must be protected. That most famous of all Adam Smith quotations – again, ignored by some of his most devoted though least

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informed disciples – makes clear that the government must act to protect markets where markets should be. Otherwise, when tradesmen come together for merriment and diversion, in Adam Smith’s words, their inevitable wish to conspire against the public and continue to raise prices ends, not merely in the conversations to which Adam Smith referred, but in actual agreements in restraint of trade.

Now my paean of praise for genuine competition in markets where they are appropriate is complemented by the admission that, when properly organised, the market does offer some plausible answers to the basic questions which are posed by classical economists. It offers a theory of efficient production. Marginal costs should – though rarely do – equal marginal revenue. The competitive economy – at least when it is genuine - even possesses a defensible theory of remuneration. An employee should receive his or her marginal revenue product. How that principle can be applied to a chief executive who, having failed, is discharged with a multimillion-pound bonus, I cannot say. But then, neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx offered anything which was of much help in the real world. Clearly, Sainsbury’s remuneration committee did not accept the labour theory of value. It is impossible to calculate how many otters Peter Davies would have had to catch to justify a £2 million share option as a leaving present.

But I give that as an example of the free market’s inadequacy, not as a justification for its suppression, or even as proof that it is not the sovereign cure for all our economic ills which its enthusiasts suggest. I repeat again, I think for the third time: in most cases it is the best system available to ensure political freedom and overall commercial efficiency. But its efficiency is not absolute and universal, for it lacks one essential ingredient. There is no ethically defensible free market theory of distribution – unless you accept the moral judgment of Hayek and Friedman that purchasing power, being a function of earnings, is sacred.

Protecting the consumer In the market, distribution is determined by demand – effective demand, the money in the consumer’s pocket – and almost invariably the greatest purchasing power is possessed by those who have the fewest needs. Needs and demand are often unrelated. That is why – at least, it is one reason; there are many more – markets, in all forms, ought to be kept well away from education and health. But there is a second reason, which is equally compelling. The relationship between consumers and vendors is different from the relationship between providers and recipients of social services. To confuse the two is likely to damage the recipients and diminish, indeed demean, the providers.

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Doctors and teachers, nurses and probation officers are engaged in the supply of public, not private goods, and the two commodities are not the same. Public goods were defined by Paul Samuelson in 1954 as goods which we “all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual’s consumption of such goods leads to no subtraction from any other individual’s consumption of the same goods”. The experience of health and education allows us to go a step further. Another individual’s consumption of public goods actually enhances the prospects of the whole community, and more often than not the consumer knows it. The producers depend on it for incentive and morale.

Looking at the public services in New Zealand, Simon Kemp concluded that “people do not think about the value of government services and goods in the same way as those supplied by the market”. The success of the public services depends on that distinction. Nothing has so reduced the dedication – and therefore the performance – of nurses and teachers as the overt decision to treat them as if they obeyed the rules of the market. Of course, they would like more pay. But they also need the recognition that they work for something more than the monthly salary cheque. By introducing the market, we break down that crucial belief.

It is for all those reasons that most of us here oppose, irrevocably I suspect, the Conservative Party’s plans to subsidise free market patients out of health service funds, and it is why we are equally antagonistic to a system of school selection which gives parents a voucher, of notional value, which they can “spend” on the schools of their choice – including private institutions, which will require the parents who choose them to make additional personal contributions to the fees. Vouchers are really no more than money with a limited use – rather like the old Poor Law pennies that recipients could only spend on groceries. A moment’s consideration of how they would work confirms that it is not necessary for real money – or any surrogate of money – to change hands for the competitive system to operate.

The danger is that, although we keep money out of the equation, the “ethos of the market system” will be introduced into the provision of public health and education. That ethos is as damaging to the intentions of the public services as currency in pounds, pence or anything else. The consumers who have the most get the most.

What I want to consider for the rest of this lecture is the ethical justification of a market which depends on a special sort of currency – human currency: the ability to pay in terms of education, self-confidence and verbal facility. That is in fact one of the variants of what

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Professor Julian Le Grand, now a Downing Street adviser – perhaps I should make it clear I mean next door when I describe a Downing Street adviser – what Professor Julian Le Grand calls in his book Motivation, Agency & Public Policy a “quasi market”. Happily, the position is established by a man who works in Downing Street that the notion of choice is a quasi market. We are inclined to describe it in the terms of choice; that is an acceptable description, but let us have no more denials of the notion that the market and choice are unrelated. In a very real sense they are the same thing.

The problem of choice Choice is to become the watchword of the government’s third term, and the promise by which its election victory will be governed. A couple of weeks ago on Any Questions? , who was one of the true begetters of the latest big idea, asked how anyone could object to a situation which he described. Patients, he said, waiting for cataract operations found that the nearest hospital had (in market terms) more demand than it could meet. So they chose to have their surgery at a hospital some miles away. To the question how could anybody object to that, the only possible answer is: nobody could, nobody should; that was an understandable and necessary expedient. But that is not the sort of choice that worries the theory’s critics.

Before I give a more realistic example of that choice, as it is currently proposed, it is worthwhile noting that, even in that carefully selected and highly prejudiced example, the advantages allegedly associated with the market do not apply. If the hospital with the shortage of space had been a supermarket and the cataract operations had been tinned beans, the retailer would have met the excess demand by increasing the supply of the product almost immediately. A hospital cannot do that. Expansion is only possible for hospitals (or, for that matter, for schools) in the long run. And Keynes told us what happens to the patients and pupils while they are waiting in that condition.

One of the constant errors of enthusiasts for markets – whether the markets are driven by money or any other currency – is the notion that they can be organised in a way which replicates commercial competition. They cannot. We can create a caricature of the market – sacking incompetent surgeons, offering high rewards to “super head teachers” and closing “failing” schools and hospitals. But the decision on all those incentives – negative and positive – will be taken by the government. They may be stimulated by consumer dissatisfaction, but they will lack the impetus on which the market depends. There will be long lags – and bitter arguments – before the changes are made, and the changes, when they come, will be hedged about with bureaucratic appeals and consultation arrangements.

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More important, it has to be understood that genuine market choice is still arbitrarily limited. Obviously it is limited by purchasing power. But it is also limited by the availability of a desired product. Let me give you a homely example. A couple of months ago I visited a fish and chip shop in Tideswell – a Derbyshire village in which two fish and chip shops fiercely compete. I hoped to buy deep-fried haddock. As advertised, it was a product which I could easily afford. But others had chosen haddock before me and the supply had run out. For choice to be a reality, the product has to be available in such abundance that everyone who chooses it can be satisfied. It is now generally agreed – the Financial Times made the point a week ago – that choice requires “an element of spare capacity. Without it, choice”, the Financial Times says, “becomes a mockery.” We are some time away from the day when the health service can boast that desirable condition.

But in the distant future, even when we have enough hospitals to meet needs, they will still be of a variable quality. That is not simply a matter of making all hospitals good hospitals. A policy of choice automatically creates a hierarchy of desire – schools and hospitals which are, in the public mind (though perhaps not in professional reality), the best. At least in the short term, we acknowledge officially the existence of that hierarchy. It is recognised by the award of star ratings to hospitals.

If the day ever comes where there is an abundance of hospitals, and every one of them had four stars, the whole issue of choice would become redundant and ridiculous – a question of whim rather than of judgment. Choice is hypothesised on the notion that some services are worse than others. We need to examine the consequences of that undoubted fact.

Limited appeal? Proponents of choice have a pat answer. They insist (and believe it or not, seem honestly to believe) that by creating that sort of limited market within the public services, they will somehow benefit the whole community. The best hospitals and schools will become a beacon of excellence, inspiring the rest and sometimes (in imitation of the commercial market) driving the worst out of business.

I was delighted to read last Wednesday that the Prime Minister does not accept such nonsense. He told the Liaison Committee on July 6 that unless standards are raised across the board (and I quote), “You are going to end up in a situation where parents who are the most assertive get their kids into the best and the other parents end up with their children getting a poor education.” No suggestion of self-generating improvement there.

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Indeed it is a wholly accurate assertion that choice itself will disadvantage the humble and meek, and that improvement depends not on the operation of the market, but on direct government action.

Choice can certainly benefit some sections of the community. It may well be that some self-confident, articulate and well-informed patients, having inspected the kitchens, compared the mortality rates and investigated the qualifications of the consultants and the number of ancillary staff, will find, choose and insist on the best hospital. But we know the consequences of that process. Again to my delight, the Prime Minister described it to the Liaison Committee last week. “The one thing”, he said, “we can be sure of with a more assertive, middle-class people is that they will make damn sure they will get the places that they want to go to.”

Even Dr Reid – the soi disant philosopher of choice – agrees. In an article in defence of the idea, in fact in an article attacking my criticism of the idea, he wrote this: “Some people gain better access to the service in the NHS because of cultural factors such as greater knowledge and confidence.” Exactly. The patients, who become customers, have to have both knowledge of their own needs and the capacity to demand that those needs be met. My experience suggests that a proportion of the population fulfil neither of those criteria.

It is fashionable to respond to the truth with: those who make that allegation, who claim there are some people incapable of organising the best choice for themselves, those are the old people – us, me – and are patronising the whole of the working class. I can only reply that, patronising or not, about some of them it is true. And, by definition, the families incapable of making the best choices are the families in the greatest need. I cannot imagine how anyone who has ever represented an inner-city constituency can possibly believe otherwise, but since apparently some people do, let me give you two practical examples.

Ten years ago there was outrage in my constituency when the Sorrento Maternity Hospital – named after the honeymoon venue of the businessman who had built it as a private house in 1902 - was closed. It was closed because it was judged unsuitable for its purpose. Mothers who had recently given birth, some of them by caesarean section, were wheeled from the delivery room across an open yard, shortly after their babies had arrived. The babies went with them. If it rained or snowed, they were covered head to toe by a rubber sheet.

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I take it for granted that we are not so besotted with the choice, the idea of choice, that – like a parody on chapter IV of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty – we insist that women who prefer the convenience of a nearby hospital to high quality in medicine must be allowed (often under pressure from their indolent families) to risk their health and the lives of their babies. I assume that even Dr Reid would have wanted to close Sorrento. But what does he think about the capacity to choose of the women who, very often on the instructions of their husband, said they preferred the familiar and the inadequate to the strange but superior?

And I offer a second example. Last year, I wrote a long article for about general practitioners. It involved seeing very many family doctors, all of whom I asked to tell me the greatest clinical problem which they faced. A GP in Liverpool’s dockland said that he laboured against the difficulty of patients who smoked, ate the wrong food, took far too little exercise and often neglected to take the medication he prescribed. He spoke of the local population as “chronically unable to look after themselves”.

The Richmond GP to whom I spoke faced a different problem. His patients went home after visiting his surgery, looked up their diagnosis and proposed treatment on their web- sites, and telephoned the doctor they had just left to ask why his prognosis and remedy was different from that they had found on their screens. Does anyone really believe that when two types of people compete – as they will in some urban conurbations when choice becomes the general rule – does anybody really believe that those two groups of people have equal access to the best? The less self-confident, the less articulate, will have to wait to get anything at all.

Creation of hierarchies Yet policy built on choice persists in politics and widens the gulf between the best and worst in the absurd belief that improvement at the bottom of the table of excellence can somehow be inspired by better performance at the top. The paradigm example of that is foundation hospitals. They will be allowed to keep money raised from selling assets, retain surpluses from one year to the next, borrow from the private markets and set their own pay rates. They will invest in better equipment and attract the highest-quality staff. Choice will widen between the best and the worst. No wonder the King’s Fund talked about the current policy “reducing the emphasis on equality of access”.

Hierarchies, once created, will attract to themselves at the top all sorts of advantages. The so-called best hospitals will “cherrypick” the most remunerative and most glamorous

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specialities and abandon some of the essential but unfashionable services. The same will happen in education: schools will – overtly or covertly – choose the pupils who are the easiest to teach. The middle classes, with books at home and aspiring parents, will get the preference. We already know that, given half a chance, the new semi-selective schools attempt to avoid adding pupils to their rolls who have special needs.

The introduction of the competitive ethic has done most damage in the area of public service employment. Privatising hospital cleaning, food, laundering, has in some areas certainly saved money. But more often than not, it has made the saving by reducing work, reducing wages or reducing numbers of staff. The obligation to contract out by tender – a process devised to enable the selection of the lowest-paid labour – has been replaced by the concept of best value. But best value for whom? The patient and parent, who is necessarily regarded as a customer; the taxpayer who finances the enterprise; or the general good which subsumes them both? The argument against a two-tier workforce is more than a demand for the protection of lowest-paid workers. It is a defence of the whole ethos on which the public service depends.

We all want value for money – especially in the public services, where a pound wasted is a pound less for necessary provision. But there is no reason to believe that when it is regarded as the sole criterion of policy, the pursuit of value for money achieves its stated end. The public services do not work when their ethic, as well as their organisation, apes the behaviour of the private sector.

The incentives which motivate the private sector cannot be transplanted into the provision of medical care and a good education. Doctors cannot put in extra hours in the hope of share options, and teachers can never hope for bonuses based on the year’s profits. We diminish them when we pretend that their lives are governed by such stimuli to greater effort. The health and education services only succeed – perhaps, in their present form, only survive – when the government regards them as more than another form of enterprise.

Why choose choice? So we are left – and this is my final point – to wonder why choice has become the watch- word for both major parties. One possibility is that it attracts the target voters – the one group who might benefit and, coincidentally, decide the outcomes of general elections. Sometimes we have to understand that such stratagems are necessary and grown-ups have to accept them with good grace.

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I am more worried about the alternative explanation – the strong possibility that choice has become an imperative because some politicians actually believe that it contributes to a better service. Modern politics suffers from a fashionable refusal to consider anything from first principles. That attitude is represented by the promise to do “what works” without considering: works in what way, works with what long-term results, and (most important) works for whom? Politicians need a lodestar to guide them on their way.

We can return as our authority to R H Tawney and the Christian socialists. Tawney described liberty “not as a possession to be defended but as a goal to be achieved”, and said, equally important: “Liberties – social and economic as well as political – must be such that wherever the occasion for such an exercise arises they can in fact be exercised.” He was anticipating John Rawls and the doctrine of “agency”, which requires rights to be practical rather than theoretical. Choice in the public services is a right which cannot and will not be exercised by the people who most need protection. Politicians who understood Rawls and Tawney would recognise that.

Now, let me make clear that I am not suggesting that practical politicians should philosophise in public. Nobody can complain about a Chancellor of the Exchequer who redistributes wealth but feels no obligation to theorise about it. The problem lies with philosophically footloose politicians who have no clear idea of the direction in which they want to travel. John Smith was not one of them. I miss him and so, in a greater and more important sense of the word, does the country as a whole.

Thank you very much indeed.

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Vote of thanks Wilf Stevenson, Director of the Smith Institute

Thank you, Roy. The intensity and length of the applause here shows what people thought of your lecture.

When we were thinking about this lecture, one of the key things that we had in mind was to give somebody a chance to make an extended presentation on a topical idea or a theme, with time to argue a case in the round. We felt that too many public pronounce- ments were moderated by the press or by spin doctors, so that the public merely gets extracts, or someone else’s version of the idea. I am delighted that Roy, whether or not you agree with his thesis, has certainly taken advantage of our offer and has delivered a terrific contribution to the debate about the morality of employing market solutions to public services. In addition, you were able to give us an historical context and all the references appropriate to your argument, something that many modern politicians do not often do. As a result your case gained considerably in persuasiveness, and I look forward to reading it again when we publish it, as we intend to do.

I was struck by your references to Adam Smith and his support for strong competition where competition was appropriate, and to the ethical dimension to trade. Although we are named after John and not Adam, we are often confused with the Adam Smith Institute. This has one main advantage, at the Tory Party Conference, where many people who perhaps would not otherwise come to listen to our debates, pile in and often don’t realise that there has been a confusion. Your comments remind me that we have had for some time a plan to reclaim Adam Smith for the Left – and your lecture has inspired me to return to that thought.

You started your lecture by saying how unrewarding it is to speculate on what might have been, but it occurred to me, listening to what you said tonight, how rewarding it is to listen to those, like you, who have been there and who can share their experiences. That, combined with your strong commitment to the need for a philosophical basis to policy would have appealed to John Smith, and I know it would have been a road along which he would also have wanted to travel.

Thank you, Roy, for sharing your thoughts with us this evening.

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Rt. Hon. John Smith QC MP (1938 – 1994)

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John Smith was born in Dalmally, Argyle and Bute, Western Scotland. His education, in what he described as ‘Scottish country schools’ – Ardrishaig Primary, Lochgilphead Secondary and Dunoon Grammar – provided him with a learning experience that he treasured throughout his life, informing his belief that education was a major component in the delivery of opportunity and social justice. He often stated that he wanted everyone in Britain to receive an education of similar quality to his own. Upon leaving Dunoon he went on to study History and then Law at University, becoming a solicitor in Glasgow before being called to the Bar and moving to to practise as an advocate.

John Smith distinguished himself as a public speaker at an early age, winning the Observer Mace debating competition in 1962. His style was logical, incisive and quick witted. He was careful to use rhetoric sparingly and never without purpose, preferring to build a

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case methodically and to carefully dissect the evidence to prove his point and convey his message. His highly effective style of oratory was one of the many skills for which he was admired and for which he is still fondly remembered. He entered the House of Commons in 1970, representing Lanarkshire North and, from 1983, Monklands East.

John Smith served in the administrations of and , becoming Secretary of State for Trade in 1978. In this post he worked hard to improve the relationship between government and business, seeing that such a link was crucial for the improvement of skills, investment, technological advance and regional balance. His delivery of the keynote speech at the 1993 CBI conference (no mean feat for a Labour politician) is testament to his lifelong belief that government and business could achieve together what neither could alone.

From 1979 he was opposition Front Bench spokesman for Trade, Energy, Employment and Economic Affairs. A central argument of John Smith’s economic policy lay in his belief that social justice and a strong economy mutually reinforce one another. He was appalled by the levels of unemployment that were accepted by the government during the 1980s, seeing it not only as a terrible waste of opportunity and valuable human life, but also as short sighted economics that could only serve to debase the potential of a whole generation. As Shadow Chancellor, from 1987, he delivered a series of stinging blows to the Conservative government, highlighting the unfairness and economic folly of the 1988 budget which he viewed as a short sighted redistribution of wealth to the super rich at the expense of the needy – ‘a budget too far.’

He succeeded Neil Kinnock as Leader of the Labour Party in 1992, a position which he held until his untimely death in 1994. As leader, he continued to employ his formidable oratory skills in holding the government to account while at the same time turning those skills to the task of continuing the revitalisation of his party. Actions such as securing the motion for one-member-one-vote at the 1993 party conference are considered to have been instrumental to the modernisation of the Labour Party.

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Recent publications

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Recent Smith Institute Publications

Enlightenment Lectures 2002 Lord Dahrendorf, Sir Neil MacCormick MEP, Dr Robert Anderson, Elspeth Attwooll MEP, Lord Sutherland, Rt. Hon. Sir QC, Rt. Hon. MP, Dr Emma Rothschild, Dr Irwin Stelzer. Edited by Ben Shimshon Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 80 6 Published: 2005

Transcripts of a series of lectures held as a tribute to the late , Scotland’s first First Minister. Their aim was to examine some of the ideas that flourished in 18th Century Scotland in the period now known as the Scottish Enlightenment and to bring out those aspects of that period’s political and economic philosophy that still hold relevance for today’s world. Over the course of the four lectures the ideas of Adam Ferguson, Joseph Black, David Hume and Adam Smith were each discussed by an academic of distinction and by a contemporary commentator or politician. It became apparent that many of their concerns, and their approaches to them, resonate closely with present day issues such as the development of a healthy civil society, links between academia and enterprise, the balance between economic liberalisation and social fairness and the problems of moral relativity.

Telling it like it could be: The moral force of progressive politics Douglas Alexander MP Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 86 7 Published: 2005

Over the last year, the Smith Institute has held a number of seminars and events around issues which their proponents claim are rooted in the ‘common ground’. This has developed in tandem with a growing concern that the tribal politics of Westminster is becoming increasingly alien to the British public whose trust of politicians is diminishing and, for many of whom, party loyalty is no longer the core component of political identity. Single issue lobbies are attracting significant attention, while the offerings of the single issue political parties are often supported beyond their reasonable expectations. In this first pamphlet of a series we have commissioned to explore these developments,

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Douglas Alexander MP frames the centre left’s quest for progressive policies in terms of the current debate about how to build upon a ‘common sense’ in which the British values of equality, solidarity and social justice prevail. In developing the argument for a politics based on shared principles, this essay also raises questions about how we could ‘do politics’ in 21st century Britain.

Affordable Housing Margaret Ford, Peter Bill, Prof. Anne Power, , MP, Tony Pilch, Rt. Hon. Keith Hill MP, , Jon Rouse, John Callcutt. Edited by Peter Bill Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 86 5 Published: 2005

Although average house prices have risen over the last six years, the numbers of homes being built has not, with official figures showing a shortfall in the number of new homes of 62,000 per year. But as the Barker Review showed, the costs of constraining supply go beyond higher house prices and a lack of market affordability. Inadequate housing means that the UK will become an increasingly expensive place to do business, with high housing costs and reduced labour market mobility. In addition, weak responsiveness of housing supply and the volatile behaviour of our housing market pose risks to economic stability and overall economic welfare. As the Chancellor has said, “most stop-go problems that Britain has suffered in the last fifty years have been led or influenced by the housing market”. Affordable Housing brings together essays by key experts in the field of housing and we hope that their contributions will help to develop the debate on promoting affordable housing.

Can social justice ever be delivered in a disordered world? (John Smith Memorial Lecture) Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 35 0 Published: 2005

On 31st March 2004 Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen delivered a John Smith Memorial Lecture at an event held jointly by Zurich Financial Services and the Smith

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Institute at William Kent House, London. Taking as his starting point John Smith's belief that prosperity and social justice must go hand in hand, Lord Robertson discussed the importance of foreign policy in the pursuit of a fair society. He emphasised the importance of an internationalist perspective, both as a means of providing the security that allows us to pursue social justice at home, and in order to avoid the creation of ‘some cosy oasis of social fairness in a world of injustice’ – a state of affairs that would have been unacceptable to John Smith.

CSR in Action: A review of the Young Offenders Programme led by National Grid Transco. The SMART Company Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 84 9 Published: 2005

Currently, over 11,000 under 21 year olds are in prison at a cost to the taxpayer of £340 million. Over 70% re-offend within a year of their release. National Grid Transco has developed a unique scheme to train and employ young offenders as gas network operatives, and pioneered business involvement in the rehabilitation of offenders which meets both a business and social need. To date, National Grid Transco has trained over 140 offenders. A further 100 will have completed training and be in jobs by the end of 2005. The re-offending rate is currently only 7%. The Smith Institute is pleased to be publishing this review of National Grid Transco’s Young Offenders Programme, which has been prepared by the SMART Company. We hope that this excellent case study will contribute to the ongoing debate about the role that business can play in promoting public interest goals.

Smart Localism Jim Robertson, Phil Swann, Judy Doherty, Peter Smith, John Foster, Jane Roberts, Alex Hopkins and Rachel Thompson. Edited by Jim Robertson Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 83 0 Published: 2005

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Although the concept of localism has risen up the policy agenda, with all political parties arguing the case for greater local involvement in key policy issues such as public service reform, a number of important questions remain about the key elements, processes and potential benefits of localism. What does localism mean in practice? How can greater local involvement help to drive improvements in public services? What is best practice? In trying to meet national and local priorities, what should the role of local authorities be? This collection of essays and case studies seeks to answer some of these questions; to clarify what the different understandings of Localism are; and to suggest practical ways forward that reconcile as many of them as possible.

Perspectives on Migration Tony Pilch, Robert Winder, Christian Dustmann, Francesca Fabbri, Susan Anderson, Gloria Mills, Sukhvinder Stubbs, MP, Claude Moraes MEP and Dr Irwin Stelzer. Edited by Tony Pilch Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 82 2 Published: 2005

Throughout its history, Britain’s population has been augmented by successive inflows of migrants. Each inflow has made significant contributions to the UK’s economic, social and cultural development. Some ethnic groups have done particularly well in terms of both education and the labour market. But despite this contribution, the debate in recent years has become more negative, and there are now serious difficulties in discussing the differences between immigration, asylum and migration; and in many instances overtones of racism are apparent. In addition the case for economic migration has often been confused, and has focused on the social costs of immigration rather than its potential economic, social and cultural benefits. Perspectives on Migration brings together essays by commentators and key experts in the field of migration. We hope that their contribu- tions will help to develop the debate on ensuring that Britain’s immigrants continue to make a positive contribution to the country’s economic and social development

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Achieving Social Inclusion Rt. Hon. Baroness Blackstone, Martin Stephenson, Mary Robson, Mike White, Peter Jenkinson, Rt. Hon. Richard Caborn, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, Sir Stuart Lipton, Andrew Ogg. Edited by Tony Pilch Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1902488 72 5 Published: 2005

This booklet is based on a series of three seminars that took place between May and June 2003. These events were organised to investigate the roles that sport and active recreation; the arts; and architecture and the built environment can play in promoting greater social inclusion. While these areas may have been previously underdeveloped in terms of their policy implications, over the course of this series it became apparent that, if the government is to succeed in its overall strategy to promote social inclusion, these issues will have to play an increasingly important role.

Civilised Capitalism Lord Tugendhat, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Shriti Vadera, Sir Ronald Cohen, Sir Christopher Gent, Denise Kingsmill CBE, Michael Clasper, Dr Irwin Stelzer, Sir Howard Davies, MP. Edited by Ben Shimshon Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 77 6 Published: 2004

The series of seminars which are transcribed in this monograph were held between January and April 2004. The initial idea for the series came from a speech given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Social Market Foundation in February 2003 entitled A Modern Agenda for Prosperity and Social Reform. In his speech, the Chancellor raised a number of crucial issues and questions about the role and limits of government and markets in pursuing the public interest. In many of the current areas of political controversy – public/private partnerships, the future of healthcare, the funding of univer- sities – a common thread is the relationship between individuals, markets and the state in meeting the interests of the public.

Over the course of the series we tried to discuss the major policy implications that flow from the Chancellor’s speech. What exactly is the ‘public interest’? What are the conditions

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that are necessary to promote the public interest through the activities of government and the markets? What are the respective roles of markets and government in securing opportunity and security for all? What are the moral limits of markets and where does perceived market failure become a threat to the pursuit of the public interest? Each seminar saw these themes drawn out through presentations by, and discussions between, politicians, business people, commentators, academics and public servants from across the political spectrum.

Building Sustainable Communities: Capturing land development value for the public realm Peter Bill, Wyndham Thomas, Kate Barker, David Camp, Ian Henderson, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Phil Butler, Jeremy Edge and John Gummer MP. Edited by Peter Bill Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 78 4 Published: 2004

This monograph considers the policy proposals that seem best able to meet the recom- mendation made in the Barker Review, that “government should use a tax measure to extract some of the windfall gain that accrues to landowners from the sale of their land for residential development.” As is pointed out in the monograph, there have been three serious attempts since 1948 to impose a super-tax on the jump in the value of land bestowed by the grant of development permission, all of which failed. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that not only is there a need to generate the funding required for the wide range of infrastructure of high quality necessary for sustainable communities, at the right time in the development cycle, but there is also a need to reform the complex Section 106 system. And the good news is that there seems (with one exception) to be a consensus amongst the authors of the monograph that some form – or forms – of a new development land tax, along with a simplification of Section 106 agreements, is worth pursuing.

These publications are available to purchase from: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN. Tel: 020 8986 5488

Alternatively they are available to download in pdf format from our website: www.smith-institute.org.uk

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Roy Hattersley Roy Hattersley was born in in 1932. He won a scholarship to Sheffield City Grammar School and went on to read economics at the . At the age of 23 he became the youngest member of Sheffield Council as Labour representative for Crookesmoor. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1964 as MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook and was appointed Under Secretary of State at the Department of Employment three years later. He was Minister of Defence from 1969-70 and for Foreign Affairs from 1974-76. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1975 and entered the cabinet in 1976 as Secretary of state for Prices and Consumer Affairs. In 1983 he became both Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (from 1983-87) and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (from 1983-92). In 1993 Roy announced that he would resign as an MP at the next General Election.

Roy Hattersley is a noted author of both fiction and non fiction and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2003. He has a columns and a feature article contract with The Guardian and has previously held contracts with The Mail, The Mail on Sunday, and . Roy Hattersley also appears regularly on television and radio shows such as Any Questions?, The News Quiz, Have I Got News for You? and Looking Forward to the Past.

Roy Hattersley received a peerage in 1997 but only uses his title on business.