You have to hand it to them; the Tories are in rampant mood as they make inroads into traditional Labour territory. Whether it concerns the emergence of an underclass (credit, Iain Duncan Smith), families and inequality (credit, Michael Gove) and our "broken" society generally (credit, Call Me Dave), they are revelling in it. Perhaps they are pining for the halcyon Thatcher years of generosity.
And what's Labour's response? Yet another TV image of
Gordon Brown uttering "hard-working British families" as he mounts a
grim-faced defence of the latest by-election humiliation or economic
embarrassment.
Brown and his Cabinet colleagues are missing a trick
here. Despite Duncan Smith's desire to see the Conservatives as the party that
can rescue the underclass, what shadow education secretary Michael Gove is
suggesting may well reinforce inequality.
He is proposing some changes to Sure Start - undoubtedly
one of Labour's great social successes - that could leave the most difficult to
reach families in limbo. A social exclusion policy, no less.
Gove says a Conservative government would keep Sure Start
but would expand a health visiting service and cut the £79m outreach worker
programme under which the most hard-to-reach families are targeted.
Schools minister Jim Knight, in a debate with Gove on
Radio 4, admitted that Sure Start was failing to reach this group, but by their
very nature hard-to-reach people are elusive. It doesn't mean you give up. At
least Labour is trying and the national evaluation of Sure Start bears out the
success of the policy.
A breakdown of this group is like a roll call of those
most in need. Among them are asylum seekers and refugees, substance misusers,
teenage parents and mothers with post-natal depression, all people who could
end up in Iain Duncan Smith's underclass, no less.
Gove's universal health visiting service does little to reach out to these groups who risk falling off the social care radar. Paradoxically,
Gove's health visiting service may well benefit only Gordon Brown's "hard-working
British families".
It is also possible that, in the absence of outreach
workers, health visitors may find themselves doing the jobs of social care
professionals, something they are not trained to do and something they would
probably prefer not to do.
So it is perhaps time that Labour reclaimed its territory
by making a noise about its successes and started picking a few holes in the
policies of what many may regard at the next general election as the new party
for the underclass.
I never thought I would say this post-Blair, but what
Labour needs now is not a health visitor but a spin doctor.
Leave a comment