SOCIAL-JUSTICE AND THE REFORM OF SOCIAL-SECURITY

There have been massive increases over the years in expenditure on the public services loosely grouped top ether as the ''welfare state'', but widespread dissatisfaction persists. This article is a critique of the proposals for reform presented in the Report of the Commission on Social Justice, set up by the late John Smith. The report contains a sweeping condemnation of existing arrangements and puts forward a series of recommendations ranging from the health service to decentralization in government and from employment policy to benefits for the elderly. As was perhaps inevitable, some are more precisely presented than others. An important example of the more fully specified proposals is one to establish what would, in effect, be a means-tested ''pension guarantee'' but with ''means'' so defined as to exclude capital and with much improved ''disregards''. Another is the endorsement of the proposals to extend social insurance to part-time workers-a proposal which raises some controversial issues. There is much in this report that deserves close attention, and it is, therefore, all the more unfortunate that its proposals are not presented in the form of a quantified plan for social policy. Even for the first five years or so of the the fifteen the Commission has in mind, there is no attempt at quantification. The importance of economic growth is rightly stressed, but ''faster growth'' can become a panacea that obscures the need for choice, not only between private and public expenditure but also between the various components of public policy itself.