Chapter 13 Section 4 Tenure

I don my best sapphire suit to meet the Prime Minister.The meeting time is short.Harold Macmillan greeted me charmingly and appointed me to my envisioned office.I enthusiastically accept the appointment.I wanted to start working as soon as possible, so I asked him how I should manage the affairs of the department.He said in his unique way: "Well, first call the Permanent Deputy Secretary, go there at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning, walk around, and then leave. I won't stay for long." In this way, the second One morning, just before eleven o'clock, I arrived at the handsome George House on John 6 Adam Street, the Strand, which at that time was the headquarters of the Department of Pensions and National Insurance.I was greeted at the gate by my minister, John Boyd-Carpenter) who showed me into my new office, a gesture I greatly appreciated and have always followed when I was a cabinet secretary .John is the kind of guy who is easy to like, and people appreciate his kindness, attention to detail, and ability to explain complex matters clearly and concisely.He is an excellent orator and debater.All in all, he was a good example for a new secretary of state to follow) When he became First Secretary of the Treasury in 1962, my new Secretary was Neil MacPherson, who was succeeded by Richard Wood.I am very fortunate to have them as ministers.Undersecretaries' work is interesting and rewarding only if the ministers direct it well.I feel like they're giving me every opportunity.The first day on Adam Street in John was little more than meeting new faces and strange events.No more time to do other things.I just identify the direction first and listen to other people's introductions.

On Friday (it was my birthday) I was given a prominent seat on the podium at the Brighton Conservative Party's annual conference.When I appeared at the entrance of the venue in a royal blue dress and hat in a royal blue car, there was only the sound of cameras clicking.Ian McLeod has become party chairman after a recent minor reshuffle, so it is widely believed that the Conservative Party is shifting to the left, as is the general mood of the conference, and I am in office and dressed with this The atmosphere was out of place. When I returned to the Ministry, the boring work replaced the glamor when I was in public, and I have no complaints about it.At that time the Department of Pensions and National Insurance (today's Department of Social Security) dealt with more technically complex issues than the rest of the government (with the possible exception of the Treasury Department's tax work). To avoid being the object of attack in the House of Commons. If a man wishes to make any serious contribution to the making of policy, he must know the main principles as well as the individual details. I began to work in this direction.

The first step is to reread the original Beveridge report.The report clearly states the rationale for the post-war pension and welfare system.I was already very familiar with the main content of it and agreed with it very much.At its core is the concept of a comprehensive "social insurance scheme" aimed at mi)) unemployment, sickness or retirement without bow!losses caused by loss of earning capacity, which is implemented through the basic living standard relief fund system funded by a uniform fixed amount of individual insurance funds.Parallel to this is the "state funding" system.It is funded from general taxation and is intended to help those who cannot continue to enjoy "National Insurance" benefits because they cannot afford to pay insurance contributions or because their insurance contributions have been exhausted. "State funding" was largely experimented with as a transitional system, in areas that would disappear as pensions or personal savings increased.

It is easy to look back now and laugh at the many assumptions and predictions made by Beveridge, who vastly underestimated the cost of his proposals, although this was partly due to the immediate introduction of full pensions by the post-war Labor government, while the There was not a 20-year transition period as Beveridge envisioned.There are other problems.The relationship between premiums and welfare gains has become increasingly unclear due to "pension augmentation" and the rising proportion of the elderly in the population, a relationship that is always indirect in any one case. Not only has "state funding" not disappeared , in the same way that later "supplementary relief" and "income subsidies" continued to inflate and become a dangerous burden on the taxpayer. These two dysfunctional systems, which should be complementary by definition but often contradict each other in practice, have become an inescapable problem.

Despite the above problems, Beveridge has worked hard to prevent the undesirable consequences of welfare dependence and loss of individual initiative, issues that later governments more or less ignored, and are now coming back to wreak havoc on us.Regardless of how it turned out in practice, the language of the Beveridge report tinged with what would later be called Thatcher: …the state shall provide guarantees for services and insurance money.While acting as a guarantor, the state should not suppress incentives, opportunities, or sense of responsibility; when formulating the national minimum insurance premium standard, there should be room to encourage everyone to voluntarily pay more than the minimum standard for himself and his family. amount. [paragraph 9]

…the insured should not think that there is a steady stream of unearned money, whatever the cause. [paragraph 22] …Material progress depends on technological progress, technological progress depends on investment and ultimately saving…It is important that some of the additional resources distributed to wage earners and other low-income earners should be saved by them rather than consumed immediately.No. 376] The gap between Beveridge's original vision and how the system has actually evolved (and the public's expectations for it) has created some difficult issues, and much of our time at the Department has been spent dealing with their implications and finding solutions Method.For example, when inflation is not under control and the benefit has to be raised every year to cope, there are various voices against the increase of the state insurance pension, which is partly used for the "state subsidy" which forms part of personal income. "It didn't increase.People also increasingly expect to retire with something better than a living standard pension, but the level of premiums required or funding from ordinary taxes makes it seem unfeasible.This gave birth to John Boyd-Carpenter's idea of ​​a "graded pension" plan, in which a higher premium would ensure a higher pension. Encourage private occupational pension schemes.Another question that has always plagued us, for which we have not found a conclusively viable answer, is the "income rule", according to which pensioners who are still working may lose part or all of their pension, depending on a certain level of income.The disadvantageous effect of this article on pensioner widows has caused me difficulties and troubles, which I will explain later.

Three other problems that will plague the government for years have also begun to emerge.One issue is how to ensure a decent level of income for older people who do not have sufficient contributions to receive a full "National Insurance" pension.The second, continued to seek greater "selectivity" (the term at the time) of "Social Security" relief, that is, focusing relief on those most in need rather than broadly applying it to a large number of ordinary beneficiaries. (Indeed, our current debate about "purposeful relief"—that's the term now—suggests that it doesn't help.) The last one, is the bad name that "state funding" and its methods have acquired. debate.As I have often pointed out, there are two sides to this question.On the one hand, people who are really living in poverty should of course be encouraged to receive help from the state.On the other hand, the self-esteem of what I have called "high performers" is morally admirable.They do not eat "what comes first", and it is now clear that this also prevents the growth of dependency, which means that loss of dependency can eventually lead to destructive social consequences.

Aside from the Beveridge report and other general introductions I got from the Ministry, what taught me more about the Social Security system was casework, that is, investigating a specific issue someone had raised in a letter.I will not sign a reply letter without feeling fully informed about the background.As a result, officials streamed in and out of my modest office, benefiting me on every issue with their unparalleled knowledge.I have taken a similar approach to parliamentary matters by consulting with other ministers.I'm not content with knowing the answer or the caliber.I wonder why this is done.The weekend before my first appearance at the parliamentary podium to answer questions was probably a nervous wreck for my private secretary and myself, as I was almost constantly on the phone seeking his explanations on various issues.

Aside from some heated conversations with the civil servants assigned to my "private bill", I first dealt with them professionally in the Pensions Department, where the permanent undersecretaries were actually more powerful than The Undersecretary is much bigger.I had been clearly told early on that he was only accountable to ministerial leaders within the Ministry.My two former Permanent Under-Secretaries in the Pensions Department, Eric Bonye and Clifford Jarrett, represented the very best of the Civil Service - intelligent, conscientious and of the utmost integrity.But real experts may come from lower ranks in the civil service.I soon discovered that the source of correct and reliable information concerning pensions was a Deputy Secretary named John Walley.In general, I've been impressed by the quality of the officers I've met.

I find it interesting to serve as Parliamentary Under-Secretary under 3 different ministers in the same department, that even on the same issue, the civil servants give different advice to different ministers.So when Neil McPherson and Richard Wood received a policy submission with proposed measures different from what I knew was submitted to their predecessor, John Boyd-Carpenter, I pointed it out , remember I went on to say: "That's not what you advised the former Minister." They replied that they knew he would never take that advice.I decided then that, once I was in charge of a ministry, I would insist on being absolutely candid in my assessment of any civil service report to me.The reason should be stated by him/herself.

I also learned another lesson.Pressure is on to scrap "earnings rules" for widowed mothers.I deeply sympathize with this.As a new MP, this is really one of the issues where I take my position publicly.I don't think that if a woman who has lost her husband and has to support her children decides to go out and work to earn some extra money, she should not lose her pension because of it.Perhaps, as a woman, I understand better the problems widows face.Maybe I still remember that heartbreaking scene at my father's shop in Grantham, where a newly widowed mother bought bad fruit to save her meager income.I find it almost impossible to defend the government's position in the face of opposition attacks.I raised the issue with officials and my ministers.I even posed the question to Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister, once when he came to address the Parliamentary Secretary.Although he appears sympathetic, nothing progresses. The point of view among department officials on the issue has always been this: Applying the "income rule" even to the most deserving groups has other consequences.Logically they are right of course, but how I loathe the word "impact".It would be a mistake for ministers to accept these superficial reasons without making political judgments about them. I am not surprised that one of the first acts of the Labor government in 1964, when it came to power, was to make a change to the very issue I was fighting for and gain credibility by doing so.The lesson for me from this incident is that bureaucratic logic cannot replace the minister's judgment.Once you forget that you are a politician, political "influence" affects you. My time at the Pensions Department was quite hectic, and although I shared a car with the Parliamentary Secretary for War Pensions, I always drove myself to work from Farnborough early in the morning.Inside the Department, the day begins with the two political undersecretaries discussing major policy issues or the current political situation with John Boyd-Carpenter.Then came a bunch of letters that I needed to sign or give me advice.I may attend a meeting relating to an area of ​​responsibility that has been assigned to me by the Minister, for example to develop exchange arrangements with other countries on pensions.I may also meet with certain officials to prepare a thesis for the "Social Security" vision, a task that is both necessary and difficult.In the afternoon some representatives from the pressure group, even in that day and age of pressure groups in social services, would come to me and ask for some so-called irregularity to be corrected or for some relief to be added.Sometimes I visit regional "social security" offices, talking to staff about the problems they face and listening to their advice; I dine in Parliament, or have dinner with political friends.Ernest Maples was an impassioned and insightful statesman who rose to fame during his tenure as transport secretary. If you were invited to dinner with him and his wife, you would not only enjoy the food and wine, but also the company. Impressive.If there is a group vote, I usually arrive in Parliament at 10 to vote, then drive home with two or three red packets of draft letters and policy papers, which I read late into the night. I have retained the feeling for the House of Commons that I developed during my two years as a Backbencher.Our Labor MP opponents are tough.Dick Clausman had an excellent political mind but was also very unpredictable, and Douglas Horton was a master at short debates.I like both of them, but I still decided to win all the debates.I like to clash facts and figures in policy Q&As or in my own debates, but sometimes I don't do it cautiously enough.I was handed a sheet of paper with the latest figures on a point raised in the debate one day while I was speaking at the parliamentary podium.I smugly said, "Look, I've got a hot new number." Laughter erupted in the council, and it took me a while to realize the pun. As fate would have it, we are scheduled to answer questions at the Pensions Department on Monday, right on the heels of the famous cabinet reshuffle in July 1962 known as "a night of sweeping swords".John Boyd-Carpenter leaves his post to become First Secretary of the Treasury, while Nair.McPherson has yet to replace him at the Pensions Department.Since most of the questions on the agenda were related to my part of the activities and not related to war pensions, I had to speak for the Minister for nearly an hour.It was another nerve wracking week for me and the officials I had to interrupt.Labor MPs were rowdy and Ian Macleod was the only cabinet minister in Parliament at the time.I managed it anyway.When someone asked about future policy, I replied: "When I have a new minister, I will ask him about it."