Socialism has never been clearer.
We not consider the State to be a ‘swear word’. We are proud of our values of solidarity, social justice, equality, equity, co-operation, reciprocity, and so it goes on.
The Right, meanwhile, needs to make up its mind: is “societal benefit” more important, or the individual?
The rhetoric under Margaret Thatcher and beyond, including Tony Blair, was individual choice and control could ‘empower’ individuals. This was more important than the paternalistic state making decisions on your behalf, and indeed Ed Miliband was keen to read from the same script at the Hugo Young lecture 2014 the other week.
Yet, the phrase “societal good” has been used by an increasingly desperate Right, wishing to justify money making opportunities in caredata, or cost saving measures such as NICE medication approvals or hospital reconfigurations, So where has this individual power gone?
Whilst fiercely disputed now, Thatcher’s idea that ‘there is no such thing as society’ potentially produces a sharp dividing line between the rights of the individual and the value of society.
“There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour.
was an individualist in the sense that individuals are ultimately accountable for their actions and must behave like it. But I always refused to accept that there was some kind of conflict between this kind of individualism and social responsibility. I was reinforced in this view by the writings of conservative thinkers in the United States on the growth of an `underclass’ and the development of a dependency culture. If irresponsible behaviour does not involve penalty of some kind, irresponsibility will for a large number of people become the norm. More important still, the attitudes may be passed on to their children, setting them off in the wrong direction.”
(M. Thatcher, Woman’s Own, October 31, 1987)
Whilst the Left has been demonised for promoting a lethargic large State, monolithic and unresponsive, there’s been a growing hostility to large monolithic private sector companies carrying out the State’s functions.
It is alleged that some of these companies are not doing a particularly good job, either.
It has recently been alleged that the French firm, ATOS, judged 158,300 benefit claimants were capable of holding down a job – only for the Department of Work and Pensions to reverse the decision. At the end of last year, private security giants G4S and Serco have been stripped of all responsibilities for electronically tagging criminals in the wake of allegations that the firms overcharged taxpayers
So why should the Right be so keen suddenly on arguments based on ‘societal benefit’?
It possibly is a cultural thing.
The idea that “large is inefficient” was never borne out by the doctrine of ‘economies of scale’, which is used to justify the streamlining of operational processes across jurisdictions for multinational companies.
This was a naked inconsistency with the excitement in corporate circles with “Big Data”, that big is best.
Many medical researchers are rightly excited at the prospect of all this data. Analysis of NHS patient records first revealed the dangers of thalidomide and helped track the impact of the smoking ban. This new era of socialised big NHS data could be very powerful indeed. Whilst there were clearly issues with informed consent at an individual level, the argument for pooling of data for public health reasons were always compelling.
The fact that this Government is simply not trusted when it comes to corporate capture has strongly undermined its case. Also, if the individual must put itself first, why should he allow his data to be given up? Critically, this knowledge doesn’t just have a social good, or multiple individual health ones. It has economic value too.
It might simply be that the Right is keen on this policy through now is precisely because such data will offer significant financial benefits, and that any to wellbeing are simply pleasant side-effects. The concern that this policy is actually about boosting the UK life sciences industry, not patient care. This is science policy – where science lies within the technical jurisdiction of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – not just health policy.
Is it not reasonable that an individual should have the right to opt out of having his caredata being absorbed?
“Societal good” has been used by the current Government in a different context too.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will consult next month on an update to its methodology for assessing drugs. It had been asked by the Department of Health to make judgments on the “wider societal benefit” of medicines before recommending them for NHS use. But a board meeting this week has decided it would be wrong to make an assessment that effectively would put a monetary value on the contribution to society of the people likely to be taking the drugs.
It is thought that any assessment of “wider societal benefit” would inevitably end up taking age into account, say papers from the meeting. “Wider societal benefit” could therefore be simply an excuse for excluding more costly older patients.
NICE’s chief executive, Sir Andrew Dillon, has said it is valid to take into account the benefit to society of a new drug, but great care had to be taken in the way it was done, so that an 85-year-old was not regarded as less important than a 25-year-old. One group of patients should never be compared with another.
But an older individual must put his access to medications first surely?
A legal challenge brought by the local authority and the Save Lewisham hospital campaign showed conclusively that the secretary of state did not have the power to include Lewisham in a solution to the problems of SLHT.
As Caroline Molloy explains:
“The hospital closure clause gives Trust Special Administrators greater powers including the power to make changes in neighbouring trusts without consultation. It was added to the Care Bill just as the government was being defeated by Lewisham Hospital campaigners, in an attempt to ensure that campaigners could not challenge such closure plans in the future. But the new Bill could be applied anywhere in the country.”
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), the groups of state representatives making local health plans about resource allocations, will still need to be consulted in this process, and the consultation has been extended to 40 days. However, disagreements between CCGs may now be overruled by NHS England. So, the most important local decision makers may have no say in key reconfigurations of their hospitals and care services.
An individual within a locality must surely have the right to put his own interests regarding social provision first?
I believe that part of the reason the Right has got into so much trouble with caredata, access to drugs and clause 118 is that it appears in fact to ride roughshod over people’s individual rights, and in all three cases is only considering the potential economic benefit to the budget as a whole. They are not interested in the power of the individual at all.
And the most useful explanation now is actually that with such overwhelming corporate capture engulfing all the main political parties, that there’s no such thing as “Left” and “Right” any more. It might have been once our duty to look after ourselves, but it is clear that conflicts have emerged between individual autonomy and the needs of the corporates.
The “Right” is not actually working for the needs of the individual at all, nor of society.
The most parsimonious reason is that the Right is not as such a Right at at all. It, under the subterfuge of being “centre-left” or “centre right”, is simply acting for the needs of the corporates, explaining clearly why so many are disenfranchised from politics. From this level of performance, the Right has not only failed to safeguard the interests of the Society, it has failed to uphold the rights of the individual. This is an utter disgrace, but entirely to be expected if the Government governs on behalf of the few.
Of course we knew that this would happen under the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but Labour needs to return to democratic socialism urgently.
