The British public share Rowan Williams' concern that "we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted". 55% supported his statement with just 15% opposed.
An overwhelming majority of the British public share Rowan Williams’ concern that “we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”.
New polling from Populus, which the Times chose not to report today, reveals that 55% of the public agree with the statement that, “The Government is undertaking big reforms to the economy, health and education which it didn’t tell you about during the General Election campaign last year”. Just 15% disagree – a margin of close to 4-to-1.
In an op ed for the New Statesman last week, Rowan Williams wrote:
“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.
Not many people want government by plebiscite, certainly. But, for example, the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates. The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury may not, however, have been the best deliverer of the sentiment since the poll showed that 47% felt it was not his job to “criticise Government policies, whether some people share those criticisms or not”. But the poll reinforces the Observer’s leader article which argued that Williams’ intervention offered a “lesson in Opposition for Mr Miliband“.
The Populus poll also sought to get to the bottom of public opinion on the Conservative party’s welfare reforms. Williams wrote about “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving” poor'” and the “the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system”.
Iain Duncan Smith claimed in an interview with Newsnight that he had “never used the language of the deserving or undeserving poor”. Not everyone’s convinced of the veracity of this claim and IDS’ colleague George Osborne has certainly compared hard woking families with those making a “lifestyle choice” to live on benefits. The truth, of course, is that benefit fraud costs just £1 billion while the Coalition are determined to slash £18 billion from the welfare budget. But the poll, unfortunately, avoided the opportunity to drill down into the emotive topic and instead used a leading question to ask whether the Government was “right to want target undeserving benefit recipients and to take payments away from those who abuse or cheat the system”. Unsurprisingly 80% agreed.
54 Responses to “Public overwhelmingly backs Archbishop’s attack of Government policy”
tracy ewan
Public overwhelmingly backs Archbishop’s attack of Government policy I Will Straw – http://j.mp/my2MuR
andrew dunbar
Stop spending on foriegn aid. Stop letting foriegn RELIGIONS build their “mosques” in our CHRISTIAN country. Charity begins at home and we have MORE than enough poor to help without looking for more.
The bishop is correct 100%
Leon Wolfson
Will; Quite, on the people in work. Especially given the several million more people only working part-time since the start of this recession, and the way they will next year be dumped on the same benefit, and usually facing the same conditions, as someone entirely unemployed (and will see less money as a result, in many cases, given inflation rates).
I almost got penalised by the jobcentre last year, because I didn’t apply for a job, during a brief period between contracts, which was an out-and-out scam (and which I reported as such, TO the Jobcentre). Was that “Fraud”?
Ed's Talking Balls
Tremendous exercise in obfuscation there, David.
What makes you assume that I condone either tax evasion or avoidance, or that I don’t see them as a problem? Further, what makes you think that I have failed to read the figures with regard to benefit fraud? Even though, in the context of overall government spending £1bn might seem trivial, I could never bring myself to describe it as ‘small beer’ and, besides, principle doesn’t rely on amounts: I would want fraud stopped if it only cost £1.
But this is all a smokescreen: I didn’t say anything about benefit fraud, less still about tax revenues, in my comment.
What I did say, however, is that I expect the vast majority of the public will support a benefits cap of £26k, after tax. Certainly, the people to whom I have spoken about it are overwhelmingly in favour of the policy.
I also said that I found it disgraceful that, on the wording of the question posed in the survey, 20% of people disagreed with taking payments away from those who cheat or benefit the system. Logically, this must mean that this 20% see no problem in giving away taxpayers’ money to those who neither need, nor deserve it. I think that is a despicable attitude to have. Irrespective of the sums involved, fraud should be stopped.
But again, I must not fall into your trap of being sidetracked and moved onto a discussion about fraud. Again, I did’t mention it. I merely expressed confidence that the public want to see a cut in benefits (particularly housing benefits) and my disgust that there are people (20%, in fact) who see nothing wrong in giving money to fraudsters.
What’s objectionable in what I have actually said, as I opposed to what I didn’t?
Ed's Talking Balls
George,
I didn’t think the facts were in dispute. There is £1bn worth of fraud, according to Will’s article, so I’m not going to dispute that. I would have thought that everyone was united in thinking that that should be stopped. As Will said, it’s a no-brainer.
Of course I have sympathy with those who fill out complicated forms incorrectly: it’s happened to me enough times. But I would have thought that the system wouldn’t punish, criminally, simple mistakes. At least, I would hope not.