31 August 2006
Tony Blair spoke about his plans to tackle social exclusion during an interview with the BBC.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
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Interviewer:
Prime Minister, 9 years after describing social exclusion as the greatest crisis of our time, we learn that one million and more of the most excluded people in Britain are in as bad or possibly even a worse state than they were when you came to office.
Prime Minister:
Well the first thing is to describe the progress always because there has been massive progress. I mean the New Deal has lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of unemployment, we have got I think three quarters of a million of children in relative poverty, not simply absolute poverty, two million pensioners out of acute hardship. If you look at inner city regeneration or the investment in the public realm, there has been massive progress. What I am really talking about now, however, are the group of people that maybe have multiple problems, who we need to identify far earlier and who the general policy of the New Deal, Sure Start, the investment in the schools and so on really hasn’t helped and those people I think, we can learn from the lessons of the past 9 years, aren’t necessarily reached by the same policies that have done so much for other low income families.
Interviewer:
It is a sign of failure in a sense, isn’t it that you put so much, tens of billions of pounds into social exclusion, and yet the ones who need that support most don’t get it.
Prime Minister:
Well I really think it is a mark of the fact that as you move on you develop policy and the policies that have worked enormously well like the Children’s Tax Credit and the New Deal and Sure Start and as I say the investment in local communities have helped hundreds of thousands, millions of people, but you have always got to be looking at the next stage, and the next stage I think is to recognise that some families, maybe they have got drug and alcohol abuse problems, maybe it is a teenage mum who is not in a stable relationship, those families we tend to identify too late and intervene too late when the problem has already grown to an extent and then of course we spend tens of thousands of pounds, sometimes actually hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to deal with it.
Interviewer:
Early intervention is clearly the message that has been given to you by your advisers and agencies in this area. I’m interested in how early because a lot of the evidence suggests that you need to be getting in there while the child is still in nappies frankly.
Prime Minister:
Or pre-birth, even. You see I think if you look at this realistically and I think in some ways society has been a bit reluctant to face up to these questions fully for very obvious reasons, but let me try, and choose my words carefully, I mean in my view if you have a teenage mum who is not in a stable relationship then you have got a pretty good chance, it doesn’t follow absolutely - of course I’m not saying that, but there is a pretty good chance that that child will grow up in a difficult set of circumstances and then it maybe only at the age of 7 or 8 that the behavioural problems are so severe that something happens. Now perhaps we should be intervening far earlier making it clear that in those circumstances from a very early age there is going to be support but also some sense of discipline and framework put in place in order to make sure that that child gets a better start in life because I think if you talk, as I do, to teachers sometimes they will tell you, and I know it sounds almost crazy to say this, but at age 3, 4, 5 they are already noticing the symptoms of a child that when they are 14 or 15 is out on the street causing mayhem.
Interviewer:
People will be worried about this. They don’t like the idea that government, in whatever form it takes, looks at some baby, some toddler and says there is the problem of the future. We need to go in and sort this out. That is a worry, isn’t it?
Prime Minister:
Yes, it is a worry and it is why it is difficult to deal with this because in the old days, if you go back, if you go back even when I was reasonably young, the term anti-social behaviour wasn’t in use. You had even at that time communities were relatively fixed, family patterns were relatively stable. The world has changed. Now if we are going to face up to the change then that group of families that are severely dysfunctional, that have multiple problems, there is no point in pussy-footing around the issue. You might as well face up to the fact. As I say if you got a teenage mum, and 20% I think of the teenage mum’s kids are actually born to mums who are already teenage mums. In other words you are talking sometimes about …
Interviewer:
…. the older generation.
Prime Minister:
Yes and there is not going to be a solution to this unless we are sufficiently hard-headed to say, I am afraid, from a very early age you need a system of intervention and a system where families are being offered support but where there is also some sense of responsibility and discipline injected into the situation. Now I think if you want to deal with this problem that is what you have got to do and I think the danger is because, as you rightly imply, people get very worried about the implications of that, then we just don’t deal with the problem.
Interviewer:
The difficulty comes though that the very people that you have not been able to reach, you have not been able to reach because they don’t want to engage with authority very often. That’s the problem, so how are you going to ensure that the support packages that you may be able to put in place will actually be taken up, that they won’t just say this is none of your business. Get lost.
Prime Minister:
Well again that is a very good point. I mean the Sure Start programme has been very, very successful ..
Interviewer:
But they don’t do it properly that’s the problem.
Prime Minister:
The very point I was about to make is, the trouble is some of the Families, what we call the ‘hard to reach families’ - aren’t going. Now they may not be going because they don’t want to go. That is one problem. They may not be going because their problems are such that they are simply not focused on it and then that is when you have to bring the help to them. And actually the evidence from other countries, and there is now some basis of evidence that we can draw on, is that the majority of the families, not all of them, but the majority when you offer that help at a very early stage, for example with their drug and alcohol abuse problem or in the case of the teenage mum, actually they do take it, but you have to bring the help to them. You have to target it and bring it to them in a more interventionist way.
Now for those that simply refuse to have any help we already have through the Anti-Social Behaviour legislation parenting orders, individual support orders and so on. So you have a range of sanctions there if you have to use them but the evidence from other countries is that actually if people do know how to get the help they do want to take it because they realise that their life is being improved.
Interviewer:
We are not talking about anti-social behaviour here. We are talking about a mum who is finding it hard to cope with a baby. You know, there is no anti-social behaviour, there is no truancy, there are no kids wandering around late at night. And your critics will say this isn’t what government should be doing. They shouldn’t be getting in the way of people bringing up their kids as they see fit. Unless there is evidence of real abuse, you should steer clear.
Prime Minister:
That is the issue. But the question is, if you do steer clear then by the time when all the indicators are that this kid is going to have a difficult time and be a problem later. If you do steer clear then you end up with what we have now and every community knows it. Small groups of families whose kids are completely out of control, whose families are dysfunctional and actually causing a nightmare for the whole neighbourhood and also for those children that then end up going into kids homes and multiple foster parents and so on, and so you either steer clear, as you say, and say well that is not for government to get into, in which case you don’t deal with the problem or, and this is really what I’m saying I think we need to do with these particular issues, we actually do intervene and we intervene at a very early stage
Interviewer:
Even if they don’t want to be ‘intervened’ as it were?
Prime Minister:
I think you have to do that because otherwise you are in a situation when the problem then grows and at some point society has to deal with it. Now when I say intervene even if people don’t want it, I don’t think it is too much to say if you have got someone who is a teenage mum, not in a stable relationship, not married and not in a stable relationship, well look here is the support we are prepared to offer you, but we do need to keep a careful watch on you and how your situation is developing because all the indicators are is that your type of situation can lead to problems in the future. Now as I say I know it is a very difficult thing to say, but I think if we are realistically going to deal with this problem, then that is what we are going to have to do. And you know as I say in the past few years we have done everything we can to improve people’s material prosperity at the lower end of the market, so people who are low income families have benefited enormously from the Working Families Tax Credit, from all the help that has been given and so on and many of those families can sort themselves out and do well, but for that small group that that doesn’t really work for because their problems are not simply about low income, they are also about this multiple range of other social and personal problems, I think for those you have to be prepared to intervene earlier and before the problem has reached the height it often then does at a later stage.
Interviewer:
Obviously you will want to intervene and that support to be taken up, to cajole, to try and encourage people to take the help that is on offer but at some point you have to think about sanctions. Would you lower the bar, as it were, for the point at which Social Services can go in and look at the welfare of the child, and perhaps removing that child from that situation. Is that where you end up?
Prime Minister:
Well I think that is one of the things you have got to look at because again I think the danger is and social workers and others are often put into a very difficult situation. They intervene early people say this is the nanny state. They intervene late people say why didn’t you recognise there was a problem. Now what I am saying, and I think this is one of the benefits of what we can draw on, not just with our experience in government, look at the experience in other European countries, in the United States and places like New Zealand and Australia which have similar types of society and where there is now a very clear body of evidence that you can predict reasonably accurately although nothing is 100%, but reasonably accurately - the kids and the families that are going to be difficult for the future.
Interviewer:
For some people, this is Big Brother. This is, ‘that kid there is a problem of the future, we must go in’.
Prime Minister:
Yes but you are going into offer help and support. For example
Interviewer:
You may be going into say well you are not going to accept our support, so we will take your child away.
Prime Minister:
Well you have got to look after the interests of the child. These are families, for example supposing you have got a family in which one parent or maybe two are heavy drug abusers of hard drugs. Do you just let the kid be brought up in that family with no help and no support, no intervention with the parents to say that your lifestyle is going to be a problem. Maybe the particular person as a result of the habit that they have got they are either into crime or prostitution. The child is being brought up in those circumstances. Now I don’t think it is Big Brother to say look this is a situation in which this child is being put at risk in being brought up in a household where these problems exist and no-one is going in there to offer help and support and an intervention to say look you have got a problem here and you have got to take responsibility in dealing with this problem and if you are not prepared to take responsibility then we have got to try and make sure that the interests of the child are protected.
So I know, as you rightly imply, we are intervening in an area that is very, very difficult, there are many really hard questions about that. That is why we are at the stage, if you like, of starting a debate about it, but my own judgement is based on the experience we have accumulated in government but also the experience in other countries is that if we are not prepared to predict and intervene far more early then there are children that are going to grow up in families that we know perfectly well are completely dysfunctional and the kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society and actually a threat to themselves.
Interviewer:
Do you think looking back that perhaps you should have been bolder on social exclusion, that the efforts that you put in place when you first came to office were fine in the wide situation but that actually you should have been more radical, bolder in those early years to actually deal with this problem?
Prime Minister:
Well I think it is partly that I don’t think we would get the consent for that more radical action until we can show them that all the general intervention, through tax credits, through Sure Start, through the investment in the schools and communities and so on, wasn’t the rising tide that was going to lift all the ships, and I think in a way you are at the point now where you are able to say, look. no-one can say to us it is just a problem of poverty because we are dealing with poverty insofar I think probably more than most governments in Europe and around the world, but we have still got this problem.
Interviewer:
We talked about public health recently and you were saying, you know I don’t think we should worry so much about the nanny state. I just wondered whether, looking back across your time in office, you felt well maybe we should have been a bit bolder earlier. Do you have regrets?
Prime Minister:
Well you can always look back in hindsight and say this and that. But I think the very conversation we are having now is an indication of how you are crossing quite a serious threshold when you are talking about these issues in this way and I think it is probably only now when people can see, no-one now talks about poverty through mass unemployment in today’s society. If you look at unemployment now, even though I grew up in politics with the march for jobs and all the 1980s and 3 million unemployed, it is not what people think about today. So I think it is only now really that you are able to get the consent to say OK we have lifted many people out of poverty. Those people that needed some help with income or a job or skills, we have lifted them. Forget about the rest.
Interviewer:
This is an initiative that is going to take some years to resolve. Can people have confidence that it is ever going to come to fruition. After all, you will have almost certainly will have left office before the ink
is barely dry on the plan.
Prime Minister:
Well you know I think for us as a Party and a government I mean this is something we are passionate about and have developed over a number of years and it will continue long after I have gone.
Interviewer:
Can we be sure of that though? How do you know that your successor is not going to say well that was Tony Blair’s idea, but I have got my own views.
Prime Minister:
Well you can never be sure about anything in politics since it is up to people to elect governments and they can elect different governments with different perspectives. Funnily enough though I think in what I have been talking to you about over these last few minutes, I think most sensible people, really whatever their political persuasion, will at least say well yes this is a debate we need to have and I am confident enough that we can lead people to the point at which they say OK maybe we do have to intervene in that way and I think that in the end the best basis for your policies continuing is that people believe they are right.
Interviewer:
But there is an issue, isn’t there, about the fact that Ministers in your government, there is no new money for this, they are going to have to shift resources to put this plan into action, and they may already be looking and saying well we know that Tony is not going to be around perhaps in a year or two, and they are looking at the next guy, aren’t they?
Prime Minister:
Yes but I think that anybody who looks at this problem will come to pretty much the same type of conclusion.
Interviewer:
Really?
Prime Minister:
Oh I think so and the work that we have been doing recently has been an indication of that. If you take for example the help that we are targeting, trying to get kids to stay on at school. This is the development of policy that has been going on throughout the government over this last decade, so I am pretty confident it will continue, yes.
Interviewer:
Thank you very much indeed.
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