This week, the two main parties plan to make iconic pledges that they hope will appeal to their core vote, but that are pretty poor policy. David Cameron will today pledge to keep ‘pensioner perks’ – universal benefits for older voters such as the free bus pass and the winter fuel payment – while Labour expects to announce its new tuition fees policy. The only thing that gives the Tories any sense of moral high ground in this is that they have at least worked out how to fund their pledge, while Labour is still scrapping over the money for and detail of its plan to cut tuition fees.
Why are these bad policies? The winter fuel payment and free public transport go to pensioners who are very wealthy, as well as those who genuinely benefit from the perks and who do spend their winter fuel money on winter fuel, rather than winter wine. Cameron will today talk about the second group, describing ‘the older woman who can keep warm tonight on this cold February evening, because she’s been given the money to heat her home’ and ‘the widower who heading into into town on the bus, doing his shopping, seeing people for the only time that week’. These images make the case for the benefits, but not their universality. Cameron could equally talk about the wealthy retired financier, who spends his winter fuel payment on fine wine.
The Prime Minister will argue that means-testing would not save very much money, but at a time when the welfare bill is being shaved with a couple of hundred million here and another hundred million there, the saving – and the principle – would still be important.
Additionally, if the Conservatives are, like many, rather frustrated by the way a debate about pensioner benefits turns into intergenerational warfare, then they are hardly doing much to calm those tensions. The party has already said it will cut benefits for young people who do not engage in some kind of voluntary work. There are many arguments in favour of that sort of policy, and the Prime Minister outlined them well recently. But it remains difficult to justify a state handout for another group that is not always spent on the necessity it is supposed to fund.
As for Labour, when it announces its tuition fees cut with whatever funding arrangements the party has managed to agree on, it will be doing so not because its policy will improve social mobility but because Ed Miliband made a pledge before the evidence showed the £9,000 fees weren’t putting disadvantaged students off. But Labour hopes it will appeal to those young people who do vote, as well as their parents worried about the cost of the fees. That might be easier than bothering to explain how undergraduate financing works, on which the government has done a good job, but it’s turning out to be considerably harder to find the money.
So both parties are making pledges on the basis that some voters will like them, rather than that they will work. These are not mutually exclusive: you can have a policy that people like and will vote for that also works. But not in these cases.
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