The welfare state
Dick Stockford asks: what happened to the welfare state?
We have the best welfare state in the world; or perhaps we did, but surely if that were so, what follows can’t be us?
Education performance has dropped to twenty-third out of the twenty-six most developed countries, our health service is failing to meet the most basic targets of patient safety and care, our social security system has become an unwanted way of life for too many, housebuilding in the public sector falls in each successive year and homelessness rises, thirty per cent of children are overweight or obese, we have or had the highest level of births to girls under sixteen in Western Europe, sexual abuse and the neglect of children seem to be at record levels, our prisons are bursting with record levels of violence and drug taking and we are, not surprisingly, stressed and turning to overstretched GPs and even legal highs for relief.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.