21 March 2008
The government wants us to have a big conversation about Britishness. But its proposals for probationary citizenship and symbolic ceremonies are deeply controversial – with major implications for public services. Alex Klaushofer reports
They're flying the Union flag in central government. Britishness, long a favourite theme of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's, came noisily to the fore last week with some controversial proposals on citizenship.
A government review, led by former attorney general Lord Goldsmith, suggested that school leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen or country: an idea promptly described as
'half-baked' and 'rather silly' by prominent critics. The rest of the package included a British national day, a national citizens corps and council tax rebates for active citizens.
Along with the green paper, The path to citizenship: next steps in reforming the immigration system, launched by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last month, these initiatives represent the most ambitious attempt so far to translate 'British values' into public policy.
It's been a long time coming. Brown has been banging the Britishness drum for years, with speech after speech on the values of fairness and tolerance that bind the nation together, and the need for a contemporary form of patriotism that expresses the unique history and rich demographic mix of the British Isles. Some commentators have suggested that his views on the subject underpin his entire political philosophy.
Britishness is certainly being taken increasingly seriously across government. Picking up on Brown's 'British workers for British jobs' line in his speech to last year's Labour Party conference, few ministerial pronouncements are complete these days without some reference to British values, rights and entitlements.
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears is emerging as Brown's right-hand Britishness woman, arguing that more national ceremonies will bring Britain's ethnic communities together. And local authorities have been carrying out citizenship ceremonies with some degree of success.
But, generally, progress on giving some practical expression to these ideas of nationhood has been slow. The idea of a 'British Day', equivalent to the Fourth of July independence celebrations in the US, was in fact suggested by Brown more than two years ago but has yet to gain any purchase.
Meanwhile, the introduction of a 'Life in the UK' test, which became obligatory for aspiring citizens in 2005, has generated some good old British fun. Research earlier this year by a publishing house that produces British citizenship study guides found that only 14% of Brits who sat a sample Home Office test on Facebook passed, coming sixth in a ranking topped by the Poles. The hilarity was further compounded when Mike Gapes, chair of the foreign affairs select committee, failed to make the grade when he was set an online Britishness test.
The government's earned citizenship green paper takes further the idea at the heart of the test – that you have to qualify to be British – enshrining the principle that membership of British society is a social contract that involves responsibilities as well as rights.
It proposes that would-be citizens, having become eligible for a passport after five years in the country, then serve a probationary period of one to three years while they demonstrate their commitment to British life with community work or public service.
Along with the home secretary's confirmation this month that some non-European Union migrants will need ID cards from November, while they will be voluntary for British citizens, the proposals deepen a distinction between the two groups. Probationary citizens' entitlement to public services will be severely limited, leaving them ineligible for social housing and for benefits other than those based on National Insurance contributions. They will also have to pay overseas student fee rates for higher education.
The plans immediately drew criticism from MPs and campaigners concerned about the treatment of immigrants as second-class citizens, with former Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart and Home Affairs select committee chair Keith Vaz suggesting they might prove discriminatory and damaging to race relations in the UK.
While the Equality and Human Rights Commission says it is 'comfortable with the general nature of the proposals', others in the policy world are wondering how they might affect a public service reform programme that prizes inclusiveness and equality.
'My concern is that if you withdraw too many benefits from people who are here long term but not citizens, you risk undermining all sorts of things like equality and public health,' says Danny Sriskandarajah, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research's migration, equalities and citizenship team.
'If you leave the big rewards towards the end of the citizenship process and set the hurdles very high, you risk excluding large numbers of people, with the result that they don't necessarily feel a full part of British society, despite the fact they may spend the rest of their lives here or be entitled to services as taxpayers.'
Nick Johnson, director of policy at the Institute for Community Cohesion, also questions whether a lengthy process of 'probationary citizenship' might alienate newcomers. 'If you think you might be leaving next week, you're not going to do all those things you might do to integrate like joining voluntary groups or getting to know your neighbour,' he says. 'It encourages a head-down, keep-yourself-to-yourself approach, rather than becoming part of British society.'
He adds: 'Our entire public services are built on an ethos of free at the point of delivery, and are based on need. If you deny people access to services and they are in need they could end up on the street.'
Drill down into the detail and the realities of translating British values into policy emerge as still more complex. The green paper's proposed 'migrant fund', to be paid for by higher fees on visa applications to ease the 'transitional pressures' faced by councils hosting large influxes of migrants, has been met with bemusement by local authority representatives.
'That's really not going to help at all to alleviate the pressure. What we need are better population statistics so that we can make sure the right money gets to the right places,' says a spokeswoman for the Local Government Association, which argues that a £250m contingency fund would serve stretched councils better.
And Matthew Clifton, research manager at the New Local Government Network think-tank, says the research cited by the government in the green paper – showing that migrants generally contribute more to the British system than they take out – makes the thinking behind the proposed fund hard to understand.
'Since the government does not suggest they are a net cost to the country, it is unclear why non-European Economic Area migrants should pay a surcharge to alleviate short-term pressures on local public services,' he says.
'The government is right to identify that local government funding does not respond quickly enough to the demands of local population change because of a lack of accurate data,' he adds. 'But it's hard to be certain that a new fund would be distributed any more equitably than existing government grant.'
Beyond the nitty-gritty of local government finance, there are also concerns about whether limiting entitlement to public services might conflict with councils' wider mission to improve life in their patch. 'There is potential impact on councils' ability to deliver on community cohesion,' says Rose Doran, community cohesion programme manager at the Improvement and Development Agency. 'Existing asylum legislation means there is already a gap in terms of vulnerable people who aren't entitled to housing, benefits or help against domestic violence. It is possible that a larger group of people will effectively be “outside” British society.'
This concern is shared by social housing providers, in the light of the proposal that probationary citizens should be ineligible for help. 'If more people are to be excluded from social housing allocations, this raises questions about how their housing needs will be met,' says Helen Williams, assistant director of neighbourhoods at the National Housing Federation.
Housing associations, she says, are already seeing migrants who are unemployed or on low pay struggling to afford decent accommodation. 'People ineligible for social housing who are literally roofless or living at the bottom end of the private rented sector are economising by being crammed many to a room, or living in housing that falls way short of the decent homes standard,' she adds. 'We do need to factor in the demand for new migrants who are playing a key role in our economy and society.'
The practicalities of implementing a triage system might also prove tricky for health providers. Current practice in the NHS, where non-EU visitors, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers with failed applications are not entitled to free treatment, is a blend of pragmatism and the humanitarian impulse: anyone who turns up at A&E will be given the treatment they need, while non-emergency patients are checked for their eligibility and might be asked to pay a deposit.
'Policing when someone turns up at A&E or a walk-in centre is really difficult,' says Dr Nick Goodwin, senior fellow at health think-tank the King's Fund. 'No-one is going to ask for their passport, or where they live.'
Under the earned citizenship proposals, probationary citizens will still have access to NHS care. But a review being conducted by the Department of Health and the Home Office aims to clarify the rules. According to Goodwin, while clarification would be welcome, opening a debate about accessibility is a risky business, particularly if the result is that more people are deemed ineligible for services.
'With rising health care costs, it's natural that the question of whether someone should be entitled to free health care should be asked. It's a legitimate question, but it's also an emotive one,' he says. 'We're talking about people who are very poor and may be in ill health. People may wonder whether we are undermining human rights, or turning away people who are really in need.'
A lesson on how implementing policies promoting the British values agenda might go down with public service professionals comes from recent research in education. Earlier this year, Michael Hand, a senior lecturer in the philosophy of education at the Institute of Education, published a report on the responses of 50 citizenship and history teachers and 300 students to the idea of bringing patriotism into the curriculum. He came up with some bad news for the government, particularly if it wants to press ahead with a US-style oath of allegiance.
'The view of teachers was that schools had no business in doing things like propping up national pride or British values,' he says. Their 15- and 16-year-old pupils were not much keener: 'They don't want schools telling them how they should feel about their country,' he adds.
How far this sort of response will play out on a national scale is to be tested in September, when schools will be required to introduce a new 'identity and diversity' strand as part of the citizenship curriculum at Key Stages Three and Four. 'People will begin to explore what it means to be part British as part of wider discussions of their identity and the values associated with them,' said a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills.
In the meantime, experts feel that the government should be taking a more measured approach to the whole question. Sriskandarajah is worried about how the discussion of British values and entitlement has become intertwined with the heated debate about immigration. 'This is an incredibly important conversation to have,' he says. 'My fear is that we won't be able to have a sensible conversation.'
Johnson, who is generally supportive of attempts to enhance a shared sense of British culture and identity through measures such as a written constitution, a Bill of rights and better communication for newcomers, is also wary of the way Brown's Britishness is taking tangible form.
'Government can lead the debate, but it doesn't have to be prescriptive. You don't want it to get into too much detail below that,' he says. 'We tend to jump from the concept to the detail very quickly.'
Ironically, for a policy world that is dominated by proposals and solutions, it seems that the 'British values' agenda is one area of public life where some of the people who care about it most would like to see more thought, and less action.
PFmar2008
