BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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the Prime Minister. That it did prove possible to overhaul the administration of the work-permit system at an outpost in Sheffield only deepened
frustration at the IND’s inability to transform the handling of asylum
casework in Croydon. Successive governments’ preoccupation with
cutting immigration numbers, a culture of reaction to events, and the
35 See Audit Commission, Crossing Borders; and Sarah Spencer, Martin Ruhs, Bridget
Anderson and Ben Rogaly, Migrants’ Lives Beyond the Workplace: Central and East
Europeans in the UK (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007).
36 Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, www.abni.org.uk/about/background/
index.html.
37 Tony Blair, ‘Our Nation’s Future, Multiculturalism and Integration’, speech to the
Runnymede Trust, 8 December 2006, www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page10563.asp.
perception of the IND as a career backwater had, it seems, led to a department unable to think strategically or to join up related policy areas, even
within the Home Office itself. The foreign prisoners’ fiasco that ended
Charles Clarke’s period at the Home Office in 2005, and arose from the
failure of the IND and the Prison Service to communicate on the deportation of foreign-born prisoners, was only one visible example. Clarke
had overseen changes in the IND, including importing senior people with
operational experience from outside government, but did not last to see
the fruits of those reforms.
The frustration at the lack of both efficiency and transparency in case
management was felt as deeply by immigration lawyers, who pressed
repeatedly for migrants and their representatives to receive a better
service. One suspects it was not this concern that Reid had in mind when
he told the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2006 that his department
was ‘not fit for purpose’, instigating a review of the IND which finally led
to its separation in April 2007 into the Border and Immigration Agency.
The Blair effect
Blair must shoulder some responsibility for the party’s failure to anticipate Britain’s emerging position within the global movement of people –
the inevitability that migration would have a growing economic and
social impact in Britain – and consequently for the government’s lack of
vision and strategic objectives on taking power in 1997. Nevertheless,
faced with significant skill and labour shortages, Blair showed a courage
in opening up the UK’s labour market that was lacking in most of his
European counterparts. He leaves Britain on the map as a country which
is firmly open to labour migration in a way that seemed inconceivable
only a decade ago. When an ippr report in 1994 argued for the economic
benefits of migration to be recognised, and suggested lessons could be
learnt from countries of immigration such as Canada, it was a voice in the
wilderness.38 That view is now mainstream, and in a global economy it is
unlikely that openness to labour migration – at different levels and in
different forms – will be reversed. The job of government is no longer
simply to control and exclude. ‘Even the Tories will not row back on this’,
Pearce says: ‘there has been a shift in the political landscape which is here
to stay’.
38 Sarah Spencer, Strangers and Citizens: A Positive Approach to Migrants and Refugees
(London: Rivers Oram, 1994).
Blair made little attempt, however, to convince the public of the rationale for this new approach. Positive messages from Home Office ministers on the economic benefits of labour migration were drowned by the
negative messages on asylum. Convinced that the public would only be
reassured by tough messages and action on asylum, Blair gave it an extraordinary amount of his personal attention. In the period 2001–2004, a
senior adviser says he attended more than fifty meetings Blair held on
asylum, some lasting three to four hours, and doubts there was any single
issue other than Iraq on which he had as many meetings:
It was the sheer drive, having set that Newsnight target that he put into
delivery. If left to their own devices the Home Office would not have driven
on asylum as much as they did. The Home Office is so driven by day to day
events that, without pressure to keep going on an issue for months and
months on end, it just doesn’t happen. There was a consistent pressure
from the PM which they couldn’t ignore.
To the extent that the external controls and exclusion from work and
benefits did contribute to the fall in asylum numbers, Blair must therefore take some credit. To the extent that those measures eroded the
refugee protection regime, preventing individuals in need of protection
from reaching Britain and leaving some of those who did destitute, he
must share responsibility.
The issue on which Labour focused in its 1997 manifesto, the treatment of family members, should not be overlooked in assessing Blair’s
legacy. The ‘primary purpose’ rule had cast suspicion on anyone entering
the UK for marriage, and the impact of correcting that injustice,
Mactaggart, insists, was ‘iconic’, as was the decision in 2002 to restore citizenship to British Overseas Citizens whose right of entry had been withdrawn: ‘They had been deprived of their citizenship. We gave it back to
them. It was the morally right thing to do. We could change a rule and
have a positive impact on people’s lives.’ With the focus by then on
asylum, the government got little credit for righting this ‘historic wrong’.
Giving substance to the acquisition of citizenship may also prove to have
more than symbolic significance if those who acquire it feel a stronger
sense of acceptance in British society. The failure to develop a strategy to
address the needs of the 1,500 migrants who arrive in the UK each day and
their impact on local communities was a surprising omission that left local
authorities in a policy vacuum from which they have yet to emerge.
Blair inherited an Immigration and Nationality Directorate incapable of strategic planning, efficient casework management or effective
enforcement. Coping with six major Acts of Parliament in less than ten
years arguably exacerbated its difficulties.39 Frustrated that successive
attempts at administrative reform did not deliver, Blair’s insistence on
results finally led to the IND’s rebirth as the Border and Immigration
Agency in 2007. It remains to be seen whether that will deliver the
efficiency and joined-up administration that eluded it while in the Home
Office. Leaving overall responsibility in a rump Home Office, now
focused almost exclusively on security and policing issues, does not bode
well for a policy that needs to have broader economic, social, human
rights and international development objectives.
A clear lesson from the Blair decade is that migration cannot be
managed solely through tighter controls and tougher enforcement when
the powerful draw of jobs, education, family or a place of safety make
migration an aspiration some will risk all to achieve. In this
, the literature
shows, Britain’s experience mirrors that of other industrialised countries:
policies which do not take account of the long-term dynamic of migration processes in source and receiving countries, of the actual motivations of migrants or the strength of demand for their labour, and which
overestimate the impact of regulation, tend to fail.40 Migration cannot be
turned on and off like a tap.
Blair’s overriding objective was to convince the public that migration
was under control and to neutralise immigration as a political issue. In
that he undoubtedly failed, polls showing public concern rising throughout his period in office, reinforced by the measures and rhetoric that were
meant to reassure. That outcome, and the lessons that could be learnt
from it, are his most enduring legacy to his successor. An immigration
debate that revolves on numbers, that concedes that rising numbers are a
threat per se, cannot be won. For the public and sections of the media any
number is too many; and numbers are not within the government’s
control. Labour failed to shift the debate into more constructive territory
in the early years when it had the greatest chance to succeed. When Blair
left office there was still no sign that it seriously intended to try.
39 Immigration and Asylum Act 1999; Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001;
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002; Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of
Claimants) Act 2004; Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006; UK Borders Bill
2007.
40 Stephen Castles, ‘Why Migration Policies Fail’, Ethnic Studies, 27(2), 2004: 205–27.
17
Schools
Blair came to power in 1997 with improving education as his declared
passion, and believing he knew how to do it. He had tacitly accepted the
major planks of Conservative reform – the national curriculum, national
tests, regular inspections and financial delegation to schools – although
his party had opposed all of them at the outset. But even so he believed
there was a vital missing ingredient: the engine to drive up standards.
And he thought he knew what it was. Governments had traditionally contented themselves with policy and legislation. He wanted his government
to accept responsibility for ‘delivery’ as well, and he had been persuaded
that targets and monitoring were the way to do it.
Within a week of the 1997 election, a Standards and Effectiveness
(SEU) unit had been set up in the Department for Education and
Employment (DfEE, as it was then). It had specific tasks including
‘improving and sustaining standards of attainment’ and ‘monitoring performance in education and intervening where necessary’,1 but it was
intended also as a catalyst to change the culture of a civil service which
‘had little truck with the idea of delivery’.2 Within two weeks, ambitious
national targets for the literacy and numeracy of eleven-year-olds had
been declared and David Blunkett, the Secretary of State, was tempted
into admitting ‘his head would be on the block’3 if they were not met
(which famously became reported as he would resign). This was the first
public indication that Blair’s education ministers would be judged not
only on political nous but also on how well pupils did.4
Blair’s education policy was not all plain sailing, but his struggles were
more with his own backbenchers than the main opposition party. His
first act as leader in July 1994 was to kick into touch the recommendations
11 Department for Education and Skills, Standards Site, Standards and Effectiveness Unit,
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/seu/.
12 Stephen Pollard, David Blunkett (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2005), p. 228.
13 Ibid., p. 256.
4 Ibid., p. 263.
of the education commission set up in the wake of the 1992 election defeat
under the then shadow Secretary of State, Anne Taylor. Her document,
Opening Doors to a Learning Society, proposed, among other things, scrapping league tables, bringing grant-maintained schools back under local
authority control and replacing A-levels by a general diploma. A particularly thorny issue was – and is – the organisation of secondary education.
Old Labour is implacably opposed to academic selection and has long
wanted to see the abolition of the remaining grammar schools, in spite of
their popularity and achievements. Blair thought he had found a convenient way of sidestepping the issue by adopting the mantra ‘standards not
structures’. He could also see the political potential in this respect of the
Conservative’s diversity agenda. Far from an untidy mix of schools being a
problem, it could be argued that the different types were necessary to give
parents choice. With money following pupils, schools would compete for
parental preferences and this would reinforce targets in levering up standards.
For his plans to succeed Blair needed to find extra funding and here he
had to contend with Gordon Brown, his Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who wanted to devote the available money to his own pet, but costly,
scheme of tax credits. There was also a dire shortage of teachers and it was
feared that school staffing was near to collapse. Moreover, the Thatcher
and Major governments had left unfinished business, in particular with
regard to the role of the local education authorities and qualifications
reform. Blair nevertheless felt very confident that education could be
transformed. He had a strong team, carefully laid plans, and the government was riding high in popular support. He had every hope that his
tenure would come to be celebrated as the time when England’s education really did become world-class.
Ten years on we can see how it has all worked out. The numerical
targets enable us to make a quantitative assessment. We can also track
what happened to diversity and choice in secondary education, the social
agenda, the teaching profession, the curriculum and qualifications,
autonomy and accountability, and how much extra money was made
available. This chapter complements the reviews of Blair’s education
policies made immediately after the first and second terms of office.5 The
themes and conclusions remain much the same, but we are now able to
15 Alan Smithers, ‘Education Policy’, in Anthony Seldon (ed.). The Blair Effect (London:
Little, Brown, 2001), pp. 405–26; and Alan Smithers, ‘Education’, in Anthony Seldon and
Dennis Kavanagh (eds.), The Blair Effect 2001–5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), pp. 256–82.
take in the broad sweep of Blair’s thirteen years as Labour leader. We
begin by considering the people who helped to shape his thinking.
People
Blair was particularly fortunate in his first Education Secretary, David
Blunkett, who served for three years in the shadow cabinet and the whole
of the first term. Blunkett was of the left and acted as a bridge between
Blair and Labour activists, but importantly he was also open to new ideas.
It was Blunkett’s powerful speech that helped to ward
off an impending
defeat from the floor at the 1995 Labour Party Conference over grantmaintained schools. Blunkett and his aide Conor Ryan were in on the
meetings of the small group that helped Blair to clarify his thinking and
shape it into policies. Together they wrote, in consultation with Blair’s
advisers, much of the major policy documents, Diversity and Excellence
and Excellence for Everyone, which provided the platform for the first
years in office. David Blunkett, in turn, was fortunate in his permanent
secretary Michael Bichard, who unusually had been appointed from
outside the civil service and was very receptive to Blair’s ideas on delivery.
Beside Blunkett, the key players were David Miliband, Michael Barber,
Andrew Adonis and, less directly, Cyril Taylor. Miliband and Barber were
there from the very beginning. Miliband was brought in from the Institute
of Public Policy Research and Labour’s Social Justice Commission to help
put together Blair’s manifesto for the 1994 leadership contest, and he soon
became Blair’s head of policy. In 1994, he had edited a book, Re-inventing
the Left, which became the ‘set text for New Labour intellectuals’.6 He
played a major role in drafting both the 1997 and 2001 manifestos, and in
2001 he was himself elected an MP. In no time he emerged as the Minister
for School Standards, where he stayed till December 2004.
Barber, chair of education in Hackney, former Labour candidate for
Henley, and professor at the London Institute for Education, drafted
some of Blair’s early important speeches on schooling. It was Barber who
laid the foundations for two of the main prongs of Blair’s education
policy. He was a keen advocate of targets. In The Learning Game (1996),
personally endorsed by Blair, he held out a vision of ‘the power of ambitious targets . . . to provide a real opportunity to generate excitement and
enthusiasm across society’.7 Both Blair and he had been very impressed
6 Andrew Rawnsley, ‘Heir to Blair?’ The Observer, 20 October 2002.
7 Michael Barber, The Learning Game (London: Victor Gollancz, 1996), p. 261.
by the way David Simon and John Browne (both soon to be ennobled)
were using targets to turn British Petroleum from an also-ran into a