The Archbishop of Canterbury’s sharp rebuke of the British government’s welfare reform has put the Church of England in the midst of a major political debate.
Writing in the New Statesman, Dr Rowan Williams questioned the morality of David Cameron’s Conservative party’s policies on welfare reform.
Dr Williams attacked changes in the National Health Service and education which he said had left people “baffled and indignant”.
He labelled Cameron’s “Big Society” as “painfully stale” and something that is viewed with “widespread suspicion”.
“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context,” Williams wrote.
“The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument.”
On welfare reform, he said there had been “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor” combined with a “steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.”
“The Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around.”
An angry PM hit back swiftly at Williams claiming that Jesus would back his “Big Society” plans.
Speaking from Ireland, Cameron said he agreed that the Archbishop was free to express his political views and that the Church is entitled to make political interventions.
However the PM also said he profoundly disagrees with many of the views that the Archbishop expressed, particularly on issues like debt and welfare and education.
“I don’t think it is good or right for people and our country if we just give up on paying down our debt and just pass that down to our children.”
“I don’t see anything good or even moral in that approach. I don’t think it is good or right for us to pay people to stay on welfare, trapped in poverty, when we should be trying to get them a job.”
Catholic support of “Big Society” being tested
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, the nation’s leading Catholic bishop, has praised Cameron for putting marriage and family stability at the centre of policy-making.
Having previously spoken of the “genuine moral agenda” driving the Government’s the “Big Society,” as an opportunity to build a stronger society, he fears communities hit by the economic downturn will suffer if they don’t get support.
Nichols accused the Government of washing its hands of responsibilities to communities and expecting volunteers to fill the gap.
“It is all very well to deliver speeches about the need for greater voluntary activity, but there needs to be some practical solutions,” he said.
“At the moment the Big Society is lacking a cutting edge. It has no teeth.”
“Devolving greater power to local authorities should not be used as a cloak for masking central cuts,” Archbishop Nichols warned.
“It is not sufficient for the Government, in its localism programme, simply to step back from social need and say this is a local issue.”
“We’re now at a very critical point, with the philosophy of the Big Society getting clearer, but on the other hand the effects of the cuts are becoming real and there’s real pressure about what will happen on the ground,” said Archbishop Nichols.
Sources