Self-help is the key in Blair's vision of welfare

TONY BLAIR's vision of welfare in 2020 was presented for the first time yesterday, with self-help as an inbuilt cornerstone for the middle classes who can afford to stand on their own two feet.

"We want a system that aids those who need it, and helps people to help themselves," the Prime Minister said in a foreword to Frank Field's consultative Green Paper, A New Contract for Welfare. The whole tenor of the document was geared to damping down people's natural fear of change, and the controversy that could be stirred up by it.

But in a Commons statement on a document designed to "break the traditional welfare mould", Mr Field, the minister for welfare reform, said: "Our commitment to the vulnerable is not negotiable. Our commitment to reform is not negotiable."

In a statement that marked a climax in Mr Field's 30-year personal campaign against the kind of poverty that disfigures his own Birkenhead constituency, the minister told MPs: "The new contract is about duty."

A final chapter of the Green Paper, on "Welfare 2020", is full of duties, but short on detail. In one sentence, it says: "Mutuals and private providers - In 2020, these providers will deliver a substantial share of welfare provision, particularly pensions."

It also says that individuals will have duties to be independent, if possible, and to save for retirement, if possible; and to "give support, financial or otherwise, to their children and other family members".

In another chapter on "New Partnerships for Welfare", the Green Paper says: "Provision for a number of contingencies is currently insufficient, including long-term care and protection for homebuyers against the loss of income." But there is little elaboration, beyond the need for a possible introduction of compulsory second pensions. On that, legislation was promised within three years.

After Easter, another Green Paper would be published on Britain's first national childcare strategy; the "scourge of child poverty" would be attacked, including action to reform the Child Support Agency; social exclusion would be tackled through community-based action; and legislation was promised to set up a Disability Rights Commission.

Labour left-wingers said last night that the jury was still out; judgement was suspended pending delivery of hard policy.

While most pressure groups welcomed the Government's commitment to the welfare state they said it was only a start and they wanted more detail of the reforms. Many said it was "a repackaging of proposals that [had] already been announced".

Sally Witcher of the Child Poverty Action Group, the charity Frank Field himself used to head, said that while the organisation welcomed the fact that targets had been set, these should be more specific. "The Green Paper states that success will be measured by a reduction in the proportion of children living in workless households. But for this to be meaningful we need to know by how much."

Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative spokesman, said: "The Green Paper adds nothing to the debate."

Poverty to dignity, pages 8,9

Leading article, page 20

Test for Blair project, page 21