My Life

by Malcolm Wicks

(Matador, £9.99)

The Tories sometimes defend their privatisation policies by saying that they are based on Labour "reforms" such as the hated Atos work assessment tests, introduced by Tony Blair's Welfare Reform Act.

With its new Labour mantra of "working families," Labour under Ed Miliband seems increasingly ambivalent toward the welfare state it created and was justly proud of.

That's one reason why this posthumously published autobiography by Malcolm Wicks, who died from cancer in 2012, is of interest. A former anti-poverty minister, after his Civil Service career he became Labour MP for Croydon North in 1992 and went on to work in several ministries under Blair.

In the book Wicks reveals historical divisions over welfare within the Labour front bench and argues for a new commitment to a reformed and collectivist welfare state by the party.

"A good starting point," Wicks remarkably declares, "are the values of the French revolution - liberte, egalite, fraternite" though he is not clear how welfare can be both contributory and inclusive.

He reveals that as a civil servant with access to Cabinet papers it was he who in 1975 broke the Official Secrets Act and blew the whistle on the Labour government's attempts to ditch the party's commitment to child benefit.

This was the much-needed replacement for family allowances, an idea put forward by Eleanor Rathbone in 1917, supported by Beveridge in 1942 and enacted by the post-war Labour government.

Though privately educated, Wicks was the son of a committed Labour family and after studying at LSE he joined the newly established Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).

In 1965 the group called on Harold Wilson to achieve "a radical improvement" for families living in poverty by overhauling tax and family allowances, which became a manifesto commitment in 1974.

As a social worker at that time I welcomed this, though the language of "scroungers" and "layabouts," which Wicks notes is now increasingly prevalent among Labour voters, caused me to resign from Labour.

I joined CPAG, though it says something about poverty issues that such a lobby group has proved necessary.

In March 1976, just as success looked likely, Wilson suddenly and mysteriously resigned, resulting in Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey manoeuvring to introduce a means-tested scheme. Wicks writes of lies and "fabricated" briefings to mislead trade unionists that backbenchers were not in favour of child benefit. There was dismay among anti-poverty campaigners as Callaghan began changing special advisers.

One of them was Tony Lynes, now active in the National Pensioners Convention, who took the flak for the leak and was named by the Sun. But it was the then CPAG director Frank Field - who writes a fulsome forward to this book - who revealed the inside story without naming Wicks.

After risking near defeat in the Commons, following lobbies including Labour women, Callaghan was forced to back down. The new benefit, worth nine per cent of average wages and for the first time paid for the eldest child, was phased in from 1977.

It became one of Labour's most effective anti-poverty measures since the creation of the welfare state, though its introduction owed much to lobbyists. Indeed, 40 years later, Wicks admits he was surprised to find that Ed Balls is "no friend of universal child benefit and something of a means tester."

With Labour's increased emphasis on "middle England" and the "deserving poor" the struggle over welfare policy continues as doubtless will the use of the Official Secrets Act to gag whistleblowers.