Good condition

Conditionality will be an important approach to the emerging politics of public behaviour

'Wicked issues', from obesity to climate change and welfare reform, are reshaping government around a new set of priorities: the politics of public behaviour. More than ever governments are being asked to confront the public consequences of private decisions. Politicians find themselves drawn into questions about how children are parented, how household waste is disposed of, how much we save for later in life, how much we eat, drink, smoke and exercise.

One expression of this is the use of conditionality in public policy: attaching terms and conditions to state support. For example, those who can work are expected to do so; benefits are conditional on people actively looking for jobs. As Ed Straw and others have argued, conditionality has a track record of changing people's behaviour and a range of possible applications. However, as the proposed uses of conditionality grow, the issue is where is it both legitimate and useful? What are the conditions for conditionality?

The first question to ask is whether conditionality is simply a means of testing eligibility for state support? Or whether is it actually a more paternalistic measure designed to help people for their own sake? The distinction matters, because each answer requires its own justification and each produces its own set of policy prescriptions.

Second, how should progressives draw their ethical boundaries when rationing public resources? The welfare state was designed to pool risk - so when and where is it unacceptable to impose costs on other taxpayers? Is an unhealthy lifestyle socially unacceptable or a personal choice? Are there one set of rules for welfare and another for the NHS? And what should be the response when people express a wish to change their behaviour, but are unable to do so in practice?

Third, there are practical questions. How can governments calculate accurate costs and implement the right conditions? It has been suggested, for example, that those who die young from unhealthy lifestyles actually cost the taxpayer less than those who live longer and require care in old age. Meanwhile, conditionality seems to fit more easily with old-style public services, where government assumed that it held the answers, rather than personalised services that involve people in creating solutions to problems that are personal to them.

The lesson seems to be that conditionality has a role to play, but that the prospect of its misuse looms large. To guide policy, some principles need to be established, tested and refined. In The Politics of Public Behaviour, a forthcoming Demos pamphlet, we propose the following tests:

• Clear-cut, unacceptable, social costs: a person's decisions would impose unacceptable costs on others
  
  
• Abuse rather than reliance: costs would be incurred through abuse of a system, or dereliction of a duty of care for another person, rather than due to reliance on state support
  
  
• A clear solution: there would be a straightforward solution to address the problem, through fulfilling a condition or conditions.
  
  
• Acceptable levels of stress: the process of imposing a condition would avoid unacceptable levels of discomfort for the individuals involved.
  
  
• Realistic, enforceable conditions: the consequences of the enforcement of a condition would be acceptable in practice.
  
  
• A measure of last resort: conditions would only be imposed after other, less coercive, approaches had been tried.

Where does that leave conditionality? Expecting divorcing couples to agree a parenting plan would pass the tests above on most peopleÕs reckoning. So would making welfare payments contingent on parents paying child benefit to one another. But on more fundamental - and complex - issues, such as healthcare, conditionality looks entirely redundant.

Finally, what of conditionality as a paternalistic measure? Some people may prefer having some rules and boundaries to help them change their own behaviour, but also reserve the right to change their mind. Here, the US has one answer. In some states gamblers have the legal option of banning themselves from casinos. People sign documents precluding future entry and foregoing any potential winnings, leading to one man being forced to hand over winnings of $1,223 from one 'illegal' entry to a casino.

There is a serious discussion to be had about the use of these tools. Are the conditions right? Does 'soft paternalism' go too far? All of this needs to be debated, but as governments inevitably find themselves mired in the politics of public behaviour, that discussion needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Duncan O'Leary is a senior researcher at Demos. He is the editor of the forthcoming Demos publication, The Politics of Public Behaviour

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