BRITISH PRIME minister David Cameron has rejected charges by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is implementing radical changes in British society “for which no one has voted”. It has been described as the most forthright intervention by a religious leader for a generation.
Speaking at Stormont during a visit to Northern Ireland, Mr Cameron sought to downplay the confrontation, saying he welcomed the opening of a two-way debate with the archbishop, although a number of low-level Conservatives had been dispatched during the course of the day to openly criticise the intervention.
Dr Williams said radical changes to the National Health Service and schools in England had been greeted with “bafflement and indignation” by the public. “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.”
He also criticised the coalition’s efforts to reform social welfare, saying there has been “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor” and ‘steady pressure to increase’ punitive measures for alleged abuses”.
Of Mr Cameron’s ambitions to create a “Big Society” – where some social and community work is taken over by charities and private groups rather than be state-run, Dr Williams said the widespread suspicion remained that this was being done “for opportunistic or money-saving reasons”. “Even the term has fast become painfully stale. Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around questions such as these at present,” said the archbishop, who has never been shy about entering political debate in the past.
Mr Cameron said: “I don’t think it’s good or right for people in our country if we give up on paying down our debts 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’s 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.”
On the archbishop’s criticisms of his education policies, Mr Cameron said: “When it comes to education there’s nothing good or right in allowing people to stay trapped in schools that often aren’t giving them a good education.” Some Conservatives, even though they disagreed with Dr Williams, were privately pleased at his comments as they allow the coalition to highlight actions taken on welfare fraud and the debts left behind by Labour.
Conservative backbencher Roger Gale said: “For him, as an unelected member of the upper house and as an appointed and unelected primate, to criticise the coalition government as undemocratic and not elected to carry through its programme is unacceptable.
“Dr Williams clearly does not understand the democratic process. If he did, he would appreciate that elected members of the House of Commons are not mandated. We are sent to Westminster by our constituents to face and address the situation as we find it, to use our brains and to endeavour to act and to legislate in the best interests of those that we represent.”
Conservative MP Gary Streeter told the BBC: “I think the people are with us on this and the archbishop, sadly and unusually for him, has ill-judged his attack. I would just guess that most people would be slightly baffled by the archbishop’s comments.”
