Principles of Social Justice

"David Miller is a moral philosopher. I read Principles of Social Justice when researching my newest book, Them and Us . It was very influential in helping me to harden views about inequality and fairness that I’ve held for many years. There are traces of this thinking in [my books] The State We ’ re In and The Writing on the Wall but I hadn’t crystallised it until I read Miller. Essentially what he argues is that if you are to operationalise social justice – so that people actually put their hands into their pockets, and financially or in another way help their fellow man or woman – then the only way to turn abstract notions into actually making that happen is if the value system that underpins it is felt to correspond to deeply held human instincts. Although Miller is sympathetic to John Rawls and his theory of justice – that the test of a just society is whether you would be indifferent to which family you are born into, because the opportunity to exploit all your talents would be equal wherever you were – he feels that doesn’t really cut it, because people do feel that there should be a proportional relationship between effort and reward, or due desert. He also explores the role of luck in society. He acknowledges that some people are prettier, physically stronger or more intellectually adept at some things than others. The skills that one has are just there , and people are then better or worse able to exploit those skills. So there will always be an element of income inequality in any society. The question is whether it is felt to be deserved. Yes, I used precisely these ideas in that commission which I was asked to lead by the government. I was asked to investigate the question of high pay in the public sector, think through some principles for addressing it, and see if those principles could be used more broadly in the private sector. I used Miller’s ideas of desert – the Treasury officials I was working with must have thought, what is Will Hutton going on about? – and notions of good and bad luck. People feel strongly about circumstantial luck that you have done nothing to earn. An unearned bonus is felt to be very illegitimate, and equally if you are very ill or hurt yourself badly that’s considered brute bad luck that we should do something about. So I used these principles of fairness to address high pay. I said there is a strong sense among the British that high pay for some public servants – teachers, headmasters, police chief constables – is fair do’s if they’re doing a great job. Where things go pear-shaped is where the public feel that their tax pounds are being spent by someone who’s gamed the system and is being overpaid for the job that they do. More than that, actually. It’s over 140 times median pay. Pay in the private sector has just gone sky high."