Labour’s drug policy has few defenders, the Right thinking it not tough enough, and the Left thinking it too tough, along with the public health community – and all three agreeing that “we are losing the war on drugs”. But while the Left and the public health community debate the merits of decriminalisation or legalisation, there is a real risk that the Right’s agenda – cutting the money spent on managing drug addicts’ habits, in favour of “abstinence-based” treatment – will go unchallenged.

Few of those working on either drug enforcement or treatment would pretend that we are “winning” the war on drugs. The appalling human and financial toll both of the organised drug trade and of the chaotic lives of individual addicts is all too clear.

But any evidence-based approach should also acknowledge, despite this undeniably bleak landscape, that some trends are at least not going in the wrong direction: overall rates of drug abuse are stable or falling, and numbers in drug treatment have risen. (See page 7; within that overall trend, heroin and crack cocaine use seem to have been falling for some time; powder cocaine use seems to have started to fall; heavy cannabis use, by contrast, seems to be rising.)

That should give anyone pause before taking an axe to the drug treatment budget. Given the fiscal situation, the coalition is right to look for savings from this billion-pound drug budget – indeed many inside the Labour Government felt that, while we had been right to expand this budget a decade ago, we should have found more savings in this area ourselves during our last year.

The coalition is also right to try to accelerate the move away from input targets (numbers in treatment) and towards outcome targets (the number and proportion of users going on to drug free lives) – here too Labour should accept that we were too slow in pushing the National Treatment Agency in this direction over recent years.

But again, any new approach should acknowledge that, while painfully slow, this move towards a focus on outcomes has already begun – and not only are overall rates of drug abuse falling, and more addicts in treatment,  but the proportion completing treatment is rising, and so too is the proportion going on to drug-free lives. (See page 8.)

So there are two reasons for caution before rushing into bold policy adjustments. In fact, for those of us who believe that radical solutions – including decriminalisation, or a pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough – are too risky or too underdeveloped, this is the way drug policy is likely to remain for the foreseeable future – slow, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the stuff of clunky workshops on ‘joined-up working’ rather than headline-grabbing initiatives.

Of course we need to try to increase the number of addicts moving on to drug free lives – but we need to do this carefully, and we need to see it as a complement, not an alternative, to reducing the harm that addicts cause – and that will include “managing” those addicts who are unlikely to kick their habit any time soon.

Critics of “managing” addiction point to the suspicious increase in methadone prescription in prison, with some justification; but before that gives the whole approach a bad name, we should remember one of the quiet success stories of the last couple of years, which was an experiment to increase prescription of heroin for hard cases who had tried and failed other kinds of treatment – an experiment which significantly reduced crime, without reducing the numbers going on to drug free lives.

Above all the different agencies involved in drug treatment need to work together to combine a focus on addicts’ needs as patients, with a focus on reducing the harm they cause to others – and that means genuinely combining these aims, rather than the two respective bureaucratic empires squabbling about who “owns” the addicts and the budgets that come with them.

Family intervention projects have shown on a smaller scale how agencies can truly work together to tackle drug addiction, alongside many other problems. Michael Gove may have included FIPs (Key workers providing intensive support to families) on his list of banned words, but if he’d looked at the cost-benefit analysis, he would have realised that the real challenge he should be setting his officials is not to think of a better name, but to think about how to make them scaleable, and how to apply the lessons in other areas of social policy.

As it stands, the coalition’s apparent hostility to spending on “managing” addicts’ habits looks like a dangerous mixture of cost-cutting (with the Treasury realising that few will want to defend spending on drug addicts) and moralising (with Iain Duncan Smith and his Social Justice Policy Group leading an increasingly influential strand in Tory thinking that state spending on drugs for addicts is not merely wasteful or low-priority, but morally wrong).

Both are simplistic – to reiterate, other than the leap of faith of decriminalisation, or some new pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough, there are no easy answers in drug policy, and responsible politicians should not pretend otherwise.

The move certainly seems in keeping with Cameron’s iron-fisted clampdown on benefits, and there are many who would argue that in our new-found ‘age of austerity’ , substance-abusers should have to feel the pinch like everyone else. 

Indeed, if there is any social group the prime minister can play hardball with and probably avoid too much criticism, is is drug addicts. His good friends in the tabloid media – who so revel in demonising almost anyone reliant on welfare – are hardly sympathetic when it comes to more liberal approaches to tackling drug problems.

However, a leading figure at a major UK drug charity – arguably the sort of group best placed to comment on the potential effectiveness of any given scheme – has reacted with apprehension and dismay to the news that this move is being considered again.  Martin Barnes, chief executive of charity DrugScope, said on Radio 4 this morning:

“The benefit system can and indeed does have a very important role in terms of advice and support to encourage people both to access treatment and employment. But we seriously question both the fairness and the effectiveness of actually using the stick of compulsion – benefit sanctions – to link a requirement to undergo medical treatment with a condition of receipt of benefit.“

Barnes drew attention to the fact that the NHS constitution requires that “medical intervention should be therapeutic, consensual, confidential”, and stated there is “absolutely no evidence” the scheme would have any positive effect upon drug-users, who he labelled a “vulnerable and often marginalised group”.

In this light, it is hard not to question whether the coalition’s reviving of this untested scheme is a wise move. When experts are  heavily questioning the impact it will have, and when the proposal comes only months after the Social Security Advisory Committee canned the idea first time round because they concluded it would cause “significant harm” and have “negative economic and social impacts”, one wonders why the government has decided it is an idea worthy of consideration again.

However keen Mr Cameron is to save billions of pounds, he must surely recognize that all the evidence suggests this is a scheme which will do little more than exacerbate an already awful problem. Many hold true the maxim that ‘a society is ultimately judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members’, and if this plan is followed through on, and the result that all the available evidence suggests will occur, does occur, then it will reflect damningly upon the coalition.

Perhaps, if the prime minister really wants to tackle Britain’s drug issue, he will move away from plans to try and coerce addicts into receiving treatment through arbitrary financial sanctions, and consider a more fundamental review of the country’s drug laws – as repeatedly called for by leading doctors and analysts, and advocated by Left Foot Forward earlier this week.

Calls for a new approach to UK drug policy have been growing in recent weeks. The Observer’s recent editorial remarked – tongue firmly in cheek – that:

“If the purpose of drug policy is to make toxic substances available to anyone who wants them in a flourishing market economy controlled by murderous criminal gangs, the current arrangements are working well.”

In July, Stephen Rolles – senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation – produced a detailed study in which he drew attention to a growing consensus within the drug field:

“The prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems… but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market.

“These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market, corruption of law enforcement and governments, militarised crop eradication programmes… and funding for terrorism and insurgency.”

Rolles’s meticulous study was based on evidence provided by a range of UK committees and think-tanks, as well as recent UN reports. Its demand for the debate on drug legislation to move beyond “populist politics and tabloid headlines” and onto a consideration of “a risk guided regulatory approach” which would provide “a more pragmatic public health model” and transform “a proportion of existing criminal profits into legitimate tax revenue” could not have been more clearly presented.

Indeed, just this week, the study was praised by Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who agreed that moving from prohibition towards regulation and taxation would “drastically reduce crime and improve health.”

In light of such evidence, it would appear that common sense simply demands that the coalition government rethink UK drug policy. Even if you ignore the fact that alcohol and tobacco together account for more deaths than AIDS, legal drugs, illegal drugs, road accidents, murder and suicide combined, all the while remaining perfectly legal. And even if you ignore the fact that the UK has completey failed to combat the health issues related to drug addiction, the financial implications of drug policy reform demand consideration.

A study undertaken by Transform in 2004 revealed that a regulatory approach to drug policy would have produced “a net saving to tax payers of up to £13.943billion”. The Independent Drug Monitoring Unit found that taxation on current levels of imported drugs would bring in anywhere between £3.4billion and £6.4billion in extra tax revenue per year.

Meanwhile, evidence from Portugal and the Netherlands reveals clearly that the decriminalisation of drugs has had very few adverse effects. On the contrary; in both countries, the amount of drug-related infections and deaths has plummeted, and overall usage has declined among teenagers. In Portugal, a detailed study concluded that:

“None of the fears promulgated by opponents of Portuguese decriminalization have come to fruition, whereas many of the benefits predicted by drug policymakers from instituting a decriminalization regime have been realised.”

Facts such as these are irrefutable, and for a government that is so hell-bent on saving every last penny, cannot be ignored. When David Cameron (with the aid of his running mate, The Sun) is so desperate to claw back £1.5billion from “benefit scroungers,” it would be sheer stupidity for him not to examine the possibility of legislative reform – the blueprint for which already exists – that could potentially save ten times that amount of public funds, and which has the backing of numerous authoritative voices.

A major review of drug policy is due in December of this year. At a time when other European countries are already reaping the benefits of a regulatory approach, Latin American states such as Mexico are beginning to move in a similar direction, and even American legislatures are considering legalising cannabis, it would be foolish for the UK not to seriously look at the option of decriminalization.

It is high time that Cameron and the rest of the coalition recognised that the ‘War on Drugs’ has been lost, and that a new approach is desperately needed. If this government is truly concerned with the economic and medical health of this nation, it will take steps to reform our drug laws. Rational science and simple common sense demand it.

In his speech to the Lib Dem think tank, Centre Forum, Nick Clegg said:

“The goal of improving social mobility overlaps with other objectives for social policy, such as reducing poverty or narrowing income inequality.”

Although making it clear that social mobility and income inequality were not the same, he outlined his own commitment to tackling the problem.

In answer to a question by Sam Coates of The Times, Mr Clegg explicitly referenced the current debate over ‘The Spirit Level’ and, while dismissing the idea that Britain could ever be a perfectly equal country, outlined his view that income inequality was problematic and that “extremes of wealth inequality” were wrong especially when they became “stratified”.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks appear to be at odds with those of Chancellor George Osborne just yesterday. In his speech yesterday, Mr Osborne referred to “equality of opportunity” rather than tackling income inequality. And as noted by Tim Montgomerie on Conservative Home yesterday:

“Mr Osborne used his Today programme interview to distance himself from the idea that greater equality of outcome should be a government aim. He said that he wanted to deliver equality of opportunity and that the Coalition’s reforms in education, welfare and health – as well as the reduction of the deficit – were part of his hope that a child born today would enjoy a better chance to succeed in life than a child born during the Brown-Blair era.”

Although David Cameron name checked the work of Wilkinson and Pickett at his Hugo Young Memorial lecture last year, Conservative think tanks such as Policy Exchange and the TaxPayers’ Alliance have, in recent weeks, been challenging the findings of the Spirit Level. Malcolm Clark has debunked these attacks on this website. Much to Mr Montgomerie’s chagrin, 11 Tory MPs have signed a pledge to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

After much concerted lobbying from Community Links, as part of our Need not Greed campaign, we were delighted to see DWP’s 21st Century Welfare paper include the paragraph:

“As a result [of the complexity and disincentives within the benefits system] working legitimately is not a rational choice for many poor people to make.

“Fraud is always wrong, but we must recognise that the benefits system is making matters worse by pushing valuable work, and the aspiration that this can engender, underground.”

This recognition that the system itself rather than individuals is usually to blame was conspicuously missing from Cameron’s remarks. Instead, he has followed every previous government in picking on an easy target – vulnerable benefit claimants – to win headline approval.

As with many of these issues, playing to the opinion poll leads to a vicious cycle. A Freedom Of Information request from us revealed that last year the then-Labour government spent £4.7 million on an advertising campaign against benefit fraud, as part of their communications strategy to “reinforce public attitudes to fraud, making it socially unacceptable”.

Little wonder, then, that when you survey people about their attitude to benefit fraud they give it a high priority, and welcome aggressive measures to tackle it.

Meanwhile, the complexity in the benefit system ensures that twice as much is lost each year in error (£2.2bn) as is lost to fraud (£1bn). The proportions are similar within the tax credit system, and only adding all these together produces the £5.2bn that Cameron implied was making its way into the pockets of fraudulent claimants.

Tackling these real problems within the benefits system, through a fundamental reform that allows people to take steps back into work, will ultimately be far more successful at bringing down the welfare bill than pandering to prejudice against benefit claimants.

Even the right have taken pot shots at the the idea to recruit credit checking agencies in tackling fraud – the only actual policy idea announced by Mr Cameron yesterday – the Daily Mail lampooning it in cartoon form, with Big Brother Watch asking “Would you trust bounty hunters to enforce the law?” and Mary Riddell in the Telegraph explaining why bounty hunters “won’t solve the benefits crisis”.

Ahead of a march on the 14th by the loyalist Apprentice Boys, Gerry Kelly MLA, Sinn Fein spokesman on policing and justice issues and a junior minister in the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers, has raised concerns over so called “feeder parades” which will, on their way to Derry city, pass the Ardoyne area of Belfast, the scene of violent riots last month.

Expressing his concerns, Mr Kelly warned:

“We think that it (the August 14 march past Ardoyne) should not go down without the Apprentice Boys talking to the residents and that has not happened for some time now. These things are being used by certain other groups to ‘wind up’ the situation. People need space.

“The dissident groups are trying to use these issues.”

The comments have come after more than two hours of talks in Belfast earlier this week between Sinn Fein and the North and West Belfast Parades Forum, representing organisers of loyalist parades. It was the first meeting of its kind in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the Ardoyne riots.

Commenting after the meeting, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams concluded:

“I found it a very useful exchange. We listened very, very intently to what our friends had to say about all of these issues and their sense of themselves and their sense of their section of our community in this city of Belfast.

“We are not going to sort all of this out in one meeting, these are big issues, and we have to remind ourselves of where we have all come from and how difficult this process of society building and transition is for everyone.”

For the Parades Forum, Tommy Cheevers struck an optimistic note, commenting:

“We did not know if we would be here for two minutes or twenty minutes and I think that shows that everyone was prepared to take whatever time it took.”

Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris of the Police Service of Northern Ireland has warned that it is only a matter of time before another police officer is killed as a result of dissident republican activity.

His comments came after a 200lb bomb was exploded outside a Londonderry police station, which damaged local businesses though, did not kill or injure anyone. It is reported that a taxi driver was forced at gun point to drive the device to its intended destination.

In a joint statement with First Minister, Peter Robinson, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuniess responded:

“This is a futile and cynical attempt to try to take us back to conflict and division. We will not allow them to do so. The people clearly support the institutions and we will remain united in our resolve to work together for the greater good.”

It was thrilling to see such a large and enthusiastic turnout at the recent criminal justice hustings at Islington Town Hall, hosted by the Howard League for Penal Reform and Tribune magazine. Be in no doubt, this election is about change, and when it comes to criminal justice, we must use this opportunity to signal an end to the days of pandering to Daily Mail editorials instead of standing up for our values.

ID cards, child detention centres and Section 44 are just a few of the ugly blotches on our Party’s record. I certainly welcome the fact the other leadership candidates are distancing themselves from New Labour’s ‘hang-em, flog-em, DayGlo-bib-em’ approach to crime, justice and civil liberties.

Although as I pointed out during the hustings, I can only assume that my fellow contenders were off sick whenever criminal justice came up in Cabinet during Labour’s 13 years in Government.

Jack Straw is right about one important thing: crime did fall by 43 per cent between 1997 and 2010. As an MP, I have been proud to lead successful campaigns for longer sentences for carrying a gun, for a complete ban on imitation weapons, and I was delighted to see that last Thursday, my campaign to make eBay rethink new relaxed restrictions on the type of knives that it sells, made a real difference.

Amidst the chilling prospect a potential 60,000 police officer and civilian posts being axed by 2015, Britain must not lose sight of the magnitude of issues around criminal justice. I have every sympathy with victims of crime because I live in Hackney, which a high crime area – but under my leadership, Labour’s focus on crime will be rooted in our values.

As leader, I will make a start by protecting frontline police from budget cuts; creating a civil rights division to strive for fairness within our justice system; and by launching a complete review of stop-and-search laws.

Whilst we must oppose Lib-Con privatisation of the justice system, we also need big changes. Reform of the system, at this point, is not enough – we need a whole new outlook. The criminal justice system now costs almost £20 billion a year, making it one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world. There is a higher percentage of people in prison here than in any other country in western Europe and re-offending rates are also still too high.

Looking back at some missed opportunities, a huge prison-building programme took priority over the Corston Report’s recommendations for different and non-custodial approaches for women, for example. Recent research suggests that over 4,274 women and girls languish in British jails and that more than half have been victims of domestic violence, a third have experienced sexual abuse, and 25 per cent have been in care as children.

The first job I had when I finished university was a graduate traineeship with the Home Office working on prisons policy and so on the campaign trail, I am enjoying listening to Labour members’ ideas on justice and community. Throughout the campaign, many of the people I have spoken to have said that they would, in fact, prefer to see punishment that allows the offender to repair some of the damage done, receive treatment for any addiction and re-learn some responsibility, particularly for non-violent offences.

Under my leadership, there will indeed be an emphasis on early intervention, diversion, preventative support and rehabilitation; reducing the use of short sentences where possible whilst replacing them with community sentencing; and increasing use of restorative justice, forcing criminals to confront their behaviour.

It cannot be right that, at present, just over 2,000 children and young people are in jail in England and Wales, and it is tragic that three out of four young offenders are reconvicted within a year of completing their sentence. I will give the justice system the change it needs, starting by ensuring that all staff working with children and young people in the justice system have received training in children and young people’s development, and by creating a care pathway that includes a full range of mental health services, with transitional arrangements for young people leaving prison.

My constituents in Hackney, like many people across Britain, understand what the right-wing media will never understand: Labour needs a new national approach to crime, which makes the important link to inequality, social care, health, economics, housing and education.

The best solutions to crime are when communities come together to solve it, and I will lead Labour in that new direction by: launching the construction of a new generation of quality council homes; increasing early intervention in schools with classroom-based education programmes; investing in drug rehabilitation programmes in the community; improving access to parenting classes; and also piloting police cadet schemes in local schools.

To Labour members I say this, plainly and simply – this election must be about vision, not division. Hope, not fear. A new direction, not business as usual. And all of this is just a few first steps towards that radical change that we need.

In a completely new constitutional departure, commissioners will be responsible for setting a force’s priorities and budget and have powers to recruit and dismiss chief constables. Police authorities, which date back to 1964, will be scrapped entirely. Meanwhile a new Police and Crime Panel will oversee the commissioner’s budget, hold public meetings and produce an annual report.

The frustration about this announcement is that it should have been a Labour home secretary making it. Although crime levels fell a staggering 43 per cent under the last Labour government, the police went virtually unreformed and the otherwise estimable shadow home secretary, Alan Johnson, is completely off the pace in his opposition to this issue.

In responding to home secretary Teresa May, Mr Johnson said elected police commissioners were an “unnecessary, unwanted and expensive diversion”, claiming that the idea amounted to the politicisation of policing.

But of course one person’s ‘politicisation’ is another’s ‘public accountability’. For a service which was recently exposed for having just one in every ten police officers available to tackle crime at any one time – despite year-on-year budget increases over the past four decades – a bit more scrutiny is probably long overdue.

And when more democracy is seen to be a problem, then it’s a funny old world. Indeed, there seems to be a resistance from some progressives about elected police commissioners because they fear it ushers in the “frightening” prospect of BNP bovver boys getting elected.

Let’s be clear: you cannot run a democracy on the basis that the wrong person might get elected. You fight to make sure the right one does. No-one seriously argues that because housing and children’s services are sensitive matters we should scrap elections to councils in case the BNP takes control of them too.

Neither is it the case, as the Local Government Association inexplicably argues, that elected commissioners will “weaken the ability” of the police and local authorities to cut crime. They will put a dent in the expenses of their members who currently sit on police authorities, but that is hardly the same thing.

The role of elected Police and Crime Commissioners is similar to that of a council leader to their chief executive. They are a democratic lead ensuring the public’s voice is heard throughout the organisation; while operational independence to run the force remains in the hands of the chief constable.

But the value of elected commissioners is that the very act of voting someone into office will stimulate greater debate about key local crime and disorder issues. The police will become more responsive simply because the buck will now stop somewhere to ensure the public’s priorities are delivered. The police will stop being a top-down, take-it-or-leave-it-service and get with the programme about how modern public services are run.

The simple truth is that nothing ever changes in large organisations unless the job of someone at the very top is on the line. But chief constables are virtually regal figures. They are untouchable. The system can only benefit from someone looking over their shoulder. And the bottom line is that the police force is the ultimate failing public service – unresponsive, unreformed and very expensive – and long overdue for a sharp kick in the pants. For so many years they have been immune from change because of lax corporate governance and their own low cunning in keeping politicians’ tanks off their lawns. These reforms will help sweep away that rotten culture.

In fact, the faster Labour reverses out of the intellectual cu-de-sac it now finds itself in on police reform, the better. It feels a bit like the Conservatives’ reaction to the creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly 12 years ago. Not so much implacable opposition, more a case of foot-dragging begrudgery. It will make it harder to elect progressive figures to these crucial roles if Labour is still pulling its face about whether they should even exist.

Good riddance to flaccid police authorities. As the consultation document puts it, they are “too invisible”. They are window-dressing; pseudo-democratic cover for feudal chief constables. Their democratic value is negligible. There is no direct connection to the public – only 8 per cent of wards elect councillors who sit on police authorities. And a third of their members must be magistrates – people who, with the greatest of respect, are part and parcel of the same insular, arcane system as the police. Rather than tribunes of the people they are vassals of the constabulary.

The fact that greater democratisation of the police service was a clear manifesto commitment of both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, means that this reform is going to happen, despite the police being adept at shutting the window on the winds of change in the past.

The response of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is markedly more diplomatic from the previous silly sabre-rattling of their president, Sir Hugh Orde, who predicted that chief constables would resign in protest if this reform went through. ACPO now says it needs to “examine in detail the government’s proposals for maintaining operational independence against the practical reality of directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners”.

Meanwhile, the usually excitable Police Federation which represents rank and file officers, is even more sanguine, saying:

“The Federation is not against the proposal for elected commissioners but we would urge detailed consideration and a firm business case.”

Tellingly, the Association of Police Authorities has not been able to steel itself to comment yet.

In our post-ideological political times ideas become increasingly fluid. There are still many issues to oppose this government over. But elected Police and Crime Commissioners should not one of them.

As Lord Carlile observes, some defendants have shown they might potentially be willing to take part:

“Defendants in UK terrorism trials continue to show a willingness to plead guilty in the face of a solid prosecution case and a realistic approach to pleas by prosecutors and judges.”

Of course, cooperation will not come without a price. That price is agreeing to substantially reduce sentences for some defendants who provide information useful for preventing and detecting terrorism.

Cutting jail terms for terrorism convicts will not be easy to sell to the British public. But, in some cases, it might be the right thing to do. As Lord Carlile says:

“The prevention and detection of terrorism offences are more important than the length of prison sentences, though it is right that terrorists should expect very long sentences especially if they have denied what has been proved against them.”

It is also worth keeping in mind that, at present, British jails are doing nothing to encourage individuals incarcerated for terrorism offences to abandon their Salafi-Jihadist ideology. Nor are they preventing convicted terrorists from spreading that ideology to other prisoners.

It is no coincidence that, as a report by my colleague James Brandon showed last year,  no fewer than five convicted terrorists originally adopted extreme interpretations of Islam during their time in a British prison. Four of them were converts. As Ken Clarke said recently, longer prison sentences cannot be the sum total of our response to crime. Instead, we must rehabilitate existing terrorists by encouraging them to abandon their ideology.

Indeed, rehabilitation is second in importance only to getting the information needed to detect and prevent future terrorist attacks. Locking terrorists up and throwing away the key might sound good to tabloid news editors and right-wing pundits, but it does little to keep our country safe in the long run.

The authors of The Spirit Level have already written a detailed response (and also this one published in The Guardian) which expose “the serious methodological errors” in Policy Exchange’s work; point out the lack of any peer-review of their detractors’ work; and cite the many other academics who have conducted research which supports The Spirit Level’s conclusions.

But there are some further gaping holes in the Policy Exchange and TaxPayers’ Alliance’s publications which are worth pointing out.

First and foremost, The Spirit Level is not the only influential study to recognise that socio-economic inequality, particular in the distribution of income and assets, is also profoundly damaging to individuals, families, society and the economy.

This year alone we have had the Marmot Review into Health Inequalities and John Hill’s National Equality Panel’s report – written by the current president of the British Medical Association and the Professor of Social Policy at LSE respectively. Both men conclude that while the poorest suffer most and require most support to boost their life chances and well-being, improvements can only happen once there are fewer gaps between all sections of society.

As Marmot puts it:

“Focusing solely on the most disadvantaged will not reduce health inequalities sufficiently. To reduce the steepness of the social gradient in health, actions must be universal, but with a scale and intensity that is proportionate to the level of disadvantage.

“We call this proportionate universalism.”

Will Hutton, the very person the government has entrusted with its review of public sector top pay, has just written a book (publication imminent) called ‘Them and Us’: politics, greed and inequality – why we need a fair society. The respected cartographer Danny Dorling has also just published a book ‘Injustice – why social inequality persists’ which pulls together reams of ONS and other data to draw parallel conclusions to The Spirit Level.

Politically this new emphasis has also been evident in the commitment by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to a London living wage of £7.85 an hour and David Cameron’s view that the differential between highest and lowest paid in any public sector agency should be no greater than 1:20. The election campaign, the Coalition Agreement and most recently the Budget have all been framed in terms of fairness, who should be paying the burden for reducing the deficit, and whether resources should be targeted most only at those at the bottom or more universally.

Policy Exchange and other recent critics conveniently forget that The Spirit Level has been embraced by people across the political spectrum.  Positive reviews have been penned from the likes of The Daily Telegraph’s economics editor and The Economist; David Cameron referenced it in his Hugo Young lecture and Michael Gove was effusive in his praise when interviewed alongside Richard Wilkinson on the Today programme. Demos have even written a pamphlet (with a foreword by David Willetts) which proclaims on its cover that “equality can be a core conservative value”.

The embrace from the right has always ever only been partial; and policy prescriptions  emanating have tended to focus on tackling poverty at the very bottom but not inequality throughout society. There are now renewed attempts within the Conservative party to abandon the concept of relative poverty and say that only absolute poverty matters. That is the political context for what looks like a co-ordinated – but academically suspect – attack on The Spirit Level.