Yes, that is how they use quotes. Without them it would appear as though the The Guardian was making its own assessment of the system, which it is not.

People need to read beyond the headline and understand how it relates to the content of the article itself. I've seen a few threads on reddit recently where people were outraged about headlines and assumed the article was contradicting their beliefs when it was actually validating them. An example is this article by The Guardian, which is about the correlation between generational wealth inequality and gaps in life satisfaction between generations. /r/Australia was absolutely incensed by the headline and most of the comments in the thread were along the lines of "FEELS LIKE?! HOW DARE THE MEDIA GASLIGHT ME!!!!!" despite the fact that the article was about how young people were feeling and was arguing the exact thing everyone assumed it wasn't.