Jul 10 2007
Tackling a broken society
Iain Duncan Smith is right to highlight the breakdown in British society caused by drugs, alcohol, poor educational achievement and the perverse incentives of the tax/benefits nexus.
Important in generating success for this policy for families will be the changes to the benefit and tax credit system. The proposals are to be more generous to married couples, not less generous to unmarrieds. It will require careful recalibration of the system to make marriage more worthwhile. Iain’s report sets out four options in total to put more net income into the hands of maried couples with children. Two of the proposals are targetted on married couples with dependent children. The transferable allowance goes to all married?? couples, with half the estimated cost of the change going to married couples with children. Other beneficiaries include pensioner couples where either husband or wife has a reasonable employer pension as well as the state pension.
The Report acknowledges that many marriages are broken not by financial considerations, but by the deflation of high expectations. This is a far more difficult set of issues for government to influence.
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THIS TEXT HAS BEEN AMENDED AS LABOUR MINISTERS WISHED TO CREATE AN ENTIRELY FALSE IMPRESSION OF MY VIEW OUT OF THE PREVIOUS VERSION!
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Labour politicans trying to create a false impression? Well I never! The 24 hours news channels have been trying to create a false impression all day. Funny, I didn’t hear DC say anything about less help for single mothers, just more help for married couples, then a load of people saying that this was ‘discriminatory’.
Of course New Labour can’t talk about social ills, they’ve sat back counting the extra cash in the coffers thanks to the personal debt mountain, boasting about the ‘record economic growth’ it’s helped to ‘create’ whilst doing nothing to address over-indebtedness as a social issue. Next thing you know Tessa Jowell is bending over a roulette table suggesting it might be a good game for poor people to play in ’supercasino’s’ whilst simultaneously suggesting that 24 hour drinking will cure alcoholism.
I must admit, when I was a student and used to go down the casino to watch the Aussie test matches over a few Stella’s with some Pakistani bloke I knew, the 24 hour drinking did help us play less roulette, but did nothing for our mutual alcoholism. Then again neither of us had kids or were on benefits. I’d be in favour of greater regulation on casinos, to stop people on state benefits (except pensions) from joining them.
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