Where the Daily Mail leads, George Osborne follows. Speaking this afternoon, the Chancellor said of the case of Mick Philpott, who was jailed for life earlier today for killing six of his children:
It’s right we ask questions as a government, a society and as taxpayers, why we are subsidising lifestyles like these. It does need to be handled.
Osborne was careful not to suggest that the welfare state was to blame for the death of Philpott’s children (it was Philpott, he said, who “was responsible” for the “horrendous crimes”) but he has chosen to exploit this tragedy in order to make the case for cutting benefits for large families. The specific measure under examination, as I reported earlier today, is limiting child benefit to two children for out-of-work families. But regardless of the merits or demerits of the policy, the Philpott case isn’t an argument for it. Both his wife and girlfriend were in work throughout the period in question (and so would have been unaffected by the coalition’s £26,000 benefit cap); the problem was that their benefits, like their salaries, were paid directly into Philpott’s bank account. The guilty party wasn’t the welfare state but a violent, misogynistic bully intent on controlling the lives of the two women and their children. There is no conceivable welfare measure which could have prevented this.
But that hasn’t stopped Tory MPs renewing calls for child benefit to be capped at two children. The policy was intended for inclusion in last year’s Autumn Statement but, thankfully, was vetoed by the Liberal Democrats. Iain Duncan Smith, who first floated it back in October, said then:
My view is that if you did this you would start it for those who begin to have more than say two children. Essentially it’s about the amount of money that you pay to support how many children, and what is clear to the general public, that they make decisions based on what they can afford for the number of children they have. That is the nature of what we all do.
But the scale of the problem has been much exaggerated. At present, just four per cent of families with a parent on Jobseeker’s Allowance have more than two dependent children. And, of course, the identity of those families is in constant flux: only 1.5 per cent of those on benefits have never worked. Those who advocate the policy also need to explain why children should be punished simply for having been born into large families. Limiting child benefit to the first two offspring would inevitably lead to a surge in a child poverty, storing up far greater social problems for the future.
Osborne’s decision to disregard all of this was already alarming before today. But his willingness to now go further and exploit the public grief over the deaths of the Philpott children in order to harden support for benefit cuts represents a new low in the welfare debate.
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