Today David Cameron calls for a debate on what fairness really means. But what is 'fair' when it comes to families and children? – Telegraph Blogs

Wednesday 30 July 2014 | Blog Feed | All feeds

Neil O'Brien



Sir William Beveridge (Photo: Corbis)

Sir William Beveridge (Photo: Corbis)

In his conference speech today, David Cameron will apparently set out his views on what counts as fairness: "Fairness means giving people what they deserve, and what they deserve depends on how they behave." This is surely much closer to people's idea of "fairness" than Gordon Brown's weird and robotic obsession with income-distribution-decile-graphs.

But Cameron's point raises tricky questions as soon as you start to apply it in the real world. Given that it's topical, let's take having kids as an example. Last year we got MORI to poll people about whether the rest of society should support those who have children.

The public are evenly split: 47 per cent say that "people who choose to have children" shouldn't expect other taxpayers to help with the cost of raising them. But 43 per cent say that "all taxpayers should contribute something to help parents with the cost of raising their children".

Our complicated system of child support reflects people's split attitudes to questions of family life. Today we have Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits, childcare support of various kinds, Sure Start centres… all of which embody very different ideas about the relationship between the state and families with children.

So how did we get here? Before the second world war married men were given a higher tax allowance (the "married man's allowance") and a further extra allowance if they had more than one child. The principle was that you should not be taxed until you earned enough to support yourself, and the more people depended on you (wife, kids) then the more you needed to earn to get to that point.

In 1943 Beveridge added to these tax allowances a "Family allowance" – a flat rate benefit for everyone in the country with children.

His goal was to boost the incomes of poor people with children, without creating any disincentive to work harder (a concern shared by Frank Field and IDS). Family Allowance was paid direct to the mother, in the hope that this would mean that it would be more likely to be spent on the children, and less likely to be drunk.

Barbera Castle "combined" these tax allowances and benefits into Child Benefit. Effectively this abolished the tax allowance element and turned it into a straight benefit, reducing the advantage of those who work over those who don't.

During the 1980s concerns about the "underclass" and welfare dependency started to grow. Child benefit was reformed so that subsequent children don't get as much child benefit. This is a watered down version of a policy adopted in some parts of the US, where the first child attracts benefits, but subsequent children born on welfare do not.

In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, politicians across the developed world tried to encourage more women to work by introducing tax breaks and vouchers for childcare.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown introduced Child Tax Credits. These are not in fact tax credits, because you can claim them if you are not working. In fact they are like a much larger version of child benefit, but means tested. Brown was worried less about means testing and disincentives to work. He was trying to hit his child poverty target – which is really an inequality target – and Child Tax Credits were a good way to present the necessary redistribution.

Last but not least, in opposition the tories expressed concern about the "couple penalty" in the benefits system, and also pledged to recognise marriage in the tax system. This latter idea seemed to be on the back burner (partly because the Liberal Democrats don't like it), but now seems to have come back to the fore after this week's row.

All these different family policies have been piled up like strata of rock by politicians with very different philosophies and concerns. That's why the system is incoherent. Apparently today the Prime Minister will call for "a new converationabout what fairness really means". But we can identify lots of different things that might count as "fair" in relation to families and children.

So let's start that conversation here. What do you think? Should the government aim to:

- Support marriage?
- Promote higher fertility?
- Encourage women to work?
- Avoid creating disincentives to work harder?
- Make sure that people don't have kids they can't afford?
- Allieviate poverty?
- Promote good parenting?

Or something else entirely?

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