Charles Amos studied Political Theory at the University of Oxford and writes The Musing Individualist Substack.
At the Budget it was confirmed that Reeves will scrap the two-child benefit cap at the cost of £3.5bn. The main justification for this fiscal act is it will reduce child poverty by 630,000. The need of the vast majority of children in relative poverty is not sufficient warrant to take money from the taxpayer. Parents alone have the full responsibility to bring up their children. A consistent application of this moral principle though dictates that child benefit be opposed in its entirety and not just for more than two children.
At the moment, low-income families on Universal Credit receive £3,455 for every child they have up to two; beyond which they do not receive said payment. Since 2017 when the two-child benefit cap was introduced, child poverty among families with three or more children has increased from 42 per cent to 45 per cent; contrasting markedly with the overall child poverty rate of 30 per cent. Whether you’re a classical liberal such as John Locke or a communist such as Karl Marx, extreme need is almost always taken to justify depriving individuals of the fruits of their labour. So, is Britain’s child poverty serious enough to justify taking the proverbial handmade apple pie cooling on the windowsill?
No. The poorest parents spend much of their budget on leisure and nor do they work full time; resultantly, there is no justification for taxpayers coughing up because poor parents have the means to look after their kids themselves. The ONS provides data on the bottom quintile of households with children simpliciter and finds that 12 per cent of their spending is on recreation, culture, hotels, restaurants, alcohol and tobacco, or, about £2,200 a year. Plus, if the bottom quintile of parents are anything like the bottom decile of households which spend 18 per cent of their food bill on junk food, e.g., chocolate, cakes, biscuits, crisps and soft drinks, they could save another £531.40 annually by simply not buying it. Indeed, excess weight rates are at around 70 per cent for the most deprived people compared to 60 per cent for the least deprived.
Now, the aforementioned bottom quintile of households with children only referred to households with 3.1 people in them. Their spending directly variable with children, i.e., food, clothing and transport, totals £104.20 a week. If we doubled that to assume a household with four children in it, an additional £104.20 a week would be needed. If the father worked full time on minimum wage he’d earn £20,203.14 after tax; if the mother then worked one day a week, they’d independently cover all their expenses of £23,977.20; which includes the cost of additional children mentioned and leisure too. Sure; the children might have to be in bunk beds, but that is the case in good boarding schools.
Yet today, instead of working full time to support their own children, we find that only 37 per cent of the chief economic supporters in non-retired households in the bottom quintile by income work full time or are self-employed; contrasting to at least 67 per cent for every other quintile. Indeed: the average earnings of the mentioned group which has an average of 2.8 people in it, including one child, is about a quarter shy of a single full time minimum wage job. All poor parents, even with large families, need do to support themselves is both work low paying jobs and be frugal. Samuel Smiles’s Victorian bestseller, Self-Help, is a great place to look for inspiration.
Yet I suspect Leftists will argue there are many single parents and very large families who could still not support themselves without child benefits. Reeves appeals to the small number of people who are widows or have chronic illnesses to motivate abolishing the cap for everyone, and, I’m sure others would put single mothers in there too. Does this situation warrant burdening the taxpayer with child benefit? I’m not too sure. If a mother can either feed her starving kids via theft of bread, or, take out a bank loan she can pay back later, our intuition is the mother must take out the bank loan. Were the state then to provide parental loans, just like student loans, parents would be morally required to take them out instead of resorting to tax, i.e., the moral equivalent of theft. This ensures parents can’t offload their imprudent choices or bad luck onto others.
Although a parental loan system for hard up families would be an improvement on today’s welfare state it is hardly the ideal situation however. After all, 44 per cent of students are forecast to not pay off their student debt in full, landing the taxpayer with a hefty bill. Ideally, banks should be able to loan money to parents secured against their future earnings. The inevitable problem here is parents can currently default on the debt making the original loan unwise from the bank’s point of view.
An obvious solution to this is to permit freedom of contract which allows parents to enter into agreements with banks where they can be put to forced labour in the absence of repayments. This is hardly outlandish in the context of English history; indeed, before the Debtors Act of 1869, debtors’ prison was just part of life. Liberals will be minded to simply object to any arrangements which specify labour performance; they shouldn’t, because, to do so would be to object to forcing parents to not neglect their children too. An implausible verdict.
Children should be the full financial responsibility of their parents; not the taxpayer, thus, all child benefits must be abolished. All poor parents with large families would have to do to fully support themselves today is work a full-time job, move to a low rent area and be frugal. This is not much to ask. Reeves must be opposed in creating yet another instance of dependency culture in abolishing the two-child benefit cap at this budget: parents must take full responsibility for every child they have chosen to have.
