Well done to IDS and Policy Exchange for suggesting parents should stay at home
Dear Iain Duncan Smith,
It is quite amazing to watch your rejuvenation in British politics. You only have to go back a few years to see an Iain Duncan Smith without the support of his own party or the public, with your departure as leader of the Conservative Party an inevitably. In stark constrast, your policy work – mostly through the Centre for Social Justice - has received huge praise from the media and political commentators and yet again this morning you have dared to go where few have ventured before: openly criticising the government for making parents go back to work.
Labour have not missed an opportunity to tell us how much success they’ve had in getting parents back to work, but I have never agreed with this and it seems that you share my concerns. No doubt many people outside the Conservative Party still think we want to force parents to stay at home and that we criticise any parent who wants to go back to work, but please ignore their naivety as your joint report with Policy Exchange shows them how smart the modern Conservatives are. Parents who fail to form a close and loving relationship with their babies are certainly risking “sowing the seeds of later unhappiness” in their children, and there is almost 50 years of psychological evidence to support this assertion. The first 18 months are particularly crucial. On this basis, your recommendation to change the tax and benefits system so that parents can remain at home in the first three years of a child’s life is a fantastic idea. These changes could be worth more than £500 a month to women who choose to stay at home, which would be hugely beneficial to families up and down the country, and would undoubtedly prove hugely popular. The sad reality is that many parents cannot afford to stay at home with their children even when they want to, and they are subsequently forced to put them into hugely expensive (and sometimes poor quality) daycare at a terrifyingly young age, which ultimately damages the relationship between parents and children.
What I like the most about this policy proposal is that the choice is still with the parents. This is small government at its best. Put the financial incentives in place to help strengthen families in the early years, but leave the final choice about whether mum or dad goes to work with the parents themselves. Like you said, “society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth” and I still do not understand how the government wants to take credit for getting mums and dads back to work within a few weeks or months of children being born. I have always strongly felt that giving mums less than a year off work can lead to problems later down the line (again, supported by evidence rather than personal whims) and don’t even get me started on the scandal of dads only getting two weeks off work when they have a child. David Cameron has already put measures in place so that the Conservatives would give families one year off work which can be shared between mum and dad (instead of Labour’s dictatorial policy of forcing mums to take parental leave) and your work could add even more substance to the desire to promote the family and put it back on the pedestal where it belongs.
I don’t think you’ll be back in the Shadow Cabinet any time soon, but the recognition you receive for your work is thoroughly deserved. Labour have unleashed a generation of broken families, weak (and frequently absent) parenting and failed childcare and family-oriented policies. Sadly, as with the economy and just about everything else, the Conservatives will have to pick up the pieces if and when they win the next election. As I have said all along, a strong family unit is not ‘outdated’ or ’stuck in the past’ – it’s where children have the best chance of growing up to be psychologically and socially healthy teenagers and adults. Well done for having the guts to stand up for this.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
What do you think of the Swedish system, where parents can take up to 480 days off after a child is born and 390 of those days are paid at 80% of your salary. Also the time off can be split between both parents.
12 months parental leave is an absolute minimum, in my opinion. I cannot belive how poor our leave arrangement are in this country, relative to many of our European neighbours.
The issue of who pays for parental leave (and how much leave is paid) is tricky, as small businesses may not be able to afford many of their employees taking a year off work. Having said that, the government could step in to give them specific help.
One thing which always angers / amuses me is the way that Labour claim to be the party of ‘equality’, yet only give dads two weeks off work after the birth of their child. In fact, giving dads a year off work if they chose to do so would address gender inequality issues in the workplace as employers would have less reason to discriminate against women. The decision about who takes time off work to look after a child should be made by the two parents concerned, although I suspect mothers will still prefer to be at home in most cases.
The Swedish system includes the state being about 70% of GDP it is not applicable here. I approve of levelling the tax position for couples and certainly of ending the fake job market for credits but I have grave misgivings about doctrinally based benfits .
It is too ambitious , far better just to remove credits completely and reduce tax. Women will choose to stay at home if they can afford to in the main and do not need to be bribed …just taxed less in the first place.
Sorry LFAT I like the instincts you have on this of course but the conclusions less so I think
I agree that lowering the tax burden should be a key objective. However, if and when tax credits are abolished, parents could be paid a simple allowance and state would need to do no more (although further savings in public spending would have to be made elsewhere to cover the full cost of this allowance, according to Policy Exchange).
The problem with your system of just lowering the tax burden is that it still penalises poorer families who cannot afford to stay at home while their children are very young, yet it is often poorer families who need the most help.
What Newmania says.
The tax and welfare system should be indifferent between staying at home or going back to work. It’s not up to The State (pandering to lots of narrow interests) to make these decisions.
It would be nice if the TaxBen system was indifferent between single parents and couples as well (who currently face a savage couple penalty).
Possibly .Sounds liable to incur the wrath of the god of unforeseen consequences to me much as I heartily approve of the motives.
Throw the prohibitive cost of child care, the myth that men will ever take a year off and the position of the 70/80 % of those in small companies and its awfully complicated to predict the result .The existing welfare tax and housing position is fiendish . For example there is currently such an advantage to being single that there are 200,000 people pretending to be single , and an earner with child pays effectively no tax up to £25,000 .
Anyway ,I reckon anyone with three boys under four ought to get a Government therapist and Masseuse for free once a week as well…oh and some money …( and a holiday)…pleeeeeeeze
As a socialist, I would agree that there should be an equalisation of leave available to parents of newborn children. The issue is, where would the money come from to finance such a scheme:
1) Sweden is a high-tax economy by European standards, however wages tend to be higher than the average across the board and public service provision is considered good – meaning that the Swedes are (relatively) happy to pay such levels of tax. In the UK, there is more antagonism towards paying tax, partially due to the general belief that public service provision is poor and too limited in scope, and also due to a (again, relatively) lower level of wages. So, a generous tax-funded parental leave package, although beneficial to parents (and perhaps, society in general), would probably prove too unpopular with the British public as a whole.
2) Reducing taxes across the board may have a minor impact vis-a-vis parental leave, but such an effect would be minor as the overall cost of living is so high relative to most other Western countries. For example, in London a £25-30k a year job may not leave you with much left over after rent/mortgage payments, debt repayment, rising utility and food bills and so on are taken into consideration. And call me a sceptic if you will, but I would not be convinced that lower business taxes would be transferred to the public at large – either business (particularly the utilities) would not reduce their prices to consumers as they know that the increased price gets paid, or if there was a general drop in the cost of living, what’s to say that businesses would not cut wages in line?
Are there solutions to this? Probably not yet, particularly with such a spineless and craven Government as we have now… but there are things that they could undertake now which may bring about such a desired sceme in the future:
1) Set up a Sovereign Wealth Fund: we may associate these investment funds with Middle-East principalities, but the Scandinavian countries have these too – in fact the second largest SWF in the world is Norway’s one. Setting up a UK SWF would unlikely produce short-term benefits but perhaps 20-30 years time would prove its worth.
2) Make it a statutory requirement of businesses to offer, say, eight months or a year’s paid parental leave at 70-100% of pay, but with a sliding scale of tax-funded contributions to such a scheme – i.e. multinational corporations have to fund this themselves, but small businesses (say those that produce less than £200,000 net income) pay nothing. Therefore business contributions would increase in line with their ability to pay and would allow small businesses and the self employed to avoid such a financial hit. I’m feeling gereous – throw in a two year exemption for start-ups.
3) I have a belief that many people dislike paying taxes as they do not know where that tax money is spent. Although I do not believe in the virtues of a flax-tax, I am in favour of somehow simplifying the tax system and making it fully transparent to the tax payer. OK, this is an over-simplified suggestion, but let’s run with it: the public should pay three taxes: a central government tax (i.e. pays for everything the Government administers such as pensions, national insurance, armed forces, etc.), a local government tax (rates, local authority services) and sales tax (VAT). But in line with this the Government should have two Budgets a year, to allow more flexibility to cope with changes in the economy) and alongside each Budget a report should be made available to show the total central government tax collected and how it is spent down to the last pound. Local authorities do the same. The simplification should help ordinary people budget better themselves, and the reports may cause the Government to Budget better too, or people will be on their backs for any unpopular spending or waste as they will be much better informed. So how would this help the cause of parental leave? Well, if people know where their money is going and understand what is being paid for; they may be less opposed to paying tax and more willing to jointly pay for new or expanded services.
A qualification: I’m no expert on any of this – this comment is just my view. I’ll be interested to hear if any of it is viable!
Erm, damn keyboard! Above should read “I’m feeling generous” and flat-tax as opposed to flax-tax. Apologies for any other typos!
As a socialist, I would agree that there should be an equalisation of leave available to parents of newborn children. The issue is, where would the money come from to finance such a scheme:
“ As a socialist “ is , in this millennium somewhat like saying “ As a creationist “ still ,Mr . Cheesy , I`ll have a go at some of your comments .
Firstly everything you say is based on the profoundly misguided assumption that there is a direct relationship between the state and the people. There is not .Far more important influences ( Thank god ) rest in the culture and history of the country and communities of the “people “. This is in fact the socialist error in that you cannot understand that people are not ants .
Your question, for example , is very far from the only question. Another would be ,can we reconstruct the English so either men or women actually wish to have equal jobs bearing in mind the non existence of the oft predicted house husband and the total resistance of women to any such thing .( some 70% of woman graduating in one year of the 70s will die childless as a consequence of resistance to the idea of woman as main bread winner through the classes.). This is embedded with patterns of employment
You will say ,this is because English people are stupid and backward compared to the shiny enlightened ( Neutral to the Nazis ) Swedes .But this is a bold and unsupported assumption given that they have an economy that has not need innovation and is not based on clients as ours is. How Mr. Cheesy do you suggest I get my clients back when I come back next year and , given that I have three children how do I do anything useful at all. Why is it that in Sweden work cut be cut like a cake ? Here remember 70/80% work in SMEs. A sector utterly opaque to the Labour Party which has done all it can to destroy it .
There are only nine million people in Sweden’s vastness . Inward migration from outside Europe is negligible and they sit on fabulous mineral , forestry and coal reserves . They are also possessors of along tradition of neutrality from which their economy stole a fantastic and enduring march on the rest in post war booms as fact conveniently forgotten by the left…. . We had the Nazis to fend off 60 million people to fit in ,plus a stream of world wide social problems to pay for . The per-capita wealth of the Swedes is just a trick of numbers.
The character of the Lutheran Swedes seems peculiarly able to get by with trading material sufficiency for slavery anyway. They are robotically conformist and dull to the point of temple throbbing agony. For example, on September 3, 1967 at 5am, the whole country went from driving on the left to driving on the right, despite the fact that 80 per cent of the population had voted against the change in a referendum. Imagine trying the same stunt here ! Italy…forget about it . Alcohol is hard to get and punitively taxed and anecdotally ,there are few laughs, or even smile between the herd. It is well known that Sweden is always near the top of the suicide ratings for developed countries they conducted Sterilisation programmes in broad daylight into the 70s as well as enforced lobotomies .
I could go on and on. Forget Sweden. I have considered some of the other reasons why a high taxes along Swedish might be an anathema in the free world . It was after all Germany that was the pin up boy for the left until we overtook their taxes without the same advantages accruing . As many special circumstances apply to Sweden as Germany in fact more so. Spending let us not forget has grown by 55% adjusted in the last ten years . Clearly we do not do tax and spend very well and equally clearly the people are sick of listening to the same old lies about where the money went
As for your suggestion that we follow Norway …Oil Mr. Cheesy , they have rather a lot and I am not going to waste any more time on that.
The rest of what you say is more or less a fiction as it cannot be funded and your assumption that it is only the ignorance of the people which keep them from appreciating the value provided by taxes is so far from central debate as to be more of a contrarian joke than a serious point . Don’t get me started !
Oddly I rather agree with your idea that taxation should be simpler . It should also be more obvious . No more PAYE benefits re-named community support if not charity so we know who pays and so on. Government takes to be clearly identified at the petrol Pump , the sort of thing in fact they isist on the private sector doing . You feel clarity would provide us with a voluntary Cuba like Sweden .I think you are living in coud cuckoo land .The clearer taxes are the lower they get. That , Mr. Cheesy , is why they are opaque and that why New Labour have hidden them as well as their borrowing ,future taxes.
On topic I suggest we remove the burden placed on married couples as a start and if we bring back the married man’s allowance in some guise well why not. It cannot be a serious distorter like the disastrous tax credits but as a symbol , yes . Lets support marriage against the incursions of the state but not use it as an excuse to extend the state yet further into the home and working environment .
“”As a socialist” is , in this millennium somewhat like saying “As a creationist” still ,Mr . Cheesy , I’ll have a go at some of your comments.”
Yeah, damn us gun-toting, God-bothering, Republican-voting, anti-science redneck socialists… cough … you’ll have a go at some of my comments? How nice of you. It’s just a shame that you addressed hardly any of them, but still.
“Firstly everything you say is based on the profoundly misguided assumption that there is a direct relationship between the state and the people. There is not .Far more important influences ( Thank god ) rest in the culture and history of the country and communities of the “people”. This is in fact the socialist error in that you cannot understand that people are not ants.”
So not only can you reach across the interwebs, but you can read my mind too? That’s very impressive. And for the record, there is a direct relationship between the state and the people, because there has to be: otherwise the state couldn’t function in any way. If, say, the Libertarian Party were (somehow) to win a general election, would their first pronouncement be to say “well we’re dismantling the state, everyone, so go away and play amongst yourselves”? Of course not. This is a straw man, and a particularly gerbil-nibbled one at that. And if I had any interest in ants, I would have an ant-farm. Us socialists (well, most of us anyway) understand people are people who have free will. I could just as easily say that conservatives and libertarians cannot understand that people are not mere cogs in the economy, but that would be a stupid and ill-informed comment to make. Of course.
“Your question, for example , is very far from the only question. Another would be ,can we reconstruct the English so either men or women actually wish to have equal jobs bearing in mind the non existence of the oft predicted house husband and the total resistance of women to any such thing .( some 70% of woman graduating in one year of the 70s will die childless as a consequence of resistance to the idea of woman as main bread winner through the classes.). This is embedded with patterns of employment .”
Erm, what? Who said anything about “reconstructing the English” (whatever that means)? There is no preponderance of house husbands and stay-at-home dads, because most households in the UK couldn’t financially support one partner to stay at home with the young ‘uns. Ergo, this debate on parental leave and how it should or could be funded. I’m not sure about your statistic: are you saying that 70% of women whom graduated from University in the 1970s will die childless? This sounds like rather a high amount of croaking spinsters, so could you provide a source as I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand. Besides, I would bet that more women nowadays are comfortable with being the highest earner in a household – and more men are too. Granted my parents would be uncomfortable, but, you know, times have a habit of changing.
“You will say ,this is because English people are stupid and backward compared to the shiny enlightened ( Neutral to the Nazis ) Swedes .But this is a bold and unsupported assumption given that they have an economy that has not need innovation and is not based on clients as ours is. How Mr. Cheesy do you suggest I get my clients back when I come back next year and , given that I have three children how do I do anything useful at all. Why is it that in Sweden work cut be cut like a cake ? Here remember 70/80% work in SMEs. A sector utterly opaque to the Labour Party which has done all it can to destroy it .”
I will say you are projecting again, Newmania! I would never suggest that one nationality of people were more or less thick than another, English or otherwise. And doesn’t reference to the Nazis break Godwin’s Law? I can’t suggest ways for you to get your clients back next year, because I simply don’t know what you are talking about – what do you do? What would your circumstances be? I can’t stand Labour – they’re about as socialistic as Simon Heffer – but I doubt it “has done all it can to destroy [the SME sector]“, because if it did, it would never have won two elections, rather than three… even if three election victories can partially be explained by many on the Left not voting at all due to no serious alternative (Respect? Ha!) to vote for. Now, this may surprise you, but I believe that any truly socialist administration should encourage small businesses… for the simple reason that they provide jobs for people like me, who are not of the entrepreneurial type. As long as they pay a decent wage (i.e. workers not being hit adversely by the cost of living) and recognise unions, I’d be happy. In return, why not reduce taxes for the self-employed and small business turning over less than a set amount?
“There are only nine million people in Sweden’s vastness . Inward migration from outside Europe is negligible and they sit on fabulous mineral , forestry and coal reserves . They are also possessors of along tradition of neutrality from which their economy stole a fantastic and enduring march on the rest in post war booms as fact conveniently forgotten by the left…. . We had the Nazis to fend off 60 million people to fit in ,plus a stream of world wide social problems to pay for . The per-capita wealth of the Swedes is just a trick of numbers.”
As an aside, this does bring to mind defence spending, which I’m intrigued about for these two related reasons: a) why is defence spending so high year-on-year; and b) considering the high amount we pay for the military, why do soldiers have inadequate kit, unreliable machinery and low wages? Just a thought.
“The character of the Lutheran Swedes seems peculiarly able to get by with trading material sufficiency for slavery anyway. They are robotically conformist and dull to the point of temple throbbing agony. For example, on September 3, 1967 at 5am, the whole country went from driving on the left to driving on the right, despite the fact that 80 per cent of the population had voted against the change in a referendum. Imagine trying the same stunt here ! Italy…forget about it .” [rest snipped due to irrelevance]
I’m certain that the Swedes will love to think of you painting such a broad picture of them. No, seriously – drop the stereotyping as it brings nothing to any debate anywhere. If the Government here changed the direction of driving, there would likely be a protest march that would achieve nothing before everyone got on with the new system, albeit grumbling as they did so. It’s just that we don’t do protest too well in this country (re: Iraq) most of the time (poll tax, fuel crisis excepted).
“I could go on and on. Forget Sweden. I have considered some of the other reasons why a high taxes along Swedish might be an anathema in the free world . It was after all Germany that was the pin up boy for the left until we overtook their taxes without the same advantages accruing . As many special circumstances apply to Sweden as Germany in fact more so. Spending let us not forget has grown by 55% adjusted in the last ten years . Clearly we do not do tax and spend very well and equally clearly the people are sick of listening to the same old lies about where the money went”
Thatis why I want to see independently audited accounts down to the last pound made available on every Budget day. I want to see where the money goes to… I suspect that there is a lot squandered on ridiculous PFI schemes, corporate welfare, plugging gaps caused by tax avoidance by the multinationals, and so on, but I want to know for sure. Because then we, both Left and Right, can better hold this or any other Government to account.
“As for your suggestion that we follow Norway …Oil Mr. Cheesy , they have rather a lot and I am not going to waste any more time on that.
We used to have oil… but that was mismanaged too. I mentioned Norway because of the size of their SWF, which has grown over time. As I said, a state investment fund could be beneficial to this country… but the benefits may not be felt in the short-term.
“The rest of what you say is more or less a fiction as it cannot be funded and your assumption that it is only the ignorance of the people which keep them from appreciating the value provided by taxes is so far from central debate as to be more of a contrarian joke than a serious point . Don’t get me started !”
“Don’t get me started?” Are you channelling Florida-based (alleged) tax exile Richard Littlejohn? Anything can be funded if the will and support is there. ‘Ignorance’ is such a pejorative term, isn’t it? Again, it may imply I think that the population is thick – I don’t believe this to be the case. I think that this Government at turns obfusticates and technobabbles at people, with the result that I (and am sure others) don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Which is dangerous, as they can get away with more, be it increased detention without charge, ID cards, detrimental extradition treaties, incomprehensible tax credits – I’m sure you could mention a few more… even some I might agree with.
I’ve worked with a number of people in the last few years who you would never consider natural Conservative voters. But they believe they are paying sky-high amounts of tax (I beg to differ, some people’s interpretations of “sky-high” can be surprisingly modest) and that is why the Tories will be the next Government, and by a large majority too. If my guess is correct, there are many of these people throughout the country, particularly in Labour marginals. But I do believe that people in general (and I include myself in this) do not know the exact breakdown of how their taxes are divided and spent. Because that information is not available in any easily digestible form, and most of us are too busy to work it out for ourselves.
“Oddly I rather agree with your idea that taxation should be simpler . It should also be more obvious . No more PAYE benefits re-named community support if not charity so we know who pays and so on. Government takes to be clearly identified at the petrol Pump , the sort of thing in fact they isist on the private sector doing . You feel clarity would provide us with a voluntary Cuba like Sweden .I think you are living in coud cuckoo land .The clearer taxes are the lower they get. That , Mr. Cheesy , is why they are opaque and that why New Labour have hidden them as well as their borrowing ,future taxes.”
“On topic I suggest we remove the burden placed on married couples as a start and if we bring back the married man’s allowance in some guise well why not. It cannot be a serious distorter like the disastrous tax credits but as a symbol , yes . Lets support marriage against the incursions of the state but not use it as an excuse to extend the state yet further into the home and working environment .”
Erm, again, where does Cuba come into this? I’m a socialist, Newmania, not a moron, and hold no candle to any Communist system. What burden is placed on married couples, compared to unmarried couples (who get much less in state aid) and single people (who get pretty much nothing)? The nuclear family is pretty much a myth for most people. There is only a select few families where Mummy stays at home and Daddy goes to work and earns enough for four people to live on. If I look to my family, I don’t know of one wife or mother through the generations who did not work – because they had to as otherwise there wouldn’t be enough money to pay for the family, home and expenses. So why the hell should there be a married man’s allowance? They can lump it with the rest of us as far as I’m concerned. And if you think that shoring up marriage with what amounts to bribes will actually work, then you are either a deluded fool, or a greedy, grasping fool.