Proposed changes to child benefit - a reasonable idea turned nightmarish

Iain Duncan Smith has proposed limiting benefits payable for children in any family to a maximum of two children. If the parent or parents then went on to have more children, they would not receive additional money for the third or higher child.

In some ways, this is quite a reasonable idea. The additional amounts of benefit paid for families with more children can be fairly generous. Each additional child can currently bring in approximately £70pw in tax credits and child benefit. It also entitles the family to rent a larger house and to a higher income disregard in housing and council tax benefit worth about £50pw for each child.

I have thought for some time that some kind of limit to how many children a person can have while claiming benefits, just as someone who wants to claim help for a mortgage cannot usually take out a new mortgage while on benefit.

The extent of additional money for each child has already been somewhat limited by the new, and highly flawed, benefit cap of £500 a week per household. That system will only affect people with 4-6 children, depending on a number of factors such as the amount of rent they pay. If this new change were implemented, then it would make the cap completely obsolete as nobody with under four children would ever be affected by it. But this is where we get into difficulties with what has now been proposed.

The first problem with the new proposal is that Duncan Smith is once again making it into an issue of those in work against those out of work. From his description of things, you would get the impression that 'those with three or more children' and 'those in work' are two separate groups on a Venn diagram that don't overlap. But this is wrong - people in work can obviously have more than two children.

Despite purporting to make this distinction, there is nothing in IDS's announcement that suggests this change will be limited to those out of work. It seems that everyone will be affected. So it's not just something aimed at the unemployed - we need to be clear on that, or a falsehood is spread.

As I said above, I think it would be reasonable to limit people from having more children while on benefits and immediately claiming more money for them. But it would definitely not be fair to say that if a parent with 4 children loses his or her job, then he or she is unable to claim enough money to live on. It's not as though someone who has lost a job can give up children.

And this is the point where fridge horror sets in. Benefits for children include help with higher rent, for the larger family. This proposal means that a parent with 4 children losing his job would almost immediately become both homeless and un-houseable. This completely undermines the idea of safety net. We may see families forced to split up and children being sent to live with other relatives (who will then be able to claim benefits for them - ruining the point of the idea once again.)

This government has no idea what it is doing. It just pushes through seriously flawed ideas without thinking them through, before and again. No-one who looked carefully at the last benefit cap thought it was a good idea, so I am very worried about this new idea.

PCC Elections - Bill Etheridge's manifesto

Bill Etheridge, the UKIP candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner, pledges (in addition to the standard things most candidates are saying):-

•  I will demand tougher and more sensible sentencing from Judges. I will send a written request to each Court in the WMP area and request most vehemently that they adhere to the Sentencing Guidelines Council recommendations for that crime. 

This is a worrying statement, which suggests that as I feared in yesterday's post, PCCs may not be happy to keep to the duties that are prescribed or recommended for them by the Home Office. Writing to judges should not be part of his role, for very good reasons, and it is highly unlikley any member of the traditional executive branch of government would dream of violating the separation of powers like this.

If Mr Etheridge did this he would be at risk, in my opinion, of acting contrary to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, as well as ultra vires the powers granted to him by Parliament. The section 3 of the CRA states:

(1)The Lord Chancellor, other Ministers of the Crown and all with responsibility for matters relating to the judiciary or otherwise to the administration of justice must uphold the continued independence of the judiciary.

 and

(5)The Lord Chancellor and other Ministers of the Crown must not seek to influence particular judicial decisions through any special access to the judiciary.

Subsesction (5) might well include those who are part of the Home Office as well as actual ministers. If a public body or official acts contrary to statute, this does not imply any criminal offence, but does leave the decision liable to being quashed by the courts. Parliament can also hold the executive to account. But because of the directly elected nature of the PCC position, it will exist outside the established executive branch of government and will not be accountable to Parliament in the usual way that ministers are. And it is not clear yet if the courts will be willing to interfere with actions of directly elected office holders. I'm sure Mr Ederidge is not alone in this kind of plan, so this could mean interesting times.

Why I will not be voting on Nov 15th

On November 15th, we will be asked to vote for the first elected Police and Crime Commissioners. This new post was created with the stated aim of "giving the public a say in cutting crime", and the government describes it as "being at the vanguard of its reforms". The theory is that an elected police chief will make the police better at serving in a way the public want.

This all sounds great, but there are two very serious problems with this idea.

1. There is little that a voter can do to make a meaningful choice as to which candidate to vote for.
2. The concept of electing the police, or voting on which crimes to enforce, is inherently dodgy.