| The Con Dems: enemies of the family | Jonathan Bradshaw Can the benefit-slashing coalition be the same government that was committed to eradicating child poverty?The Coalition government is getting into a real old mess with its family policy. Even before the public expenditure cuts are announced on 20th October it is extremely difficult for them to maintain that their approach to the deficit is fair. The Women's Budget Group estimate that 70% of the benefit changes announced in the emergency budget would come from the pockets of women. The list of measures that will harm children is stacking up: abolition of Child Trust Funds; the Health in Pregnancy Grant; Surestart Maternity Grant for second child; uprating of benefits by the CPI rather than RPI; the three-year freeze on child benefits and the introduction of housing benefit limits. Pensioners and the childless remain unscathed so far.Now at the Tory party conference George Osborne announces the end of universal child benefits and the reintroduction of the wages stop. The wages stop was the rule in the old national assistance scheme that no one should receive more in benefits than they received in work. It had been inherited from the hated prewar unemployment assistance scheme and was eventually abandoned to general relief in July 1975 when only 6,000 claimants were being affected. Osborne has said that the new wage stop is going to be related to what the average family gets. By this he seems to mean earnings of about £500 per week – despite the fact that a family with children on those earnings will also receive child benefit and child tax credit on top. Where is the evidence base to justify this measure? One suspects that it is a response to the Daily Mail's library of bizarre cases.Who are the 50,000 people who it is suggested will be effected? How much will be taken from their benefits, which are already substantially below the minimum income standard threshold and the 60% of median income poverty threshold? They are probably all families with children. How this can be reconciled with the government commitment to eradicate child poverty remains a mystery. Hitting large families will not help; 38% of poor children live in families with three or more children and their risk of poverty is double that of one-child families.Now we have the bizarre suggestion from Jeremy Hunt on Newsnight last night that the policy is designed to reduce incentives for beneficiaries to have children. So how many of the 50,000 had children after becoming unemployed? It is actually not family size that drives the policy. A couple with three children on Employment Support Allowance gets £319, and for each extra child £58. Even the extremely rare case of a six-child family is still below the £500 threshold. But they get their rent as well and this drives them over the limit. So is the policy designed to stop families on benefit living in the London housing market – or stop them having babies if they do?Liberal-Conservative coalitionFamily financesChild benefitCommunitiesChildrenWelfareJonathan Bradshawguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
SNP offers two-year tax freeze The SNP has announces plans to extend the freeze on council tax beyond the next election at its annual conference bbc.co.uk |
MOBO Awards 2010: The Winners This is the full list of winners of the 15th annual MOBO Awards. telegraph.co.uk |
Humanists launch 'no religion' census campaign The British Humanist Association wants non-believers and the seriously lapsed to stop ticking the Christian boxThe British Humanist Association has launched a campaign to encourage non-believers and the seriously lapsed to tick the "no religion" box on the 2011 census with the aim of challenging religious privilege in Britain.According to the organisation, public figures have spent the last 10 years claiming that most people in this country are religious to justify the money or attention spent on these communities.While the statistics show that 37.3m people stated their religion as Christian, these figures are not reflected in church attendance.The beef the BHA has with the census is manifold but, principally, it is that it underestimates the number of non-religious people and inflates the Christian population. The official figures show that in 2001 15.1% of respondents did not answer the religion question (which was voluntary) and 7.8% of the people who did said they had no religion.That equates to 22.9% of respondents – approximately 13 million people – who were either non-religious, did not want to answer the question or failed to spot it. The no-religion group exceeded the Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu populations combined.Since the last census was carried out, the BHA believes the numbers of the non-religious have increased. And there have been high-profile campaigns by atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the group behind the Atheist bus.The BHA says it is time for people who never go to church or who never think about religion to 'fess up: " ... what people do not realise is that by ticking the 'Christian' box rather than the 'no religion' box – which would more accurately reflect their identity – they have contributed to data used to justify an increase in the number of 'faith' schools, the public funding of religious groups, keeping Bishops in the House of Lords as of right, and the continuation of compulsory worship in schools." Yes you fickle and lazy lot, the humanists blame you for all that.While some might argue that humanists have no more place to tell you what to do than religious institutions, it will be interesting to see what difference a decade of high profile campaigning and posturing front has done to the thorny question of religious belief in Britain.ReligionAtheismChristianityRiazat Buttguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
David Cameron refuses to back down on housing benefit cap Under fire from Ed Miliband at Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron insists he will not compromise on plans to put an upper limit on housing benefit. telegraph.co.uk |