This is a photograph I took last week of Coleton Fishacre in Devon. Now a National Trust property, it was built for the D’Oyly Carte family, and would be well within the Mansion Tax category.
I was encouraged to see Eric Pickles’ robust rejection of the Lib Dems’ Mansion Tax in Saturday’s Telegraph, but rather surprised to see our own Tim Montgomerie, usually the soundest Conservative around, appearing to support the idea of such a tax. Certainly the idea is current in the blogosphere: Bagehot of the Economist takes a long, cool look at it, but at the end of the day comes down against.
Where would the money go? Tim makes the point, quite rightly, that family breakdown is hugely expensive, and therefore that interventions that reduce the level of family breakdown are good value. But I hope and suspect that Tim does not have in mind armies of social workers intruding on “problem families” with intensive programmes, but rather the creation of family-friendly fiscal policies to remove the disincentives to marriage (and dare one even say to promote marriage?), plus a robust defence of the traditional family, and an end to the mealy-mouthed circumlocutions that welcome “all kinds of families” (which is usually leftist-speak for domestic arrangements that are scarcely families at all).
With all the usual caveats about the fine job done by some single parents, who deserve our respect, it remains a fact that the traditional family is the best environment for raising children, and I commend those few politicians, like Iain Duncan Smith, who are prepared to say so.
Tim suggests that we could fund extra support for families in part by reducing unnecessary benefits for better-off families, and he is right. George Osborne agrees, which is why the Coalition has removed child benefit from higher earners. Tim points to benefits like the free TV licence and the winter fuel allowance, and it is difficult to see why families paying higher-rate tax should enjoy these hand-outs.