The couple who are 'better off' living apart

If you want a real life example of how Gordon Brown's tax and benefits system is corrupting morality you need look no further than today's News of the World.  Reporter Philip Whiteside profiles the example of a couple that have chosen to split up because they are £878 a month better off as a result.  This is the problem that Iain Duncan Smith's social justice report was attempting to begin to address.  Read the full story here.

The Sunday Telegraph has a poll that shows a clear majority believing that it is right for Government to support marriage (57% to 35%) but a smaller majority in favour of using tax allowances to do so (49% to 44%).

Comments

[gobsmacked]

Britain has gone mad!

Me and my wife are paying tax to fund welfare benefits for unemployed people who are several hundred pounds a month better off than us for sitting on their @rses all day while we go out to work.

[dizzy]

"corrupting morality" is a bit of a stretch surely? Far better just to point out the absurdity and mechancial nonsense of the system he has created.

[Yet Another Anon]

Far better just to point out the absurdity and mechancial nonsense of the system he has created.
It is a problem that goes back even before National Assistance back to the Poor Law.

People are penalised for having any savings, if they live as a family then they get less than if they live separately in many cases - there are some things that can be done about this such as eliminating income and savings assessments as much as possible, reducing the number of benefits and similar mechanisms and rationalising them as much as possible; also reducing the number of benefits that are not fixed rate and using low interest loans repayable along the lines of Student Loans in place of many benefits for things such as housing, medical costs and Education. Moving away from having benefits for single people and benefit rates for couples and instead having a particular rate for a person - this might mean uprating some people's benefits while cutting many other people's benefits to make sure that there is an equitable approach to single people and couples.

It is time to abandon the principle of redistribution for redistribution sake or any notion of reducing inequality of incomes and focus instead on providing a minimum that does not provide disincentives from people for living in groups and does not disincentivise saving or work, and is simple enough at the claimant end both for those most in need not to miss out on what they are entitled to should they chose to claim, but also for there to be little scope for fraud.

This would also mean though tightening definitions of disability to further restrict additional payments on top of core rates, and cutting rates applicable to most claimants, because it would be being spread more thinly.

There would have to be a far greater focus on residency qualifications with much more intensive checking of identity and stricter requirements for eligibility, and far tighter monitoring of people in the country and passing through, checking identities - this would also help counter general crime and terrorism.

In addition perhaps not providing things such as loans to meet debts people might have - people would be expected to live within the amounts of money they got and if that wasn't enough then the state would not help them out additionally even if it mean't their death.

[TomTom]

using low interest loans repayable along the lines of Student Loans

Speaking of Student Loans - it would be interesting to see the accounts and how much Debt the taxpayer is carrying, how much has been written off, and how much is being amortised.

I suspect the taxpayer is simply paying more to fund university education disguised as loans which will probably never be repaid

[Editor]

I don't think corrupting morality was too strong a description of what is going on, dizzy (9.45). To effectively force people apart who want to live together is certainly a subversion of a moral aspiration that society should be supporting - not penalising.

[Yet Another Anon]

Speaking of Student Loans - it would be interesting to see the accounts and how much Debt the taxpayer is carrying, how much has been written off, and how much is being amortised.
This could be changed though, under the present arrangement once someone reaches pension age all Student Loan is written off - I don't think that loan should be written off until either it is repaid (and any interest) or until the person who took the loan out is dead and buried and their estate has been sorted out, Student Loans and other such loans should be recoverable from the estates of deceased people.

[TomTom]

I don't think corrupting morality was too strong a description of what is going on

Not at all....don't we speak of moral hazard in terms of insurance ?

[bgp]

gobsmacked, Not just you, but around a half of all British households. Anyone who thinks a £20/week tax-credit is an appropriate and proportionate way to deal with the problems of our welfare system and dependency culture needs to be put in the loony bin, not given a seat in the Commons (fill in your own obvious joke). Once again, the Tories are fiddling while Rome burns.

[YMT]

I know of someone who did this, her husband had been injured after he was assaulted by a group of thugs, he can't work any more so the wife went to the "support people" asking for more help as incapacity benefit was'nt enough as they had 3 young children and her job wasn't paying enough, she was advised by the support person the best thing to do was get a divorce so she could get single mothers allowance. After much anger, there was no alternative.

[Fred Baker]

The actual truth is that Labour wish for everybody to be beholden to the state. In the end Tories could never get into power because all those beholden to the state will lose benefits. This is also why the Civil Service and Local Government have been expanded on a grand scale. What Labour has succeeded in doing is to prove that Democracy does not work. We now live in such a nightmare society that even George Orwell could not have envisaged.

[TomTom]

We now live in such a nightmare society that even George Orwell could not have envisaged.

He envisaged much much worse...do read his books....this country is not anything like 1984 in fact it is rather a weak and effete country where the British have no self-respect but are simply whiners and lack any backbone

[Matt Wright]

There would be a lot of support amongst the real working class for a Tory party prepared to reform the benefit system. When I stood for election I was endlessly told by lower paid workers in traditional Labour areas that they were sick of people taking the system for a ride. They respected a firm response on this matter.

Matt

[bgp]

Someone claiming to be Sean Ash, and who sounds like it really is Sean Ash, has posted his version of the story over at pickinglosers. Not surprisingly, it sounds like the News of the Screws had significantly distorted the story. And it is hard to draw the conclusion from his comments that the £20/week tax-break or any of IDS's other proposals is terribly relevant to his predicament. "Attempting to begin to address" sounds about right as a description of the superficiality and timidity of IDS's proposals.