Part of me agrees with the sentiment.

But it is true that you can afford a far nicer home in a far nicer part of town on benefits than in work. I’m not sure that is a good thing.

“But it is true that you can afford a far nicer home in a far nicer part of town on benefits than in work. I’m not sure that is a good thing.”

The solution to this, surely, is to make it easier for people in work to afford nicer homes, not to put all the people on benefits in ghettos?

This is a superb piece of analysis.

Sevillista – I’ve got a friend who lives in council accommodation in (I think) Kensington & Chelsea (her place is v near Earl’s Court tube, but I don’t think it’s Hammersmith & Fulham).

It’s a pretty basic place – I wouldn’t say it was far nicer than other estates and/or council homes.

It’s right near a very busy road (so had a lot of traffic noise) and in the basement.

She was pleased to move there, though, because it was bigger than her old place (which also had a lot of problems with leaks, etc, and maintenance) and also because she felt she and her kids would have better access to better amenities in a Zone 1 neighbourhood. Her hope would be that it was an area in which her kids would have a better chance of making their way up.

Might give her a call to see what her thoughts are.

Great piece, Dan.

Nice analysis.

My greatest frustration with the last 13 years of Labour government, is that whilst they have done a lot more good than they’re given credit for, on issues such as immigration they are forever running away from themselves.

On the issue of immigration, the only positive I can say is that the Tories would be worse. That’s hardly impressive is it?

AFZ

First rate,Don. New Labourish triangulation somehow always ends up (perhaps unintentionally, but I’m not so sure) crapping on the marginalised to placate the Mail/Express mob (whose readers aren’t anything like as exercised about such matters as the editorial staff…cf social surveys etc), a crowd for whom this is not punishing enough anyhow.

Once in one of these ‘nicer homes in a nicer part of town’ and on benefits it’s very difficult to get off benefits. Because even in the less nice parts of town (thinking of London particularly here) you can’t afford the rent unless it’s paid by housing benefit or you get a really well paid job. And don’t have children to arrange childcare for. I knew a lone parent (a widow actually) with four children, who kept begging the council for a home. Having a council home was the ONLY way she could afford to go out to work, which she really wanted to do. She was a well-educated professional woman, who could’ve been a useful asset to the country’s economy.

So the solution, actually, is to increase the amount of ‘social housing’ or somehow get private landlords to reduce the rent to that approaching social housing rents. (Or, as was suggested a few years back, that those on benefits ‘negotiate’ the rent with a private landlord. Hahahahaha)

I know these questions are not going to be popular but……

Is there any thought from anyone on the left around here that, before having 6 children, the parents had any duty or any responsibility to consider how they planned to feed, clothe and house them?

I know that we cannot have children starving in the streets and I know that people’s plans for income, employment and housing sometimes go wrong. But is it considered morally acceptable to have as many children as you wish in the full and certain knowledge that others will be compelled to pay for them?

If that was what you planned to happen from the beginning?

With 6 children being supported on state benefits, do the parents have the inalienable right to have more children if they want them?

Is there any limit to the duty of the state to provide?

Hi pagar,

Those are reasonable questions, but my view is that the answer to:

“But is it considered morally acceptable to have as many children as you wish in the full and certain knowledge that others will be compelled to pay for them?”

is yes.

The fact that birth rates are falling overall suggests that extremely few people plan to have kids in order to rake the cash in (they would be pretty daft if they did).

The more general argument is that when children grow up in poverty and in overcrowded homes, their life chances are worse and they are more likely to have large families which the state has to stump up the cash for. The better the start that children have in life, the lower the chances that later in life they will have large families and be out of work.

@7 pagar

“But is it considered morally acceptable to have as many children as you wish in the full and certain knowledge that others will be compelled to pay for them?”

If your answer is “no” what would you do?

Claire’s point @6 is a good one. Housing benefit can, in some circumstances, get people into accomodation that they would struggle to afford from their hypothetical salary, especially when other issues around marginal tax rates are considered.

In many circumstances, housing benefit isn’t a benefit to the tenant as much as it is to the landlord. It provides an artificial floor to rents, almost guaranteeing that landlords can find tenants at their chosen rent level so long as they’re happy to have benefit claimants as tenants (and if the benefit is paid direct to the tenant, the landlord won’t even know). This is one of the pillars supporting the buy-to-let housing market. The problem is that cutting housing benefit would, in the short term, be a disaster for the tenants too. In the long run perhaps the housing market would adjust, but there’s a long period of uncertainty and pain in the middle to be dealt with.

The only real solution is an increase in the housing supply, naturally bringing housing costs down. Tackling the benefit withdrawal problem would also help to solve the problem of people who can’t afford to stay in their present locale if they take a job.

Pagar,

The person I’m thinking of ended up in the situation she’s in because he partner beat the hell out of her. She had to get out.

She had a part time job which she’d been in for about 15 years – believed v much in paying her way. I know that doesn’t cover the old ‘don’t have 10 kids – tie a knot in it – argument, but not everyone in these circumstances is in them because they’re irresponsible.

@ Don Paskini
“The more general argument is that when children grow up in poverty and in overcrowded homes, their life chances are worse and they are more likely to have large families which the state has to stump up the cash for. The better the start that children have in life, the lower the chances that later in life they will have large families and be out of work.”

Unfortunately this isn’t an argument that will hold sway with anyone who doesn’t already see the case for state provision. It assumes that a future state will continue to pay e.g. child benefit beyond the first two children and factor in overcrowding into housing points. To deal with this issue you need to take at least a certain percentage of the moderate public with you, and in many respects the Unfairness Test given above (‘I pay my taxes and I couldn’t afford to have a house in X!’) is a killer for this sort of support.

In the context of a benefits system whose cost now outstrips income tax reciepts, it’s crucial that we look at other ways of achieving the goals of a progressive state. The welfare system is only there as a safety net, and something has clearly gone wrong when it’s possible for our opponents to portray it as a lifestyle choice.

For example, say a teenage single mother is kicked out of her parents’ home and moves into Council accomodation with her child. This is a clear-cut case of need; no-one would dispute that. However, say she then falls pregnant again and has another child – a child she can’t support without help. She’s made a choice that has made her personal situation worse. Is extra financial support really appropriate here?

The case in the Evening Standard of the lady with 7-8 children by five different fathers who admitted to liking having children is a clear example of where financial support hasn’t helped. The danger is that in saying that one leaves oneself open to accusations of moralism; when rather the issue to hand is whether the benefits system is fostering life choices that lead to more positive financial situations and self-reliance. A much higher level of attempting to influence the choices of benefit recipients within our welfare state is necessary to protect it from attacks from right, and from its potential unaffordability.

@Kate Belgrave
The obvious right-wing response is why would she move into Zone 1 when better amenities (and much more space) are available outside of London? We do need to make it easier for social housing tenants to move between local authorities.

“But is it considered morally acceptable to have as many children as you wish in the full and certain knowledge that others will be compelled to pay for them?”

I would say no, and also add its irresponsible. But what can you do? Once the kids are here they need to be looked after properly and i agree with Dons sentiments @8.

Pagar

So what is the real, viable alternative? Given the link between poverty and larger families is pretty well understood throughout the World (irrespective of the existence of a welfare State), how should we tackle the issue? Forced sterilization and state issued ‘permission to breed’ certificates?

Given that mammals have been happily reproducing for millions of years before housing benefit existed, is it possible that this issue is slightly more complex than the ‘Libertarian’ approach can comprehend?

Do you think it is the job of humanity to bend to the needs of the State, or the State’s job to bend to billions of years of evolution?

@Jim
I think that’s rather an unfair strawman response to Pagar’s valid question. Calls to examine the potential to reform the welfare state should not be taken as calls to sterilise the poor. That sort of knee-jerk reaction doesn’t help in a media environment in which the basic fairness of the welfare state is being called into question.

The job of the State is to respond to the wishes of its citizens. If those of its citizens who pay tax start saying, ‘Actually, we don’t want to give money to a system we regard as wasteful and not leading to beneficial outcomes’, what happens to the poor from there?

@Kate Belgrave
I’ve got kids. I’d like them to be able to make their way up, as your mate apparently puts it. However, while they do it they’ll be subsidising flats in Kensington for people like your mate. No-one in my family has ever been able to afford a flat in Kensington. Why do we have to pay for your mate to have one?

Adam Bell @ 15

What is the real alternative though? If a woman (oh, BTW we are talking about women here) has two kids and ‘gets’ (or finds) herself pregnant again, what do we do? Do we stigmatise that third child, take it into care, force her to an abortion clinic or whip out the ovaries after the second kid? Or do we go into tag team mode and go in for a sponsored ‘moralising’ or what?

If we object to the poor having ‘too many’ kids, then we really need to look at practical solutions to prevent that from happening. We either announce that these people’s subsequent children are ‘non human’ and remove them the benefits/welfare system. This disadvantages those kids of course.

Or we make a decision to directly intervene in these people’s lives and forcefully sterilise them after they reach the ‘optimum’ family size as well as preventing them from forming new relationships, perhaps by branding the word ‘Claimant’ in nice friendly letters on their forehead?

Really Adam, if we want to stop this from happening, what is the alternative?

@Chris,

I got kids too and would like them to be able to make their way up. No subsidies for us and no flat in Kensington either. However, I’m prepared to accept that some of my tax payments go to supporting people who need assistance, particularly when they’ve come to need that assistance through no fault of their own. I also like the idea of living in a world where communities are mixed. Otherwise, we’ll soon have a situation where dear old South London is fenced off, like Manhattan Island in that Kurt Russell thing.

Prefer my tax to go towards housing and mixed communities than Fred the Feckn Shred’s French pile.

@ 10 Rob

“The only real solution is an increase in the housing supply,”

There used to be rent controls and sheltered tenacies. It worked pretty well as a solution.

With any benefit you have to accept a tiny amount of inevitable abuse as the price of living in the sort of society that doesn’t let people die in the gutter. I imagine we all do accept that trade-off really, including Pagar. And no, much though I disagree with Housing Benefit on principle (for reasons Rob provides at 10) it doesn’t seem particularly sensible to start tearing it out from under people without making amends in some other way.

Saying all that, London is a bit of an odd case. Plenty of people would see the wisdom in living in zone 1 with access to lots of great amenities, jobs and opportunities and cheap tube travel round the centre*, but the vast majority can’t even think of affording it. It is very, very unusual. I would actually find it quite hard to explain to someone on a low wage from Merton, say, why it was ok that someone else gets to live in zone 1 because they’re on benefits, whereas I wouldn’t find it remotely difficult to explain why the state was supporting that person per se. Access to zone 1 housing really isn’t something you can “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or whatever the usual rubbish is and work towards.

*I’ve always thought it odd that the tube pricing structure doesn’t operate the other way round, so that the poor sod commuting from Hillingdon to serve lattes to bankers doesn’t have to pay about three times what the bankers do to get to work.

@Jim

This isn’t about ‘too many’ kids, it’s about individual situations which lead to negative financial & social outcomes. There are plenty of alternatives, but the important point is to consider state intervention on a case by case basis. It may be appropriate for one person to convert their child benefit into childcare credits, allowing them to go out for work. It may be appropriate to provide counselling, in the case of the Evening Standard who had self-declared self-esteem issues. In the case of Kate’s friend, it may be appropriate to use the CSA to force an abusive partner to provide support for the children. There are alternatives to the Orwellian nightmare you describe; which rather seems a council of despair. What’s important is to provide a toolkit of different options for every case, rather than providing one-size-fits all benefits – or, indeed, one-size-fits all sterilisations.

The welfare state needs to be fair – and affordable. Right now it’s not. If we hold off on reforming it for fear of being cast as moralists, we will end up in the situation you’re talking about.

More considered replies later, but just to thank everyone who’s commented – this has been a really good discussion.

Yurrzem! wrote:

@ 10 Rob

“The only real solution is an increase in the housing supply,”

There used to be rent controls and sheltered tenacies. It worked pretty well as a solution.

Yes, but they’re only a temporary solution, as evidenced by the fact that they don’t exist any more. Houses, once they’re built, tend to stick around longer than government policies do.

Perhaps we switch to universal benefits rather than means tested, thats the only way anything is fair.

I must admit I’ve not really thought it through but a couple of obvious advantages would be no benefit fraud and no more csocial divisions that the benefit system seems to have created.

@ Kate

Clearly, your friend’s situation was not planned and I don’t think any reasonable person would grudge her financial support. It would be great if that support also comprised help with a childcare system that would enable her to have the additional fulfillment of pursuing her career and a tax/benefit system that rewarded her financially for doing so.

Regarding the broader issues, I agree with Don’s point that

when children grow up in poverty and in overcrowded homes, their life chances are worse and they are more likely to have large families which the state has to stump up the cash for. The better the start that children have in life, the lower the chances that later in life they will have large families and be out of work.

I would add that children who are born to parents who have not seen fit to prepare themselves emotionally and financially to provide for them are likely to be relatively disadvantaged and it is important for others, outside the immediate family, to try to help such children.

I am less convinced that the way to help them is for the benefits system to motivate their parents to procreate further. I am also unconvinced that it is helpful to the parents in terms of impressing on them the advantages to be found in taking responsibility for their own lives.

At a macro level we are not only in danger of failing to break the cycle of deprivation but we are at risk of creating a cycle of dependency that is arguably more dangerous in the long run.

Let us not forget that the “choice” of whether or not to bring children into the world is not universal to all women,some of us can plan motherhood,some women do not have the same level of control over their fertility.

@26, could you explain what you mean. In this context you seem to be implying that some woman get pregant randomly, whether they have had sex or not?

@25 Pagar

“I am less convinced that the way to help them is for the benefits system to motivate their parents to procreate further. ”

There may be problems here, but how should they be dealt with? Is some abuse of the system tolerable in comparison with the alternatives?

@pagar – one point worth noting is that the decision of poor women to have children doesn’t seem to be influenced very much by restrictions in entitlements to benefits. For example, in the USA they have tried all manner of initiatives to restrict welfare to single mothers, but with no noticeable impact on family sizes.

Women who have a child when they aren’t able to support it without assistance from the state are much less likely to be rational economic agents maximising their financial gain, and much more likely to be relatively powerless and marginalised. If you are worried about parents who aren’t emotionally or financially able to support their children, the solution is empowering women and improving the safety net, not restricting welfare and making the system more punitive.

@ Don

If you are worried about parents who aren’t emotionally or financially able to support their children, the solution is empowering women

I absolutely agree.The difference we have is about how that is best achieved.

You would argue that, by raising levels of income and ensuring that all material needs are provided for, this improvement in living standards will break the cycle of deprivation in a generation or two. The children will become valuable productive citizens and poverty will have been defeated.

I would argue that the above, though well motivated, is not empowerment at all.

Fashioning a society in which effort, struggle and work are not required fundamentally dehumanises the population and creates a world where the message that is reinforced from parent to child is that personal responsibility is unnecessary (because the state will provide for all needs). Such an environment, in my view, is stultifying to aspiration and progress.

Of course it would be difficult to tackle the dependency cycle in an acceptably humane way, but I do agree with Dave above that universal benefits would have to be a key component in the attempt.

@Kate

But this reform is not going to affect council accommodation.

It is about those who are housed in the private rented sector due to a shortage of social housing in Inner London.

Admittedly the favourite cases of the tabloids are probably Tory councils politicking and trying to shirk the blame of their housing policy failures – see http://www.fivechinesecrackers.com/2009/12/colour-me-suspicious.html

But do you really think those on housing benefit should be able to afford to live in very nice houses in central London while those in work are forced into tiny houses an hour commute to the centre? Is there really a right to live in expensive Inner London?

Housing benefit is meant to provide a safety net – I can’t see why this safety net should be set higher than what most people can afford.

Maybe unfairness is a price worth paying for mixed communities?

@ pagar 30

“Fashioning a society in which effort, struggle and work are not required fundamentally dehumanises the population”

Are you suggesting that living on benefits is a bed of roses? I think this spoils the point you were trying to make.

I have had a leaflet from my Labour candidate (Karen Buck) alleging that the Tories are proposing to abolish secure tenancies and raise social housing rents to market levels.

Anyone know anything about this?

@23 Rob

“Yes, but they’re only a temporary solution, as evidenced by the fact that they don’t exist any more. Houses, once they’re built, tend to stick around longer than government policies do.”

This is a weird thing to say. Policies can come and go as we want them to, if we have any influence on government. How long they last is political, the durability of houses less so.

Given that I don’t want the Evening Standard (nor the Grauniad) to determine policy for anything, I still have to ask why does Darling think there is £250m (£145m in London) to be saved by this change?
Kate Belgrave’s example deserves sympathy but most comparable examples should be entitled to claim maintenance from the (ex-)husband. If not, why (apart from young widows) not? So while these are deserving cases, with which even the average right-winger would sympathise, they can only make up a small proportion of the total. There really are not that many young widows these days
Why should anyone on Housing Benefit want to live in a property which is among the most expensive 8% of those in London? The food and other local cost are significantly higher, so they are worse off than if they lived in an area generally inhabited by poor people. (I know this, having lived for a decade in central London). No family on housing benefit should wish to live in Kensington or Chelsea or the fashionable bits of Islington. Why should a short travel to work help someone who is unemployed?
I do agree with Don Paskini that capping the number of bedrooms at 5 rather than setting a norm and allowing housing managers some discretion to reflect individual circumstances is discriminating against ethnic minorities who live as extended families – two widowed grandmothers, an aunt, two parents and children of different sexes should have six bedrooms. However there are very, very few houses with six bedrooms so it may be that the stupidity of housing regulations has put such a family in a house for a rich family with servants when the could be accommodated in two adjacent three bedroom houses by someone with a brain *who was permitted discretion*
N

@ 32 Are you suggesting that living on benefits is a bed of roses?

On the contrary.

I am suggesting that to be unemployed and living on benefits is the most depressing and dispiriting place you can be. It grinds down the human soul more completely than anything else I can think of.

Ask anyone who has done it.

#33 Secure tenancies – yes, it’s in the Tories’ white paper on housing (read it cover to cover, it’s horrifying stuff and it gets worse than that)

Rents – something they’ve already done in some local authorities which Cameron has praised as an example to follow (Westminster is one example, I think), but not yet official policy

“Rents – something they’ve already done in some local authorities which Cameron has praised as an example to follow (Westminster is one example, I think), but not yet official policy”

I don’t know but I wouldn’t have thought this has already happened. Social housing rents (council and housing association mostly) are all set by a national rent formula. I don’t see how any Tory council could go outside this.

@36 pagar,

I see. I misread your posting.

[37] Got a link, please, Tim?

Part of the problem is that the S of England is over developed due to the over heated economy . In parts of N England there is demolition of property. By rebalencing the national economy it will help to relieve housing pressure in S England.

Some excellent comments on the problems, but very little concrete proposals on the changes needed.

Its worth bearing in mind that London is different from the rest of the UK. The situation of high levels of benefits being paid to people in zone 1 has only occured because properties in zone 1 are expensive, which in turn is essentially an externality of excessive wages in one particular industry located in london. However, in more general terms, I think the housing system in the UK is not fit for purpose, and needs a thorough overhall. Housing benefit is just one small part of this, we also need to look at the wider issues of house prices and rents. Housing benefit represents a subsidy and artificial floor on rents, but equally there is a need for a welfare system that pays the cost of housing for when people lose jobs, or relationships break down and one side is left with childcare responsibilities and thus cannot work full time.

Sometimes such debates on housing can often fall into cliched arguments. Either it is argued we throw more money at the problem (whether that is house building or increasing benefits) which fails to address the underlying structual issues or questions of fairness (people who work should be having higher standards of living than those who don’t – I dont think that is unreasonable), or the other side wants to remove benefits and assume the magic adam smith fairy dust will result harmony and prosperity to housing

I’d like to see some ideas here that avoid such cliches if possible,

@ 32 Are you suggesting that living on benefits is a bed of roses?

well its certainly much more comfortable then working in a low paid job and having to pay your own rent for a crappy place hours away from work.

Makes me wanna sign up asap…….

42 – there is actually a bit of an emerging consensus on this, in that both Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Justice have argued for spending roughly £4bn to make sure that people in low paid work get to keep more of their housing benefit (by reducing the rate at which benefits are withdrawn). (Emerging consensus in that mainstream right-wing think tanks are backing a traditional leftie proposal).

This guarantees that people are better off in work than on benefit, but achieves this by increasing the income of workers, rather than reducing the income of people on benefits.

There is a more techie and cheaper version of this, which is to replace HB with a housing tax credit, suggested by Chartered Institute of Housing. More info at:

http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/1842630806.pdf

Thanks to Sevillista for the link. I have to say that I find it pretty funny that the council involved in more than one of these scandal stories is Westminster, of the ‘homes for votes’ scandal.

London really is very diffeent to the rest of the country. Something you see in parts of London is previously poorer areas which traditionally had large working-class communities having housing prices spiral upwards until the children of the local community cannot afford to live there any longer.

In some of these places (like where I grew up in West London and couldn’t afford to live now) rather than having the problem of people moving to an expensive part of town, you have people who have lived there all their lives being given housing benefit to live in the area.

People haven’t always picked an expensive area to live in, it’s just where they’re from.

@ 44 Don

The problem with Housing Benefit, even if given as a tax credit, is that it inflates the price of affordable houses by subsidising the buy to let market and distorting the market in the rented sector overall.

It benefits the grasping rich, not the poor.

Paying everyone a basic income and allowing them to make their own choices on what proportion of that income they spend on housing would bring the actual cost of housing down. It’s would also be more ….er…..liberal.

If we then allowed everyone to earn a certain amount on top of their guaranteed basic income before we began to tax them and recovered, through the tax system, the basic income from those that didn’t need it, we’d have a very different and more efficient system.

Means testing is inefficient, beaurocratic and psychologically crippling to all involved in the process. Just think. No more scroungers or benefit cheats ever again, just the personal pride involved in taking up the minimum income that is the entitlement of the citizen.

Sorry about going slightly off topic, but really it’s all part of the same conversation.

If you can’t afford a five bedroom house don’t have five kids………………….

“Paying everyone a basic income and allowing them to make their own choices on what proportion of that income they spend on housing would bring the actual cost of housing down.”

How long would this process of declining rents take? what would the social consequences be during this time as people struggled to pay rents whilst they waited for the cost to go down? and what would the economic effects of a decline in the return (and therefore asset value) of owning and letting property bearing in mind even a small decline has almost crippled the financial system?