Of all the animals of prey, man is the only sociable one.
Every one of us preys upon his neighbour, and yet we herd together.
The Beggar's Opera: John Gay

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Mick Philpott - hijacking the welfare state

The current welfare reforms have caused such an outbreak of unison knee-jerk reactions that the MSM are in danger of looking like a 'Riverdance' tribute act.

In the midst of the argument - after a startlingly short time, given the usual glacial pace of the justice system - stands Mick Philpott, appearing just in time to polarise opinions completely and give the straw men of the Left another outing.

Any suggestion that the benefits system is at fault for allowing - or encouraging - this man to treat his women as brood livestock and effectively farm their children for the income they generated is met with a barrage of hostility amid accusations of attacking all benefit claimants.

Like Karen Matthews before him, Mick Philpott embodies some of the worst aspects of human nature; someone prepared to exploit and ultimately endanger his own children for personal gain. It's nothing new, of course; it's the same behaviour that has for centuries led beggars to parade and even mutilate children to enhance their chances of soliciting alms.

But what has changed is the way that child benefit and tax credits have skewed the system. Each new child, instead of being an unwelcome extra mouth to feed, now represents a substantial and all-too-easily generated increase in income; the less you earn, the more tax credit the child brings in. Successive well-meaning efforts to tackle child poverty have led to payments at the lower end of the spectrum that can dramatically exceed the child's actual costs to the family.

Take, for example, the couple who recently appeared in the news arguing that, because of the taxes paid by their parents, they were entitled to a life of leisure on state benefits; the breakdown of their income given suggested that they receive £20 child benefit and £60 tax credit payments a week for their daughter (caveat: Mail). The child in question is all of four months old; she's hardly even on solid food but it appears that she's getting more than the jobseeker's allowance.

Equally, in the Philpott case, it's hard to see how 11 children could justify the alleged £45,000 a year allocated for their upkeep, given state-provided schooling (with meals), healthcare and housing. But, just as we saw default rates rise when social housing tenants were expected to take charge of their own finances, some of this money must be going to people who cannot - or will not - manage to put it to its proper use.

The defensive reaction against the welfare cuts has left me wondering whether many of the most vociferous critics have tacitly accepted that, because a minority of parents on benefits will misappropriate the child-related payments, the only way to avoid child poverty is to throw more public money at all of them in the hope that, when their parents' wants are met, some leftover cash will eventually filter down for the benefit of those children at greatest risk of deprivation.

The effect of this is to render young single mothers highly vulnerable to predatory older males, for whom they represent a significant source of present and potential future income. Younger men, still waiting to find suitable housing, simply cannot compete. There's a horrible irony in the way that a welfare system which should be the hallmark of a civilized country has, in effect, returned a sector of the population to the social structure of the great apes.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this media fuss is that, amid the strident criticism of the cuts and the implication that to censure a single claimant is to condemn them all, we seem to be losing sight of the way that excessively large families intentionally conceived and  reared on welfare payments must effectively reduce access to resources, both financial and supportive, for those who unexpectedly find themselves in need.

The safety net of the welfare state was devised in an age where pride and a work ethic made it a genuine last resort; now the kind of people it was meant to help - the newly unemployed or homeless and families in genuine hardship - must queue up behind those who, like Philpott, have been knowingly playing the system for years.


There are some interesting perspectives on this story at Unenlightened Commentary and Burning Our Money (which has made a welcome return).

5 comments:

  1. "The safety net of the welfare state was devised in an age where pride and a work ethic made it a genuine last resort; now the kind of people it was meant to help - the newly unemployed or homeless and families in genuine hardship - must queue up behind those who, like Philpott, have been knowingly playing the system for years."

    Well said!

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  2. The Left, in their blank refusal to admit that there is ANY problem with the welfare state, are in fact threatening the very foundations of that they are trying to defend. By effectively saying 'We don't care if a few people behave like Philpott' (in terms of his benefit claiming history, not his murderous scheming) they risk sparking an even more ruthless backlash against the welfare state.

    Its noticeable that the cases wheeled out as examples against the 'cuts' rarely actually make good evidence for their own argument. They often result in other people thinking 'Well I can't afford X, or Y, or have that amount of disposable income, and I'm working full time and paying taxes too.'

    I am firmly of the opinion that the vast majority of ordinary voters will back the current welfare changes, and while there is a lot of BBC/Guardian generated heat and light at the moment, the changes will prove irreversible, whoever wins in 2015.

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  3. Thanks, Julia; praise from the praiseworthy and all that...

    Sobers, there's some fine examples of the sort of comment you mention on this Observer article:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/07/working-families-exasperated-benefits-harman

    In fact, there's enough stuff about 'better that 100 cheats prosper than one just claimant misses out' and 'sins of the fathers' to give it a distinctly New Testament feel.

    Meanwhile, the BBC is doing its level best to keep the bedroom tax 'injustices' in the foreground - I wish I had your faith in the judgement of 'ordinary voters' but I think a constant diet of bread and circuses may have irreversibly damaged their ability to make rational decisions.

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  4. "I wish I had your faith in the judgement of 'ordinary voters' but I think a constant diet of bread and circuses may have irreversibly damaged their ability to make rational decisions."

    I think that is what the Left are hoping - their parading of a series of sob stories will appeal to the masses sense of 'Oh isn't it awful, something must be done' sense. In actual fact I think it will hit a much deeper sentiment in people, their self interest - 'They've got something I haven't and I'm paying for it'. By detailing the very intimate details of what people are getting out of the system, and what they are spending it on, its letting the cat out of the bag. Working people are realising that they're working hard for little more than others are getting in benefits, for nothing.

    I have yet to see a case highlighted where I thought 'God they're really struggling, they've pared spending to the bone, but still can't make ends meet on benefits'. Quite the opposite in fact. And I can't be the only one to have come to this conclusion.

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  5. Sobers, I have yet to see a case highlighted...

    Good point - though anecdotal evidence from food bank and Citizen's Advice volunteers suggests a small minority really are in difficulties but are doing everything they can to hide the fact, which would presumably include refusing to be made use of in this way.

    My worry is that the populace may be experiencing a justifiable outrage now but it will be gone and forgotten in a few years time; we live in an ephemeral society where the ability to discard knowledge is essential to avoid information overload.

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