How Hammond could put marriage back in fashion
by Kathy Gyngell, The Conservative Woman:
No man is an island. The UK income tax system chooses to treat its citizens as though each were one; as though each were an autonomous unit without responsibility for, or need of, anyone else but the State; as though families no longer mattered.
Almost uniquely amongst OECD countries, the UK refuses to recognise family responsibilities in the tax system. The only ‘recognition’ of ‘family’ has been provided by inflated benefits (in the form of a multi-billion-pound annual tax credits bill), which in turn sustain ever more family set-ups dependent on the State while failing to provide the stability and security children need.
Were Philip Hammond to produce a Budget of vision, it is this, the reform of family taxation, that should be at its core. Were he genuinely keen to take on socialism, this is where he should start.
Given the fashion for apologies these days, he could well start with one. On behalf of successive Conservative governments since 1985, when independent taxation was introduced without any counter-measure to acknowledge the majority of single-earner couple families at the time, he could apologise for the family breakdown they are responsible for. He could apologise to the children without fathers for the blight of state welfare dependency they grew up in and the institutionalised child care inflicted on them which Conservative, as much as Labour, governments presided over. I am half-serious. If you don’t understand why, just read this heartfelt account of a father’s terrible doubts about putting his baby into long daycare.
Maybe Theresa May, Philip Hammond, David Cameron and George Osborne should all, in turn, apologise for making it so hard for people to be married, to make the right choices for the sake of their children.
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