Making benefits work

It’s not often that my home town gets a mention in the national press. While Anne Widdecombe remained our MP we could usually rely on some attention when she did something newsworthy. But generally speaking the events in the county town of Kent remain strictly local in interest. Last Friday the headlines in our local newspaper reported a family of 8 who were being forced to live in a one bedroom flat by the council. Who would have thought that the family in question would go national with their plea for a bigger home.

The story is here, in the Daily Mail…

Family of six in one bedroom flat

Here are the key points in this story, if you don’t have time to read it all. Maggie and Gavin Flisher have not worked at all since she fell pregnant with her first child in 2005. They receive £27,000 a year in benefits, and presently live in a one bedroom flat which they complain is too small for their family. Apparently Maggie Flisher is super-fertile and so cannot be blamed for continuing to produce children at the rate of almost one a year, which the rest of us must bear the burden of supporting. Maggie can’t work because she is depressed and has mental health issues, while Gavin needs to stay at home to look after the family.

Surprisingly they receive £540 a month in jobseekers allowance when they are straightforwardly honest about not being able or willing to look for work. The family complain that they need a four bedroom house, and that the council should build more for people in their situation, and they seem to have the support of their local MP, Hugh Robertson, who has written to the council about their problem.

We must take Maggie’s word for it that contraceptive implants and the pill don’t work in her case, although it is difficult to imagine that a doctor would prescribe both at the same time. The implant has a failure rate of 0.014% per year. Now if Gavin had used a condom as well, with a failure rate of 2% if used properly, then we might expect the risks of a pregnancy in one year to be only 0.0028% a year. Of course it may well be that Maggie is at the sharp end of the distribution curve, and each of her pregnancies was properly protected against but happened despite their strenuous efforts. She is to be commended for not having aborted her children for simple utilitarian reasons.

But Maggie is only 26, and at the current rate of production will have another 6 children before she even begins to see her biological clock slowing down. Her doctor has refused to sterilise her because she is still young and fertile, but this is surely a case where it is reasonable for a mother to say that enough is enough, and for a surgeon to agree. If a teenage girl can have breast augmentation on the NHS, why can’t a mother of six children have a sterilisation? Of course it might also have helped if Gavin had taken the step of having a vasectomy. There is still a small risk of pregnancy, but coupled with a contraceptive implant, a cap, and a condom, the risks should be infinitesimal.

But what about the demand for a bigger house? Maggie and Gavin’s friends and family think it disgusting that she is in such a situation. Four bedroom houses are like ‘gold-dust’. A quick look at this weeks listing of available properties in the Maidstone area shows no 4 bedroom houses being available. It is possible to have sympathy with the Flisher family, but to have grave concerns about the usefulness of simply providing larger and larger homes for families in which no-one works, and where the income stream is directly related to the production of children.

It is easy to suggest that benefits should be capped, but we are left wondering how that will affect the children in this case, and many others. Is it their fault that they have been born into a family where neither parent works, and their mother is super-fertile? We could propose that child benefit be payable only for the first two children, but again we will wonder how that affects these children.  We can insist that families in which neither parent works, or has worked for many years, should not receive larger housing beyond a one or two bedroom flat, but again, many of us will have sympathy for the children forced to share cramped accomodation.

Hardly anyone would suggest that children over a certain number should be removed from their parents. Indeed the state has shown itself to be singularly lacking in the ability to care for children in need, and this would, in any case, not prevent the birth of more children, all to be brought up as wards of the state.

Surely what is required is that families in circumstances such as these are made to work for the benefits they receive. Across the country there are public works that could be done, but which are now neglected because the funds to pay for them are diverted to support families in which no-one works. Hospitals are left dirty and in need of redecoration. Parks and public spaces need grass cut and flowers tended. Minor roads have potholes that need to be filled.

What if Gavin were given such a job. It would be a 5 day a week job. It would not be a sentence, nor would it be demeaning. On the contrary he would be free to find another job if he wished, and the fact that he was working for the benefits his family were receiving would be something commendable. At the moment he can’t work because he is looking after his family (though he is still claiming jobseekers allowance), so let’s organise child care before and after school for his school age children, within their own school perhaps; and lets provide nursery accomodation if Maggie is not well enough to care for the younger children (while also claiming jobseekers allowance).

That will leave Gavin free to man up and work for the income his family receives. He’ll have the pride of doing a proper job and he’ll be a role model for his children. The commitment to working for his family will perhaps allow the provision of larger and more suitable housing as part of a contract with the taxpayer. But at the moment there is no such contract, not even the pretence of looking for employment, and so the demand for a four bedroom house grates on taxpayers who are struggling to pay the mortgage on their two or three bedroom house.

He’s already receiving £27,000 a year, tax-free, so that is the equivalent of a £35,000 salary. He’d not be taking someone else’s job, as people like Gavin would be doing work that councils have had to abandon. It’s a win-win solution if Gavin is willing to commit himself. But what if he won’t? Isn’t that always the problem? What about people who don’t feel any compunction at all about receiving benefits without having any sense of obligation to those who provide the benefits.

Well, it’s unavoidable. There has to be a sanction. Gavin has received almost £200,000 in benefits since he last worked in 2005. It’s going up each week. The tax-payer makes a contribution over their lifetime and expects to be able to receive benefits when they are required. The chronically ill, the elderly, the genuinely disabled all receive the sympathy of the national family because they are unable to contribute more than they need. But those who are seemingly unwilling to seek employment, or through various circumstances just don’t seem able to organise themselves into work, need to be challenged to provide at least a week’s work for a week’s benefits.

But what if someone won’t? Well someone in this situation surely owes us all £200,000. If he is not going to contribute towards it then I’d make it a criminal offence, with all the usual safeguards. But deciding not to turn up for work must not be an option. Someone who refuses to participate in this sort of work for benefit scheme should face a loss of their liberty. Not a fine which cannot be paid. But a real loss of liberty. It need not be in a maximum security prison, but it must surely be a detention that takes away the freedom of a person whose family are receiving large amounts of benefit until and unless he is willing to make a contribution through gaining employment himself or working for his benefits.

And while in detention it is surely proper that work will again be offered, and participation in such detention based employment will also be necessary to gain access to anything but the most basic of facilities. This is surely fair. This is surely a matter of equality. All must work for their living. All must take responsibility for the welfare of their children. Visiting rights can be arranged. Time at home organised. But if a person wishes to receive £27,000 a year and absolutely refuses to contribute to such benefits through work, then they are really stealing from those who have a need and genuinely cannot contribute.

Let’s extend this scheme to those feckless fathers who have impreganted a teenage girl, or teenage girls, and then disappear from the scene, taking no responsibility for their offspring. If you have fathered a child or children, who are having to live on benefits, then you are responsible for them, either through being in employment and paying taxes, or by participating in a work for benefits scheme.

I feel some sympathy for the Fleshers. I know what it is to live in cramped accomodation. But simply complaining that taxpayers should provide something bigger and better is not the answer. What can Gavin do? And what can we do as a society to help Gavin contribute? Let’s make it easy for him to work for his benefits. Let’s make it  necessary for him to work for his benefits. Such an outcome helps the taxpayer, helps Gavin, and helps his children.