Nigel Farage told Radio 4 this week that he had ‘made a mistake’ in trying to pursue pro-family policies, concluding that this is simply ‘impossible in modern Britain’. The Reform leader might be forgiven for thinking so. The moment Reform moved into this territory with a pledge to end the two-child limit (among working British families it was later clarified), the politics curdled.
Britain has, in practice, built a ‘hostile environment’ for family life
Voters have long suspected any proposed softening of the cap introduced in 2017, and quite rightly on the grounds of fairness. But still more so at a time when welfare budgets are running away and working Britain is creaking under the weight of the largest tax burden since the 1940s.
The Conservatives were politically smart to punch the bruise until it went turquoise. It is not hard to see why Farage, eventually, withdrew. Still it would be a grave mistake to abandon the family agenda entirely, even if the two-child limit should never have been its first flank.
Indeed, there is a radicalism entirely in tune with the insurgency of Reform in asking a question that our liberal politics has ducked for two decades now: does it stack up, in modern Britain, to start a family?
For a growing number of people, the answer is a resounding no. Britain has, in practice, built a ‘hostile environment’ for family life. Childcare costs are among the highest in the developed world. Unlike many other countries, tax is applied to individuals rather than households sharing the cost of raising the next generation.
Housing costs have been driven sky-high by sustained mass immigration and scant new homes built. And while billions have been added to the welfare budget in benefits and social housing subsidies for recent arrivals over the last two decades, the finances of British families paying the bill have got materially worse.
As the investor Charlie Munger famously said, show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. At first, the hostile environment changes family composition, with millions now simply forgoing children. Over time, it changes the country.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics this week showed that Britain is now having fewer children than it needs to replace its population, with deaths projected to outnumber births in the years ahead.
Even with the peak of the Boriswave in the rear-view mirror, population growth over the next decade is expected to come almost entirely from migration. Meanwhile the ratio of workers to pensions is set to narrow even further, with public spending soaring to 270 per cent of GDP in the coming decades to pay for our ageing society and shrinking workforce.
For a party built on reducing immigration and putting ordinary Britons first, helping people realise their dreams of starting a family should be the cornerstone of what policy chief James Orr has called the ‘politics of national preference’. But despite the importance of this agenda, both for individuals and the public finances, the danger is a conclusion that the electoral risks seem too high.
There is a way forward. Not a return to lifting the two-child cap but rather a relentless focus on alleviating the cost of living for working families.
Take tax. Reform could set out plans to put family at the heart of the tax system, recognises the cost of raising children with a full transferable allowance as enjoyed by many French, German and American parents. More boldly, they could mirror Poland and slash taxes for young mothers – a policy welcomed across the political spectrum – paid for by rationalising our maze of a VAT system.
There is also a strong case for giving parents more flexibility in how existing child-related support is received. Allowing parents to ‘frontload’ Child Benefit in the early years would better reflect the pressures of parenthood without increasing overall spending.
At the same time, Reform should continue to adopt a firmer approach to welfare. Reimposing the two-child limit, and reforming runaway mental health benefits, while redirecting resources towards working families through tax and upfront support, would draw a clearer distinction between backing family formation and expanding dependency.
To be clear, none of this offers a quick fix to Britain’s fertility rate. But for all the change of recent decades, people’s ambitions have not shifted nearly as much as is sometimes assumed. Most still want a home, a stable relationship, and a family. And it is possible to achieve results. Pro-family policies were found by one evaluation to have led to five million more French babies being born across the channel. So why not here?
Farage is right that this is not easy territory. It is easy to get wrong, but it is also to his credit that he was willing to go there in the first place, in a political culture that often treats family as off limits.
Reform’s appeal has been built on the sense that the system is rigged against ordinary people, from migration to crime. Extending that argument to the cost of family life only strengthens it. Lessons must be learned from a botched start. But to abandon the issue entirely would be a far greater mistake.
Comments