Leader: Family fortunes

It is a curious fact about modern Britain that while we romanticise marriage and stable families as never before, our government still bribes us to split up. There has been much nonsense talked this week of the perils of introducing a ‘marriage bias’ into the tax system. But the truth is that a distinct and deplorable bias already exists — against couples. Families on low incomes are usually financially better off apart than they are together — in terms of various state hand-outs and housing benefit. The payments offered by the welfare state have robbed the low-income family of its economic function. Although one hesitates to say so on the eve of St Valentine’s day, this can often be a deciding factor in whether a couple stays together.

David Cameron, the most pro-family Prime Minister in recent British history, has promised to address this problem, and he has demonstrated how serious he is about this unfashionable cause by putting Iain Duncan Smith in charge of welfare reform. Next week, the two of them will make the case for root-and-branch welfare reform, and publish a Welfare Reform Bill aimed at springing the benefit trap in which one in seven British people are currently caught.

In place of the current system, with its array of 50-odd benefits, will come a single Universal Credit. Among other things, this will ensure that no one is better off on the dole than they are in work. It will also address the ‘couples penalty’ — so people will no longer be forced to choose between love and a higher standard of living.

Few could doubt that welfare reform is most urgently needed. The British welfare state is now incubating the very poverty it was designed to eradicate, creating what Beveridge called the ‘giant evil’ of idleness.