Howard Flight has always been an outspoken man. The new Conservative peer is reported to have said:
He may well be proved correct. But, plain-speaking and politics have never mixed, and especially not now. Following the Lord Young debacle, Downing Street has moved quickly to distance itself from Lord Flight’s comments. A grovelling apology won’t be far away.‘We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.’
UPDATE: The IFS did some very interesting work on the rising birthrate (15 percent) among what it termed ‘low income households’ under Labour. The FT also conducted research into the correlation between a rising birthrate and the fiscal stimulus.
PS: The Standard lists some of Howard Flight’s other opinions which the Tories will find uncomfortable…
PPS: And Mark ‘Crash, Bang’ Wallace is right about the BBC’s mischievous headline – Flight did not say that cuts would make the poor ‘breed’.
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