Britain's Islamic Rule

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law.

In actual fact, the latest guidelines reflect no change on the old guidelines, about which we commented last April.

The Conservatives are surely right to accuse the Government of offering preferential treatment to Muslims, and of setting a precedent that will lead to demands for further changes in British law, as we noted last year:

Presumably there are also (or soon will be) implications for things such as pension rights and exemption from death duties? Once the state recognises these, surely it is only a matter of time before "legislative creep" forces a change in the law upon us.

Like the rest of the Islamic world, our once-Christian country now has one law for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Allāhu Akbar?

Family Flat-Earthers

• Two-thirds of people (66%) think there is little difference socially between being married and living together.
• Only one in four people (28%) think married couples make better parents than unmarried ones.

Reading parts of the British Social Attitudes 24th Report, published today by the National Centre for Social Research, reminds me of those in the past who insisted the world was flat, despite any evidence to the contrary.

People may like to think there is little difference socially between marriage and cohabitation or that unmarried couples provide parenting as good as married ones, but the facts do not support such misplaced impressions. As I have noted previously, children born to married parents have significantly better chances in life than those born to unmarried parents: just 8% of married couples split up within five years of the birth of a child compared to 25% of those who marry after birth and 52% of cohabitees. The evidence increasingly shows that children born to married parents tend to be physically and mentally healthier than other children, less accident-prone, and less likely to self-harm. They perform better in school, become sexually active at a later age, are less likely to have behavioural problems, suffer depression, or turn to drugs, smoking or heavy drinking, or to become involved in criminal activities. Furthermore, children from cohabiting households are 33 times more likely to suffer serious abuse than where the child lives with married parents and children under two have a 100 times greater risk of being killed by step-parents than by genetic parents.

Perhaps this is why other surveys indicate that 94% of teenage girls want to get married by the time they are 25, 89% want to get married before they have children, and half of sexually active teenage girls say they regret the experience.

Legitimising Illegitimacy

Commenting on today's news that more than one in five births in Britain last year was to a woman from overseas (a fact that goes some way to explaining how Mohammed has now become the most popular boy's name in Britain), the Spectator's CoffeeHouse interestingly observes that, if you strip out immigrants, then 2007 will prove to be the first year in recorded British history that a majority of children have been born outside marriage — a fact that is only masked by mass migration. Quite what this apparent absence of commitment and responsibility reveals about the health of society I suppose will only truly become evident in another couple of decades...

Marriage Best For Kids

In the latest Government U-turn and adoption of Conservative Party policy, Andy Burnham, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has told the Daily Telegraph, "I think marriage is best for kids. It’s not wrong that the tax system should recognise commitment and marriage."

While on the one hand delighted that New NuLabour appears to be accepting the error of its ways, I can but refer you to my comments from earlier this week, on the need for a coherent vision for the country, and my follow-up post on the role of the extended family in society.

Pick'n'mix Politics

Having forced the Conservatives to reveal some of their trump cards last week (in readiness for the election that never was), the Government is being accused after today's pre-budget report and comprehensive spending review statement of "stealing" Conservative and LibDem policies — notably, on raising the inheritance tax threshold for married couples and those in civil partnerships, on reforming aviation duty so it is paid per plane rather than per passenger, and on reviewing loopholes for non-domiciled tax payers. However, if all our elected representatives have our best interests in mind, then surely we want the Government of the day to draw upon the best ideas from across the political spectrum and it doesn't matter who gets to implement them?

Except that "pick'n'mix" politics is unlikely to result in a stable economy and strong society. In order to achieve that, one needs a coherent vision and clear objectives. Only once core values have been identified and principles and beliefs clearly defined, is anyone in a position to evaluate how effectively any given policy fits into the overall scheme for the nation and what contribution any particular set of policies might make towards stated goals.

So, if your vision recognises marriage and the family as a means of fostering strong local communities and family-based support networks, it makes sense to introduce transferable tax allowances between spouses — on income tax, not just inheritance tax. However, it would also make sense to exempt the main family home from inheritance tax — and makes no sense to have a conflicting tax credit system that penalises couples who want to get together or who are struggling financially and want to stay together!

The reason I supported David Cameron in the leadership contest two years ago is that, whenever he spoke, he appeared to be presenting an overall vision for the country rather than piecemeal policies. He has spent the last two years first defining the aims and values of his party (in "Built to Last") and then conducting wide-ranging policy reviews. Now that each of the policy groups has reported, the Conservative leader is in a position to evaluate their many proposals against his broader vision for society.

In contrast, Gordon Brown repeatedly tells us that he has a vision but has so far failed to tell us what that vision is, which begs the question as to whether he really has one — or even understands the need for one. Ultimately, it is this that means Labour's "plagiarism politics" will fail to transform the breakdown in society and the slowdown in the economy — and why, to coin a phrase, it is time for change. Sadly, it seems we're going to have to wait two or three years more until we are given the opportunity to effect that change.

Substance With Style

Today's much anticipated report, Breakthrough Britain, from the Conservatives' Social Justice Policy Group, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, is the result of 18 months work of consultation with over 800 experts, organisations and charities, the policy proposals will propose a completely fresh approach to tackling poverty in the UK.

Having previously identified the five interlinked "pathways to poverty" — family breakdown, education failure, welfare dependency, debt, and addiction — today's proposals, if adopted by the Conservative Party will "reset the balance" that currently makes it advantageous for couples to break up, or to pretend to be "living apart together" — a term referring to the 200,000 more people claiming benefits for lone parents than there truly are lone parents in the country.

The Conservatives are not proposing a return to the married person's tax allowance, which Duncan Smith accepts had flaws. Neither are they suggesting that lone parents should have less money. Instead, married couples would qualify for a £20-a-week tax break and receive higher benefit payments of £32-a-week, bringing the benefits awarded to married couples into line with those currently awarded to single parents. This will be paid for through welfare reform targetted to encourage recipients off one of the five "paths to poverty".

Labour is already trying to claim that these proposals would be unfair on the children of single parents or those whose parents choose not to marry. However, there is nothing unfair about levelling the playing field. Indeed, one could argue that such an egalitarian approach achieves what socialism has always failed to deliver: social justice.

Generation Blair

A child's start in life is still determined by the class, education, marital status, and ethnic background of its parents. By the age of three, children from disadvantaged families are already lagging a full year behind their middle-class contemporaries in social and educational development.

That is the damning conclusion of a study monitoring around 16,000 families of children born across the UK in 2000-2. An assessment of vocabulary revealed that children of graduates are ten months ahead of those with the least-educated parents, and a separate assessment measuring children's understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes, and shapes found an even wider gap of twelve months between the two groups.

Parents' education was not the only significant factor, however. For, although black African parents were more likely to have degrees than white parents, a quarter of the black Caribbean and black African children assessed were delayed in their development, compared with only 4% of white children. Here the difference appears to be caused by the children's family background: a third of black African (32%) and almost half the black Caribbean children (47%) were being brought up by lone mothers, compared with just 14% of white children and 5% of Indian children who had lone parents. This is an important factor, as the analysis also showed nearly three-quarters (72%) of children with single parents live below the poverty line.

In a worrying confirmation of the extent of another problem that has emerged in the last five years, the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, who carried out the research, also reports that almost one child in four is overweight (18%) or obese (5%) at age three. This study also revealed a similar difference attributable to race and class. Just 9% of Indian children overweight or obese compared with 23% of White and 33% of Black Caribbean children. Equally, children in more advantaged areas of England and Scotland were less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in less advantaged areas.

Late last year, Tony Blair claimed the Sure Start programme, designed to help the children in Britain's most deprived families, was "one of the Government's greatest achievements." Can anyone tell me what NuLabour has actually achieved with the £3,000,000,000 of tax-payers' money that it has poured into the scheme?

Government Condones Polygamy

One aspect of our Judeo-Christian heritage that has contributed to legal principles in this country is that there should be one law for both alien and native alike. This differs from Islam, in which there is one law for men and another for women, one law for Muslims and another for non-Muslims.

Why, then, is today's Telegraph Spy reporting that the Department for Work and Pensions recognises polygamous marriages that were conducted overseas?!

In this country, bigamy is a criminal offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, subject to a penalty of up to seven years penal servitude, whereas under Islamic law a man is allowed to have up to four wives. Yet, the DWP's document RR2 - A guide to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit states:

If you are legally married to more than one partner
This is called a polygamous marriage. In this case you get a special personal allowance. It is made up of two parts:

• a couple’s allowance (determined by the age of whoever is the oldest of you and your partners)
• and additional allowances for each additional partner.

Other allowances and premiums are added to the personal allowance if they apply.

So, you and I can be locked up for taking a second wife (as if one were not enough!), but our taxes go to support the multiple wives of foreigners who come to our country. Presumably there are also (or soon will be) implications for things such as pension rights and exemption from death duties?  Once the state recognises these, surely it is only a matter of time before "legislative creep" forces a change in the law upon us. After all, seven years ago there was talk of Muslims in Britain challenging UK law on the basis that Britain's ban on polygamous marriage violates their human rights and the Muslim Parliament of Britain maintains that hundreds of families are being forced to live outside the law.

So much for our Christian heritage – This, I suppose, will prove to be Blair's true legacy...

Breaking The Cycle

I don't know if anyone else noticed the juxtaposition of two items referring to single parents in the news this morning. The first was on state-backed marriage preparation classes in America, where bolstering marriage has become a cornerstone of social policy, with fears that the remorseless rise in lone parenthood is fuelling welfare dependency and inner-city problems. One single mother interviewed who had been raised by a single mother and who had two daughters who were single mothers talked of how she was now trying to teach her fourteen-year-old daughter that it is better to have a child with a husband than a boyfriend. When asked whether she objected to the state trying to tell her how to approach her relationships, she complained that she would rather see politicians talk more about healthy marriages, to get off the fence and give more of a lead in this area.

The second item was about the Fabian Society report Born Unequal that more babies are born underweight in Britain than anywhere else in Europe except Greece, the proportion having increased by more than 15% since 1989, with teenage mothers and older women being most at risk. They also reveal that lone parents are nine times as likely to have a stillbirth as other parents and babies born to working-class mothers are twice as likely to die before their first birthday as those with middle-class parents.

Anyone else spot a connection?

Antimarriage

I've just noticed the following excellent letter in today's Times:

Sir, The Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, says that benefits policy should be “bias-free”. Yet the tax credit system is biased towards parents who live separately, encouraging unmarried couples to commit fraud by pretending to “live apart together”. At least 200,000 more people claim lone parent benefit than there are lone parents.

We may ask why marital status has been abolished from government forms and research in the face of robust evidence showing distinct and important differences in parent and child outcomes. Mr Johnson may also want to find out why government has completely ignored evidence-based relationship education programmes that can prevent and reduce family breakdown.

His non-argument — that not all marriages are brilliant and not all other family arrangements are doomed — is obviously true, in the same way that not all smokers die of cancer.

HARRY BENSON
Bristol Community Family Trust,
Kingsdown, Bristol