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Truants’ parents may lose child benefits as unemployed are told to sign on twice as often
The Daily Mail carried a report yesterday that claimed that the Government has plans to withdraw the child-benefit payments of parents if their children play truant from school. An article by David Cameron also implied that jobseekers are set to be forced to sign on twice as often – or have their payments cut.
One Tory MP said: ‘It is well established that children who play truant are most likely to be those committing crime and other mischief. If their parents refuse to try to send them to school, they do not deserve to receive a subsidy from the very taxpayers who are suffering from the consequences of truancy.
‘No child is going to starve if their parent loses child benefit but it will teach the parents a lesson and give them a real incentive to send their child back to school.’
It is claimed that the penalty would also be simple to impose because: “Child benefit can be stopped to an individual at the click of a computer mouse in the welfare office
Mr Cameron’s article contains the following section:
Or what about welfare? The old something-for-nothing system we had under Labour had a poisonous effect on responsibility in our society. Again, we’ve already taken bold action – we’re in the process of moving hundreds of thousands of people who are fit to work off incapacity benefit and are imposing sensible limits on the amount of benefit people can take. But again, given the scale of the problem, can’t we go further? Say by asking much more of people on benefits who should be looking for work – or imposing even stricter penalties on those who refuse job offers?
Truants’ parents may lose child benefits as unemployed are told to sign on twice as often
“The old something-for-nothing system we had under Labour….” Is he having a laugh?
I’ve had a look at the relevant part of the SSC&BA; and as far as I can see this would require primary legislation. I can’t see how the current Act allows for such a measure to be introduced by way of statutory instrument without distorting the intention of the Parliament that passed the Act in its current form.
If I am correct in this then this would seem like more bluster from Cameron designed to appease the right wing of his party and to deflect attention from bigger and more problematic issues.
National truancy rates anybody?
Welfare Reform Bill has its second reading in the House of Lords on 13 September.
Surely, it’s just a coincidence that they’re showing how tough they are with benefit claimants shortly before this event?
The Guardian is now reporting that: “The Department for Work and Pensions has been forced by the prime minister into reconsidering an idea it had days previously described as “not workable” as Whitehall scrambles for policies to toughen up welfare.
Ideas pushed by No 10 included measures that would force the unemployed and those claiming jobseeker’s allowance to spend an entire working week in the pursuit of finding a job. But on Friday lunchtime the Department for Work and Pensions said that particular idea had been ruled out as “not workable”. By Friday evening the department was instructed that the idea could be a possible candidate for tightening the welfare regime.
A Downing Street source suggested the search for stricter welfare conditionality levers was at an embryonic stage: “We’re in the early stages of considering ideas and we aren’t saying these ideas will definitely happen but we are trying to think how people could be helped into work.”
The about-turn reflects the urgency being attached to the government going further and faster on its welfare reform agenda.
BBC News reporting that Mr Cameron has repeated his proposals that parents of children in England who regularly truant could have their benefits cut, in a speech about education.
Mr Cameron said discipline needed to be restored in schools, and teachers and heads were being given the tools to do this. He added: “We need parents to have a real stake in the discipline of their children, to face real consequences if their children continually misbehave.
“That’s why I have asked our social policy review to look into whether we should cut the benefits of those parents whose children constantly play truant.
“Yes, this would be a tough measure - but we urgently need to restore order and respect in the classroom and I don’t want ideas like this to be off the table.”
Plans to cut benefits payments of parents whose children truanted were brought forward under Tony Blair’s Labour government, but were scrapped in 2002.
No doubt some private company is lobbying the government for the contract to catch the truants. With the possibility of a tie-in tv series. You’ve met Fairy Jobmother; meet Pied Piper of Cameron (supposed to rhyme with Hamelin).
[ Edited: 9 Sep 2011 at 04:15 pm by Tom H ]The government today announced that it would be considering plans to create a new criminal offence of “going out in your pyjamas”. The Prime Minister today will consult with his coalition partners about ways of tackling this insidious practice. It is understood that Mr Cameron was deeply unhappy with the erosion of basic standards of decent behaviour introduced under the last government.
A source close to number 10 said that Mr Cameron was laying the blame firmly at the door of Mrs Blair who on one famous occasion came out of number 10 without even having brushed her hair. “The rot set in from there”, Mr Cameron was heard to have said. It is also thought that Mr Cameron was sickened by the sight of young women not only going out in their pyjamas but wearing slippers too. He said it was merely another sign of broken Britain and he was not going to put up with it anymore.
The source said that Mr Cameron will brook no disagreement on this one. The debate is over he said. Young women are becoming the scourge of modern Britain. “You give them the vote” he said “and this is what they do with it. Well not on my watch, sonny, oh no not any more.”
Mr Cameron’s doctor was also worried. “Mr Cameron has not been feeling himself lately. I can’t really explain it. We’re all quite concerned. It all started in a café somewhere abroad, you know where all those foreigners are. No sorry that’s over here” he said bemusedly.
No one from the government was available for comment.
Margaret Thatcher is 186.