Hugh McLachlan: The philosophy of fairness is a complex one

The issue of George Osborne’s policy on charitable donations, writes Hugh McLachlan, is a chance to consider the ethics of giving

The continuing uproar over the proposal in the Budget to limit the amount of income tax relief on individual donations to charity illustrates well the unreliability and dubiousness of “fairness” as a policy aim.

A situation, policy or occurrence that seems fair when viewed from one vantage point, might seem unfair when viewed from another one. We cannot use the notion of “fairness” to tell us which particular vantage point we should choose to consider it from. Furthermore, to treat one person fairly might entail treating another one unfairly.

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“Fairness” does not mean the same as equality. Not all equal treatment would be fair treatment. For instance, if I gave all my final-year students 3 per cent for their essays, I would be treating them all equally, but none of them fairly.

There is a difference too between that which is fair and that which is just. Justice pertains to rights and duties. To treat people unjustly is to breach a particular duty that one has towards them and thereby to violate a particular right which they have. This applies both to moral and to legal justice.

Suppose that someone decides to donate, say, £10 to a particular church or to some other body. If the money is specifically donated in terms of the official Gift Aid scheme and the donor pays the standard rate or more of income tax, the state will donate a further £2.50 or more to the person’s chosen church, charity or community amateur sports club.

The additional £2.50 is not manna from heaven. The taxpayers at large bear the cost of it. It will turn out that either £2.50 will be reduced from public expenditure or else an additional £2.50 will be extracted from taxpayers. This seems manifestly unfair. Why should the tax payers in general, many of whom are atheists, be forced to subsidise the donor’s church or other designated charity?

This Gift Aid scheme might be a good policy. However, it is not, unequivocally, a fair one. If it is justified, it is justified despite its unfairness rather than on the grounds of its unqualified fairness. Chancellor George Osborne’s proposal to limit income tax relief on charitable donations to £50,000 or 25 per cent of annual income, whichever is greater, can be seen as a fair one. Indeed, it might be said not to go far enough. With regard to fairness, what seems difficult to justify is not a cap on income tax relief for donations to charity but the tax relief itself.

Many people argue it is fair that people who do the same job equally well should be paid the same by their employers for doing so and that people who do more or better work should be paid more. In Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 20, verses 1-16, the parable of the labourers in the vineyard illustrates some of the complexities involved with this application of the idea of fairness.

The owner of a vineyard hired labourers to work for a day for an agreed fee. Later in the day, at different times, he hired other labourers to work for the remainder of the day. When they were paid, all were paid the same, no matter how long they had worked.

There were understandable complaints from those who worked longer that this was unfair. On the other hand, it can be argued that, since they agreed to work for the wage they were paid, they were treated fairly. It could be said that the owner of the vineyard treated all the labourers fairly, even if he treated some of them more generously than others. In any case, is it not fair that the owner is permitted to run his own business in his own way? Some, but not all, people would think so.

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Whether or not some or other of the labourers in the vineyard were treated unfairly, they might all have been treated justly. There is no obvious reason to say that their moral rights were infringed by the behaviour of the owner of the vineyard and that he was in breach of a moral duty. What did the owner do that he was morally obliged to refrain from doing?

It is regrettable that representatives of the Christian churches often talk as if the teachings of Jesus are reducible to glib egalitarian sound-bites. It will be interesting to see how the Report of the Special Commission on the Purposes of Economic Activity, chaired by Professor Charles Munn, is received by the Kirk’s General Assembly next week. Let us assume, for the moment and for the sake of the argument, that the current proposal by the Scottish Government to have a 50p minimum price for a unit of alcohol is a good policy. If this minimum price policy is a good one, it will be a good policy despite its obvious unfairness.

For instance, suppose that we introduce the policy in order, say, to reduce the number of murders or assaults. Most people do not murder or assault someone when they are drunk. Indeed, even those people who murder or assault someone when they are drunk do not usually murder or assault someone when they are drunk. It would be unfair to require individuals A, B, C, and D to pay more to get drunk than they would otherwise have to pay in order to prevent individual E from murdering or assaulting individual F.

Suppose that we introduce the policy in order to reduce the number of alcohol-related illnesses or deaths. It would be unfair if A, B, C, D, E and F were required to pay more to get drunk in order to prevent G from drinking himself to death or from damaging his liver.

Good policies are not necessarily fair ones. Not all fair policies are good. To neither politics nor ethics is “fairness” pivotal.

• Hugh McLachlan is Professor of Applied Philosophy in the Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian University.

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