Philpott fall-out

It HAS been reported that shadow chancellor Ed Balls refuses to discuss the Philpott scandal in a “proper debate” about welfare ­reform.

He will not tell us how we can have a proper debate without consulting all the available evidence of the welfare dependency crisis since he knows the Philpott case is doing irreparable damage to the left’s cause amongst Labour voters who have always worked for a living. In its pernicious ­effort to create a tame voting base of ­career benefit dependants the left has contrived a welfare ­system wide open to exploitation.

How far removed from the ideals of Lord Beveridge, whose monumental report in 1942 initiated the whole process of child welfare. It is a fact that Lord Beveridge was a firm supporter of eugenics and the idea of child ­allowances was developed by the Eugenics Society with the twin aims of encouraging the educated, professional classes to increase their birthrate and to limit the number of children born into poor households.

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To be properly managed the allowance needed to be graded: middle class parents receiving more generous allowances than working class parents. The flat rate was put into effect however, Lord Beveridge concluding that even the flat rate would be ­eugenic and stimulate the birthrate of “the educated professional classes”.

Demographic evidence today reveals how far astray the idea of the welfare state has gone when we view the ever increasing ­underclass and the distortions of the wonderful social vision which was Beveridge’s mission.

Alastair Harper

Lathalmond
by Dunfermline