Quite a week for the Tories

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

It has been quite a week for the Tories. First Michael Gove announced he was scrapping the rule that teachers cannot have physical contact with children – a rule that has never existed. Next Boris Johnson popped up to tell us Trade Unions should not be permitted to strike without a 50% turnout in their ballot; this from a man who was elected Mayor of London on a turnout of 45%.

But it has been rightly overshadowed by George Osborne’s decision this week to end child benefit for the children of higher rate taxpayers – a crude, unfair measure that will squeeze an already hard-pressed group of families.

Like so many other measures in the budget it will mainly be women who bear the brunt. On the latest reckoning from the Fawcett Society, women are bearing 72% of the burden from the budget cuts. True – the women who yesterday were told they would lose their child benefit earn a decent amount as higher rate taxpayers, but they often work long hours and have high costs because they have children. I know this because I meet them in my surgeries and in my constituency every week.

They are a group of people who often felt Labour didn’t fully recognise their plight when we were in government. Yet, since Monday I have been contacted by so many of them. They are desperate and in despair at what they see as this latest attack on the family, already under strain from the pressures of modern life. As part of a wider package of cuts – to maternity and health in pregnancy grants, Sure Start and other family support measures – this is for many of them, a final straw.

But the full extent of the damage reaches far beyond them, and their children, to children in poorer families too. The welfare state is founded on the principle that universal services are the most effective services for all, based on the principle that ‘we are all in this together’ that we have heard so much about in recent months.

Only through genuinely inclusive services will we ensure they work well because we all have an incentive to protect and improve them, especially the most empowered in society: the wealthy and the educated.

At heart this is a cynical, ideological attack on the state; by removing all but the poorest from the provisions of the welfare state the coalition will not only remove a key driver of reform, but also undermine middle-class support for it.

We have already seen their contempt for this universal foundation stone of the welfare state in their restrictions on middle class families’ access to Sure Start; a fantastic service that brought together children from all walks of life and in so doing lifted them all up. By contrast, Osborne’s vision of a society where we are in constant competition with one another not only pushes some people down; it is self fulfilling. The coalition’s competitive vision will create winners and losers. Yesterday’s announcement made clear that all children – rich or poor – will be the losers, and that is unforgivable.