The welfare debate has regressed by generations
Iain Duncan Smith’s plan to restrict child benefit to the first two for new claimants is compared in the Independent to China’s one child policy. My own comparison is much closer to home. In my 1950s childhood it was commonplace to hear lots of Prod grumbling about payments to all those big Catholic families – “breeding like rabbits, they won’t have the Crown but they want the half crown” etc. Even as child this struck me as a futile argument. …