Are the cuts fair?

If you’re part of a two income family with two teenage kids and each of you earn say £22,000 a year you might think the Spending Review fair. After all you don’t work hard to see your tax money thrown away on debt interest, or government waste, or junkets for officials. You don’t work 9 hours a day and entrust your children to childcare to pay for the feckless to stay at home at your expense, or for people perfectly capable of work to turn down job opportunities for no better reason than they don’t want to do it. You don’t scrimp and save to buy or rent your home just so somebody who lives off housing benefit can get the home next door paid for by your taxes. You breathed a sigh of relief that they left child benefit alone for the 16-20 year olds. That would have been a bit painful. And you know that if tough decisions aren’t taken now then the economy will never recover and start growing again. That is probably what George Osborne hopes will be your concept of fairness. Individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and choices, not having to bail out wasters and spongers. But looking after those who can’t fend for themselves.

But you might have a different view.  If you commute to work by rail then travel costs will soon start rising fast. If you work in the public sector then you had better start thinking about what you would do if you lose your job. You might have to work hard to convince your children that it is worth taking on thirty thousand pounds worth of debt to go to university. And if you’re hoping they’ll leave home anytime soon and get their own place to live don’t hold your breath. There isn’t much affordable house building going on, and in any case the banks are being a lot trickier about mortgages and loans. Speaking of which, that credit card bill isn’t getting any smaller is it? Oh, you have a brother who didn’t do as well for himself as you? He’s about to be taken off his incapacity benefits? And have his housing benefit cut? He’s going to have to move? Yes, if I were you I’d be worried about him coming to live with you too. Starting to feel less than fair?

Don’t complain to your boss. He’s just lost his child benefit payments. And his boss has just started paying 50% tax. He’s furious. So wherever you are along the income scale there is some pain, some sense that you are bearing at least your share. But it is a very delicate political balancing act.

The coalition haven’t claimed that the Spending Review is progressive. They have claimed it is fair. According to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary “fair” means “just or appropriate in circumstances”. The Spending Review cannot be proved unfair, because fairness like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The official estimate is that half a million people will lose their jobs. There simply isn’t enough of them to vote the government out at the next election. There would have to be a strong sense of unfairness felt by the rest of us, at what happened to the poor minority. So it is down to how we feel over the next four years about what happens to us as individuals and the people around us. Choosing “fairness” as the test could yet turn out to be an act of political genius, or a suicide note.