The Times - UK (2022-02-16)

Denying expats the vote

is so last century

Richard Lloyd Parry

Page 24

New policies aren’t enough,

though. Politics needs a shift in

attitudes to parents and children.

The assumption underlying most

political thinking about having

children is that because it’s a private

choice, it must follow that people

should bear the costs and

consequences. But when you start to

see having babies as a socially useful

thing to do, priorities change.

That law firm, Burgess Mee, is

setting a good example by asking

itself what more can be done to

support people who want children.

HM government should follow suit.

Britain’s siloed machinery of

government isn’t good at tackling

big, long-term structural problems,

something Boris Johnson has

admitted by handing a single

minister, Michael Gove, the

Herculean and cross-departmental

levelling up agenda.

That’s enough to keep even Gove

busy, so someone else will have to

take charge of grappling with

Britain’s baby shortage and the

issues it raises. Maybe the prime

minister might fancy the job himself.

James Kirkup is director of the

Social Market Foundation

Daniel Finkelstein is away

Britain’s baby shortage is everyone’s problem

The falling birth rate is spawning serious economic and social problems: helping to fix it is a government responsibility

GETTY IMAGES

is driving companies to offer more:

otherwise they’ll miss out on talent

and run out of workers.

This isn’t a call for politicians to

target a higher birth rate, much less

a commissar’s call to procreate in the

national interest. Having children —

or not — must always be a private

choice. But public policy should

make it easier for people who do

want to have children but don’t feel

able to. Allocating more resources to

supporting working parents is a

logical response to demographic

trends, and helping more women to

combine careers and motherhood is

an inherently good objective.

Fixing childcare isn’t easy and

almost inevitably means more public

money. But that money can be used

imaginatively. We lend to students to

support their studies, why not lend to

parents on equally generous terms?

The extortionate cost of childcare is

putting couples off starting a family

social care or the other jobs we don’t

want to do ourselves will decline.

We’re already running out of babies.

All too soon we might be running

out of immigrants too.

These demographic trends are big,

complicated and uncertain. That

helps to put them high up the long

list of “important things politicians

neglect”, not least because they go

beyond short electoral cycles. There

aren’t many votes in telling people

they have to work longer.

And many politicians are rightly

unwilling to tell people how many

children to have, or to have them at

all. But there are surely short-term

political rewards to be had from

doing things that do long-term good,

by giving more people more choices.

This brings us back to childcare,

which the OECD calculates can cost

30 per cent of the wages of the

typical double-income couple. That’s

almost twice the cost in countries

that make a proper effort to help

people combine work and

parenthood: a Finnish couple pays

18 per cent. The prohibitive costs of

UK childcare should be a problem

for everyone, but they fall more on

women than men.

Many politicians pay little

attention to childcare, possibly

because lots of them are a) able to

afford nannies and nurseries and b)

men. This oversight means that, as

so often, the private sector is

recognising social change well before

the people who run the country.

Smart employers know they need to

do better for parents and would-be

parents.

Polling for Vodafone found that

one in five 18 to 34-year-olds have

quit a job over poor parental leave.

Twenty-five per cent said they had

decided not to apply for a job because

an employer’s parental policies were

inadequate. Enlightened self-interest

M

any modern job titles

are jarring, but few are

as unfortunate as

“fertility officer”, which

conjures visions of

bureaucratic commissars urging a

patriotic workforce to breed for the

motherland. Yet that image could tell

us something about our future,

because Britain is running out of

babies and sooner or later we’ll have

to talk about what to do about it.

In the context of demographics,

Burgess Mee, the law firm that

appointed that fertility officer,

deserves praise for its foresight. The

officer, Natalie Sutherland, is

charged with persuading young

solicitors that having children won’t

wreck their careers.

Good luck to her, but the scale of

those demographic challenges means

that her good work will inevitably be

a drop in the ocean. This is a

challenge that will require national

effort, led from the centre and

starting with a serious attempt to fix

our woeful childcare system, which

helps to make having children so

expensive that many couples put it

off or simply decide not to bother.

That’s one reason the birth rate for

women in Britain is just under 1.6,

and falling, well below the rate

needed to maintain a stable

population. We’re turning Japanese,

following other advanced economies

into a future where the young are

outnumbered by the old.

A greying population isn’t just an

economic problem, although having

more pensioners and fewer workers

poses some obvious difficulties.

Indeed, the economic aspects of

ageing may just be the easiest to

address, so long as we’re all prepared

to do more work until later in life. (I

know that’s no small thing. I’m

writing this on my 46th birthday.

Please check up on me in 25 years to

see if I’m still doing this.)

Less familiar are the social and

political dimensions of demographic

change. A country with fewer

children inevitably allocates more

resources and more power to older

people. Spending on healthcare is

rising quickly and — absent serious

reform — inexorably, while spending

on education has been flat for 20

years. The last 15 years of economic

policy have prioritised the assets

owned by the old over the prospects

of the young. Covid mitigation was a

similar story.

Younger Britons have borne these

things with remarkable patience and

generosity but it will be no surprise if

deep-seated grievances eventually

take hold. Even if our public finances

and wider economy can absorb

demographic changes, without

careful management those changes

will still make us a less happy and

cohesive society.

Of course, birth isn’t the only way

for a country to acquire productive

young folk. But immigration can’t be

the whole answer here, and I say that

as a migration liberal, because the

countries from which immigrants

come are also facing falling birth

rates driven by economic growth.

Such trends mean that relative

incentives to move to the UK to do

Spending on health is

rising; on education it’s

been f lat for 20 years

If we see having a

child as socially useful,

priorities will change

Comment

red box

For the best analysis

and commentary on

the political landscape

thetimes.co.uk/redbox

James

Kirkup

the times | Wednesday February 16 2022 23