Economic justice: Creating a level playing field.
An unfair economic system.
The average mother no longer has the freedom or choice to be based at home to care for her child. Social pressure discourages mothers to stay home but it is the financial reality of paying the rent and bills that force mothers into the workplace before they or their children are ready.
Two factors are crucial: the way we tax families and our housing policy.
The income tax system, takes only income into account ignoring the number of people the income has to support. Families on one income bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Families who are less well off will often be paying more tax than people who are better off. Some may even be paying higher rate tax and lose their child benefit.
Meanwhile housing costs have outstripped earnings. We build some of the smallest, most expensive houses in Europe and are working twice as hard as we did 40 years ago to afford them. Houses are seen as investments rather than homes leaving many families priced out of communities they were born into.
A fairer family taxation system.
Families where one parent stays at home to care for their children bear the heaviest proportion of the tax burden than any comparable household.
Housing families can afford.
40 years ago most families could afford to rent or buy a home and survive on one income but now average house prices are over 8x the average income and in some cities over 17x!
If it seems like everyone is working twice as hard to afford a smaller, poorer quality house that is because they are.
“If we want more homes, we have to build them in a way that people want… Most local people feel they have no say or voice in what gets built, where it gets built, what it looks like, how it performs and, absolutely crucially, who gets the chance to live there. If we change all that, we change the conversation.”
Richard Bacon MP