Who suffers when benefits are cut?

We have become used to the idea that moral judgments can be handed out with state-funded benefits, as though public money buys the right to criticise. A portion of the population feels comfortable claiming that other people’s benefits should not be wasted on unhealthy food or cigarettes.

Perhaps there is some basis to that. Perhaps there is a simple equation that no-one gets something for nothing. But it is easy for such beliefs to cross into punitive thinking. That is one of the problems with benefit sanctions.

Many people are surprised to learn that more than 13,000 soleparent families have their benefits docked by at least $22 a week because one parent will not name the other. In nearly all cases, the unnamed parent is the father. Many will agree with former Greens MP Metiria Turei, who said the policy further punishes the most vulnerable in benefitdependent households – the children.

Does it even work? The Ministry of Social Development said in 2016 it could not tell if the policy was or was not encouraging mothers to name fathers.

Why would mothers not name the father? Some assume it is a form of benefit fraud that gets the father off paying child support. As nearly one-fifth of sole parent families are sanctioned, that would make it a widespread scam.

Turei said the reasons are ‘‘myriad and complex’’.

The new Government has resolved to drop the benefit sanctions. Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni has agreed that children miss out when the parent is punished.

But the National opposition has found an ingenious and unexpected way to attack the Government’s position. Rather than appeal to judgmental conservatism, it argues instead that not naming a parent deprives a child of his or her right to know its wha¯ nau.

National social development spokesperson Louise Upston says a child’s sense of identity may be threatened by blank spaces on official documents. National has cited the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects a child’s right to preserve identity, including family names.

Invoking the UN certainly seems clever. But, then again, the convention also enshrines rights to ‘‘life, survival and development’’ and asks that governments make sure that ‘‘the best interests of the child are taken into account when making decisions about the child’’.

Research from the UK shows there is ‘‘clear evidence of sanctions being linked to economic hardship and hunger’’ and a ‘‘strong, dynamic’’ relationship between people having their benefits stopped and referrals to food banks.

In the light of that, it could just as easily be argued that reducing a household’s benefit income clashes with the aims of the UN convention.