Parents of truanting pupils may lose benefits, says Gove
PARENTS who fail to ensure that their children regularly attend school could have their child benefit stopped, Michael Gove has said.
The Levelling Up Secretary said persistent truancy was linked to anti-social behaviour, so clamping down on the former could help to solve the latter.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Onward think tank, he said the idea was considered by the coalition government under David Cameron but was blocked by the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Gove, who is leading a government review of policies to tackle antisocial behaviour, suggested that it could be reconsidered as part of a drive to restore “an ethic of responsibility”.
A source close to the minister said the idea was being considered as part of the review. Mr Gove said: “We need to, particularly after Covid, get back to an absolute rigorous focus on school attendance, on supporting children to be in school. It is often the case that truanting or persistent absenteeism leads to involvement in antisocial behaviour.
“So one of the ideas that we floated in the coalition years, which the Liberal Democrats rejected, is the idea that if children are persistently absent then child benefit should be stopped. I think what we do need to do is think radically about restoring an ethic of responsibility.” Mr Gove talked about other improvements he would like to see, such as more bobbies on the beat.
“The first thing is that we need to have more of a visible uniformed presence on our streets, particularly in hotspots where difficulties occur,” he said. “The second is you need a more rapid transformation of justice where people have transgressed.
“We have something called community payback at the moment, which means it’s an out-of-court settlement... But the process is far too slow and disconnected from the original offence.”
Mr Gove also said that Liz Truss’s brand of libertarianism – which led to market meltdown and her departure from No10 after seven weeks – was “particularly ill equipped” for the significant challenges ahead.
He said that there had been a “strain of thinking on the Right, popular recently” that sees “citizens as just consumers, government as a problem not a guardian and, while talking of merit and reward, it’s seen them as commercial indices and not moral values.
“It’s placed the abstract goal of global free trade ahead of the economic welfare of all our citizens and the principle of radical individual freedom and selfrealisation ahead of the other goods that promote human flourishing,” he added.