Paternity madness

There were three news stories this week which might at first appear to be unrelated. The government announced that its forthcoming Work and Families Bill will give new fathers the right to take six months’ unpaid paternity leave. The BBC demanded that its licence fee rise at 2.3 per cent above inflation over the next eight years, perhaps taking it to £200. And Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, warned that the economy is heading for a bout of the 1970s disease: low growth and higher inflation.

But of course there is a link between these three things. While the Chancellor of the Exchequer will inevitably blame the growing malaise in the economy on hurricanes, Opec, anything but himself, the fact is that economic growth is being suppressed by unnecessary costs on business and by a huge transfer of wealth from the private to the public sector, where productivity is much lower.