The Philpott case is horrific; so is the attempt to hijack it for any political purpose

The sorry truth of the Philpott case is that almost nothing can be learnt from it. Everything would be so much simpler if there were clear public policy conclusions that could be drawn from the horrors of this case. But there are not. How could there be if we’re expected to mine a case like this for meaning?

It is almost always a mistake to draw firm conclusions from extreme examples of any given phenomenon. The perils of the small sample size should be well enough understood by now to make this clear. It is even dafter to presume too much on the back of a monstrous case such as this.

A recap: Mick Philpott had spawned no fewer than 17 children by at least five different women. He did not work. Instead his family relied upon the safety net. Some estimates suggest that he accrued the equivalent of a pre-tax working income of £100,000 a year from “gaming” the benefit system.