THE COST OF LIVING LAWFULLY
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It may be going too far to say that crime pays in modern Britain. But it's certainly true that living lawfully has never been so expensive. Just consider the spiralling cost of 'compulsory compliance' - those things that every citizen is obliged to pay to stay within the law.
Firstly, council tax. Since it was introduced thirteen years ago, council tax bills have on average more than doubled. Over the same period pensions have risen by only 38% and average earnings 50%. This year, council tax bills in England will rise by an average of 4.5% - twice the rate of inflation - with the average household bill increasing from £1009 a year to £1056.
Such a rise could only be justified if the council taxpayer was getting more for his money. In fact the reverse is true. Some increases in local authority spending are inevitable, of course. As an ageing population we would expect spending on care for the elderly to rise. But an increasing amount of local authority spending is going on repairing the damage caused by our country's descent into lawlessness.
Take arson, for example. It used to be a rare occurrence in Britain, but has risen 40-fold in the last 40 years and now costs £2.2bn per year. Even allowing for changes in how crime is recorded, in the last 10 years alone the number of arson attacks has more than doubled. There are now 2,100 deliberately started fires a week in the UK, killing on average two people, injuring 53 others, and damaging or destroying 260 homes, 1,500 cars and 20 schools.
The financial cost is enormous. In 2004 arson cost the country £2.2bn, much of the bill footed at a local level, either through the education budget (£83m) or the budget for the fire brigade and emergency services. Yet what happens to those found guilty of causing such damage? The average custodial sentence for arson in 2002 was 27.9 months. The vast majority of those receiving a custodial sentence will, however, serve much less than this due to the various early release programmes.
It's the same story with vandalism and graffiti. Criminal damage costs Britain a staggering £2.1bn a year - and again much of the bill for this comes out of your council tax. In London the annual cost of cleaning up graffiti is estimated at £100m. The Keep Britain Tidy charity has put the overall cost to local authorities of graffiti at £27m a year. Yet it was only last April that a judge expressed the hope that punishment would deter others, after sentencing two young men to 10 months' youth detention for spraying their 'tags' onto trains and bridges.
Next, the television licence. This fee rose 4.2% to £131.50 from 1 April, a 2.3% increase above inflation. Since 2002, the fee has risen 20.6%. But with a few exceptions, such as the David Attenborough natural history documentaries, can anyone seriously argue that BBC programmes are as good as 30 years ago? Today the Corporation feeds up a never-ending diet of cheaply made 'makeover' programmes, antique shows, and fly-on-the-wall documentaries. Yet it has the audacity to charge us more for doing so. Is it any wonder one in 20 homes evades this tax?
As steep as recent licence fee rises have been, worse is yet to come. A recent report from the House of Lords BBC charter renewal committee predicted a "significant" increase in the licence fee over the next eight years. Indeed, "the licence fee has now been classified as a tax by the Office of National Statistics" said the chairman of the committee, Lord Fowler, adding that "We do not support this change and believe it has implications for the independence of the BBC. What is clear is that the Government are now beginning to use the licence fee as a tax."
Finally on the list of 'compulsory compliance' comes motor insurance. Premiums increased on average from £473.05 to £589.54 in the year to January 2005, an increase of over 25%. Richard Mason, Director of Insuresupermarket.com, is not alone in blaming the bulk of this rise on uninsured drivers. The Government puts the figure at one in 20, but recent research by Direct Line and MORI suggests that as many as one in 10 drivers are uninsured.
The Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB) has estimated that insurers pay £400m a year to meet the cost of accidents involving uninsured drivers. That adds £30 to the average annual premium. But what happens when drivers are caught driving without insurance? On 1 June 2003, driving uninsured became an offence for which, instead of prosecution, a fixed penalty could be offered. The level of the fixed penalty is a mere £200 plus six penalty points. Being caught can cost half what buying insurance would cost in the first place!
Uninsured motorists not only push up the premiums of honest drivers, they are also much more likely to commit other traffic offences, such as driving dangerous vehicles and causing more accidents. Jaswinder Lakhvinder Singh was driving without insurance when he killed a medical student on a pedestrian crossing in Birmingham last year, before speeding away. Yet despite being previously banned for 12 months for drink-driving, Singh was told by the judge that he was "clearly a man of good character" and given an 18-month sentence.
Having already served five months of his jail term, however, Singh can be expected to be released within four months. "This sentence is an insult," said the dead student's mother. "[It] is no deterrent or punishment." Such lawlessness, instead of being dealt with severely, leads to the majority of law-abiding citizens having to pay more to stay compliant. The issue at stake here is not one of 'left' or 'right' politics, but of fairness. For too long the honest and law-abiding have been penalised for the selfish, anti-social behaviour of others. We're expected to cough up more and get less in return.
Neil Clark
P.S. Since the council tax was first introduced in 1993, the average bill has now more than doubled. That's nearly FOUR TIMES faster than the official rate of inflation!
Editor's note: Neil Clark writes regularly for The Guardian, The Australian, The Times, New Statesman, The Spectator, Racing Post and The Fleet Street Letter. A copy of this article first appeared in The Daily Reckoning.
