When forming Latvia’s policy for families, it may be worth adopting a so-called childless family tax, said Minister of Environment Protection and Regional Development Māris Sprindžuks at the first meeting of Latvia’s new government held on Tuesday, the 20th of December.
During the discussion of the plan for implementation of the plan from Ministry of Welfare for Child, youth and family development, the minister said municipalities are not involved in this sector because they have their own tools to govern the policy for families.
If such large-scale activities are planned and guidelines are in the works, it is necessary to clarify the objective, said the politician. If the goal is regeneration of the population, then it would be important to start with an audit of all benefits provided by municipal administrations and ministries, said the minister.
«What I see from the side of municipalities, the biggest unfairness across the entire social policy is unavailability of kindergartens. This is where we have practices to compare – experience of Estonia or Finland. All kindergartens there all cost equally high regardless of whether or not they are municipal or private kindergartens,» said the minister.
The minister also said an enormous amount of funding is diverted towards free lunches that are not focused on especially protected groups of children.
«In reality this child policy is rather expensive. The state does a lot here, but the result, I believe, is not good only because we are too generous there. We support everyone, and sometimes we have nothing left for the least protected children,» said the minister.
The minister also said that some municipalities provide generous support to healthy and solvent parents of children here and there, whereas lonely mothers are often left ignored because they don’t appear on any lists even though their family has it rough.
As for Latvia’s demographic problem, the minister said it is necessary to create friendly marketing and even consider adopting a so-called childless tax.
«If we want more children, we need friendlier marketing to promote that people [with children] will have an easier, not more difficult life. We can look at childless families and their situation in the Soviet Era. Perhaps we should adopt this tax, as it would serve a single of sorts that we need to produce future taxpayers. This is family policy as well,» said Sprindžuks.
Sprindžuks’ suggestion for this new tax did not impress his colleagues, however.
Minister of Welfare Evika Siliņa hopes to establish a good working relationship with him and his ministry.
At the same time, she expects an agreement to be reached about overlapping topics between the two ministries, especially in regards to kindergartens. Currently lending options are available to municipalities for the construction of kindergartens, but local governments are not too eager to use this option, said the minister.
Later, however, Sprindžuks wrote on Facebook that during this government meeting ministers did not discuss any new tax options, adding that the idea for the ‘childless tax’ was proposed by him as one of many different solutions to support families.
He believes it is important to continue the discussion about ways to motivate families to make decisions that benefit children.
He also apologized to people who were offended by his suggestion. «I realise there are families that cannot have children, but at the same time, it is necessary to think about ways to promote childbirth. Family is the foundation. We may hear different ideas and reject many – it is normal for a democratic process. But we have to discuss this. I believe we need to analyse state and municipal support mechanisms and offer new ones,» said the minister.