Too Many People?

On 10 August Dr John Peel, the Institute’s Treasurer, was invited to take part in the Jimmy Young Programme on BBC 2 and to be interviewed on a book by Sir Roy Calne entitled “Too Many People”. The book will be reviewed in a later issue of the Newsletter but below is the transcript of the broadcast which brought the Galton Institute to the attention of the nine million listeners to this programme.

JY:  "Newly married couples should have a licence to have just two children and those who have more children should be heavily taxed.” Now that’s according to Professor Sir Roy Calne. He’s written a book which is called “Too Many People”. It’s published later this month and just to put it in context, Sir Roy himself is a renowned transplant surgeon, and apart from taxing large families he also proposes an age limit for parents and compulsory parenting skill classes at school, and on the line to talk to me about all that is the Treasurer of the Galton Institute which is an organisation which is itself concerned with population matters and he is Dr. John Peel.  Hello John.

JP: Good morning.

JY: Well, licences for new parents, higher taxes if you have more than two children, an age limit for parents, won’t people listening to us think that these really are rather big brother ideas, I wonder?

JP: Well, I think in the age of woolly liberalism of the 1970s and 80s this might well have been the case but I suspect that political correctness may now be giving way to sociological realism and I think it’s a very encouraging sign that a man of Sir Roy’s stature and distinction has taken the trouble to write about these matters.

JY: Yes. Putting this in perspective, it’s quite interesting because Professor Calne himself has six children and he says himself, he is very contrite about his own contribution to the population explosion and were he marrying today, he would certainly not be planning a family of six. What would you say about that?

JP: Well, I think this is a comment which itself reflects changing attitudes and I feel that although doubtless Sir Roy’s contribution to the gene pool has been a very significant one, I think that more people today are beginning to realise the responsibilities of planned parenthood and the problems of over population, not only in this country but on the world scale.

JY: Let me ask you about just one of Sir Roy’s suggestions. Wouldn’t levying special taxes on people who have more than two children mean that only the very wealthy would be able to have more than two children?

JP: I think any proposal which addresses itself to the problem of over-population deserves a hearing and although what you say may well be the case, this applies to many fields of personal choice, and I don’t think that there is any basic human right, which either the United Nations or even Europe has yet imposed upon us, not only to have children but to have as many as we want. The world’s resources after all are finite, and I think that these suggestions do no more than reflect the consequences of this.

JY: Yes. I just wonder, you see - some people listening to us may think “hey, hang on a minute, you know, if the amount of tax that you pay is going to determine the size of your family, how long before somebody decrees that your colour, or your race, or whatever, determines the size of your family?”

JP: I think that that would be an irrelevance really. Most totalitarian governments have been pro-natalist historically. This was the case both in Stalinist Russia and in pre-war Germany. Motherhood was encouraged. Abortion was illegal.

JY: Well, those examples aside, the thing is, it has been tried in India - you know - people who opted for sterilisation got free radios and so on; in China people who had more than one child have had their television confiscated and so on. Is that really the way that people in this country want to live, I wonder.

JP: I think what is relevant here is that Sir Roy has phrased his arguments in terms of the United Kingdom and the question of the population of this country. The fact is, of course, that a child being born in this country at the present time is going to consume 500 times as much of the world’s non-renewable resources during its lifetime as a child being born in Asia or Africa and although it may be unfashionable these days to talk about setting a good example and so on, these are strictly economic matters which are logical in their implications.

JY: What you see at the base of it, I suppose, is what part is the state to play in regulating the size of families?

JP: Well, the state of course interferes in very many so-called freedoms in this day and age and this matter seems so basic to human survival and to human well being that I suspect that this proposal might receive more popular support than perhaps we might imagine.

JY: Yes. How far do we go then? That’s the next thing. If Sir Roy’s thinking is right, do you think, for example, that it’s wrong for us to spend as much money as we do, on research into infertility and helping couples who can’t have their own children?

JP: I think that whether the National Health Service should bear the cost of these procedures or whether it should fall on the individual couples concerned is certainly a debatable issue. But in the context of population problems it is a relatively insignificant one. In any population a fairly constant ten per cent of couples will be sub-fertile and of these only ten to twenty per cent can be helped by any known or immediately forseeable medical procedures so, as I say, the problem is small.

JY: Do you think that a great deal of over population may be due to a lack of information about birth control?

JP: This is almost certainly true. In 1990 in this country there were 8,600 pregnancies amongst girls aged 13 to 15 resulting in 4,100 abortions and 4,300 live births. This at its most basic points to a failure in our educational system and if Sir Roy’s parenting skill proposals did no more than halve these figures they would be justified.

JY: You see, another thing, the Roman Catholic Church is often blamed for not actively discouraging people from having more children. Now would you like to see the Catholic Church change its views on contraception and birth control?

JP: I would and I think many ordinary Catholics in this country would too. And such a change of official views would have an even greater impact in those Catholic countries of South America and South East Asia where Papal Teachings are more strictly observed and cause greater personal distress.

JY: Yes, but I mean, if the basic idea behind Sir Roy’s book was to stimulate discussion, he’s certainly done that. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, do you think that given that we don’t live in a totalitarian state, do you think that in real life people will probably ignore Sir Roy and continue to have as many children as they think they want to have?

JP: No, I think that as I said the change in attitudes is evident. Even Professor Halsey, whose liberal credentials are quite impeccable, recently pointed out that children of single parents, and children in large families are disadvantaged in terms of their health, their educational attainment, their occupational achievement and so on, and public attitudes do usually catch up with what expert opinion suggests.

JY: Yes. Certainly interesting to talk to you on the programme about it John. It will interest our listeners, that’s absolutely certain. Thank you so much. Dr. John Peel is Treasurer of the Galton Institute which is an organisation concerned with population matters.

The item brought a larger than average telephoned response from listeners and amongst those broadcast later in the programme there was overwhelming support for the ideas proposed in the book.