To think the 2-child benefit cap is fine?

Child maintenance isn't taken into account for the purpose of benefits
And many fathers will be payiing ,but if they are on low wages it won't be that much.

That's, what happened in 2017 ,
It was proposed in 2015 ( I think) that children born after a certain date would not get extra tax credits/ universal credit
Also people still receive money for children born before thst date.

Somewhat depressingly, giving more money to the kinds of families who make a lot of bad choices, the money often doesn't actually make it to benefitting the kids.

Maybe tonight's vote isn't really about the benefit cap at all.

Maybe it's the SNP and some Labour MPs having an early go at challenging the Government to see how the land lies power-wise. It's a nice emotionally charged issue to try it on - easy to suggest that the Government is being nasty to poor children if they don't fall in with the rebels.

The housing element is dependent on number of bedrooms. If you needed four rooms you’d get more than for a two-bed. They will only pay for the number of bedrooms you need, not how many your property has so you get more if you had three children than if you had one child.

I agree re clamping down on fathers not paying their fair share. We shouldn’t let them get away with making the taxpayer pick up their tab.

I would like more done about absent fathers who don’t pay.

That happened back in 2015 when it was eventually brought into play in 2017.

Ample notice was given.

I think there may be a middle ground here. Nobody wants children being brought up in poverty, so existing children should still receive funding. As PP have said, if your circumstances change, you cannot send your 3rd/4th one back! However, 3rd children born after a certain date (maybe a year into the future so not conceived yet) would not be entitled to claim as the parents took a decision, (or were careless) in the knowledge that they’d get no extra benefits for the additional child.

the welfare state is not there for the third child if things go wrong, that's the whole point of the calls to remove the cap.

Gosh I wish there was a 'policy' that works for the men who leave their children without financial provision - for the state to cover.

For all those - including myself btw - who were left holding the babies to get on with it - truly sorry.

But for the girls who are planning ahead please heed the 2 child cap when planning your families and futures as you'll have to support them - with or without him.

The state is not paying for more than 2.

@Zwicky Wouldn’t that just lead to the taxpayer paying absolutely massive amounts of public money to compensate for useless dads? I can’t see how the government would get all of that money back - the dads would still either cheat the system or, if they’re on benefits or low wages themselves, be unable to pay. You could prosecute them but then that just fills the prisons (or further hampers their job prospects, or both).

And meanwhile the taxpayer bill has gone through the roof because taxpayers are all subbing in where the man should.

I’m absolutely in favour of the onus being on deadbeat dads but I can’t see how this wouldn’t end up with an even bigger welfare bill than we have now.

Some men would stay to raise their kids they just like to cheat on the side so their spouse/partner rightly kicks them out, and as a result they decide to try to control their ex by not paying for their children. This includes moving abroad out of the clutches of the UK government.

And what would you do with all the children where one parent gets a severe disability or drops dead? (I can only find statistics from 2011 about parents dying leaving dependent children.)

And in my wonderful new scheme men actually will be discouraged from fathering children they have no intention of raising because there will be a financial cost that they can’t get out of by working cash in hand. It’s more of a sanction than “in a few years your ex may non be able to get the child element of UC”

Thank U.

If the policy hasn’t led to a decrease in 3rd children being born - and I read on another thread that it hasn’t - then presumably lifting it isn’t going to suddenly lead to an explosion of 3rd babies being born. It just means that the ones that are born are hopefully less likely to live shitty lives.

I do feel like there are better ways of doing it than shoving money at parents as some will inevitably use it on anything but the kids, but I don’t know how that would work.

I wouldn’t bother making the taxpayer argument though - over half the UK population are net recipients and I can’t see that changing for all these kids being born now. We need structural reform before we need a pyramid scheme of increasingly state-dependent people.

Your ex-husband is self-employed and cooks the books not to pay his child maintenance. Are you saying that the welfare state shouldn't support you?

Im guessing that one of the big contributors to child poverty is separated parents where the absent parent pays far, far below what’s it actually takes to raise a child. I think kids would be better of if there was a government agency who could calculate what the resident parent needs to raise the children (based on reasonable housing costs, food, school expenses, childcare, clothing) and the government pays the resident parent and claims the amount back from the non resident parent. There would be no advantage to men to work low hours, work for cash, be self employed on 50p a year, be a SAHD for his new family etc. it would become an expectation that parents who can’t afford their child maintenance will attempt to increase their earnings, rather than decrease them as it’s a waste earning money only to pay maintenance. Non payment could be prosecuted like council and other taxes are, payment schemes could be in place to pay the debt (with interest) over an extended period, but the child would get what they need, not just the crumbs from mr self employed. I’m sure there are lots of flaws but the amount that some dads pay is preposterous compared to the actual expense of raising a child. No wonder the kid is in poverty when the dad is paying £30 a month. It’s completely arse about face.

Actually Japan and South Korea have problems due to their low birth rates. Unlike the UK they don't like immigrants and having more elderly than young people means economic growth decreases and they don't have enough people for their military. They also don't have enough people to care for the increase numbers of elderly either financially or in person. (China is also having problems.)

In the UK we can import more young adults, both skilled and unskilled, like we have done for centuries however some members of the UK population don't like this due to the ethnicities of the people we import.

The IFS wrote a good explainer on it. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/two-child-limit-poverty-incentives-and-cost

It would make a huge difference to child poverty to remove the cap and would really help to give families, disproportionately single parent families, a decent shot at life. It’s affordable in the grand scheme of things.

So shortsighted. I have no children and I pay tax. I am happy for my tax to go towards paying for today's children who will grow up to be tomorrow's taxpayers.

This - you’ve not for years that your child of born on or after 6th of April 2017 (7 years ago) your not going to get more for them.

Even if you could afford to have them at the time, life is unpredictable so why would you have a load of kids you can’t support.

just silly

My exh ran off and left me with 3 small children. The 2 child cap would have meant we starved. Would that have made you happy? Or would you have joined in the scathing looks and contempt offered to me anyway as a single parent? Judgemental people like you make me so angry.

https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons

No child should be left in poverty in this country. Cameron and Osborne brought it in to satisfy their own ideological cruelty and now a Labour government - a bloody LABOUR government, the one we were told would be so wonderful and look after the most vulnerable in the UK - continues their vile legacy. I have no love for Blair and Brown but they did so much to reduce child poverty and provide opportunity and now we have this Labour government that clings to the cruelest Tory machinations. What have we become?

yes, that’s what she’s saying the welfare state shouldn’t support you. You still should not have had more than two children. No one “needs” more than two kids - it’s still your choice no matter what circumstances come in the future that you can predict. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.