Do you think we should life the two child benefit cap?

You say it's cost effective - can you show us the working for that? What are your figures for the cost of means testing and administering your schemes for after school clubs, second hand clothing and food banks? What will be the cost of changing the way foodbanks are run to accommodate your scheme, and who will bear these costs given most food banks are charity-run? In what way are these measures practical when they don't address fuel or housing poverty, two of the major factors in child poverty?

How many children will it lift out of poverty?

Or are your claims that these measures are cost-effective and practical simply feelings you've developed about your own proposal, rather than evidence-based statements of fact?

Lots of schools have initiatives for second hand school uniform and helping poorer families. It shouldn’t need to come from schools.

I would keep it. The country is in debt, taxes are due to to rise and one of the many issues is our welfare bill. We should not be increasing that in any way, it needs reducing.
all children should have fsm across their whole school life, all should have access to extra curricular activities and there are many things like vinted, boot fairs etc for clothes. One of the countries goals should be to reduce our welfare bill not increase it

My understanding is that not only do
most of labours backbenchers not want it, but Brigitte Phillipson has been tasked at looking into child poverty and has pretty much concluded that lifting the child benefit cap is likely to be the most successful way of doing it.

I don’t receive child benefit and have no skin in the game but even though I’m likely to be hit by all the rumoured tax rises, that I’d rather help lift children out of poverty than facilitate keeping the billionaires rich.

I think this is all a moot point. Labour don't have much choice but to change it.

I think all children should have free school meals. The threshold in England was stupidly low. Thankfully it is being changed.

If parents are too selfish to put their kids' need first, they are not going to do sp by getting more money.

I agree that the support given to these kids should be outside of the household. It sounds that a number of these families expect both.

The tech on closed loop payment cards and reloadable gift cards is good enough that you can control what product categories that money is spent on. Allowing someone freedom to spend it on meat, fish, vegetables, milk for example, but not on tobacco, electronics, alcohol and the like.

Id have no problem in raising child related benefits if it was done in this was and you were more certain that money was being spent on the children in the right way.

I know it's unfashionable, and we should want people to have choices and autonomy. But personally I would feel much more generous if with benefits we paid utilities, rent and the like direct, and steered food and other spending in the necessary direction.

Reeves promised NOT to raise taxes and to REDUCE the welfare bill. Let’s not forget that.

Sorry but extra curricular and sports are not luxuries. They are a very beneficial educational extra.
keeping the children in sports, single or team, for as long as possible is better for their physical and mental health, it teaches them to strategise, sportmanship, drive and focus. It helps for those driven to stop them drinking and staying up in all hours.
those very competitive do also better in school as they dont have much time so have to learn to be efficient and organised.

if libraries are accessible, extra curriculars should be accessible too.

@Marshmallow4545 never thought about it this way but i very much agree with you. If you re on FSM, you should be allowed to access extra curiculars

they support parents to work more hours
they allow children to learn skills they otherwise wouldn’t
they increase other self development, socialising, self confidence, friendships, health (if sports related)
I disagree. It doesn't help parents working because they still have to take their kids to these activities.

The skills learned can be learned elsewhere. Everything you cite is available during g school hours.

It really is a luxury. As already stated, there already are schemes during the Summer.

But unfortunately it would also encourage more parents in the future to have children they can’t afford, as it acts as incentive to have more children

I suggest it’s best to give the current children help in other ways (vouchers for clothes etc)

The priority should be on reducing taxes.

This will be another benefit that will disproportionately go to migrant families

It never should have been put in place in the first place and the research says that it is the easiest way to lift many children out of poverty.

I don't care about the parents choices, I care about lifting children who didn't ask to be born out of poverty.

There will always be demand for free things, even when people dont necessarily need them.

I agree. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If people want more than two children, then they should pay for them as others do who are not entitled to any benefits.

And it is also unfair to the ones just " slightly above". I'm speaking about the families maybe earning £20 about the limit to get all these freebies.
So a child from a family with £20 less gets a load of freebies throw their way which are worth far more than the £20

There is a thing called Essex Activate that runs holiday schemes for the kids who qualify ( something to do with pupil premium" Yst many kids take up places and dont bother turning up regularly. Their parents aren't working so no need. Yet there's other kids who could make use of this scheme who don't qualify yet the families have less money

If Reeves raises our taxes and uses that money on benefits for parents with more children that they could afford, I think there would be a lot of anger and outrage!

It's an impossible one to solve really. Yes there are some families who pop out far too many children for them to be able to financially support within their own means but those children are here now and no child should grow up in poverty.

Would UBI not just lead to rampant inflation?

I thought the birth rate in the UK has slowed right down in the UK? There may be many factors behind that, but can it be disproven that the benefit cap hasn't played a part?

If the parents are irresponsible enough to keep having more children they cant afford, then more money from the government is hardly going to be spent wisely, is it?

The thing that so many people fail to grasp, is that disadvantage is more than being poor. It's a state of mind and tied in with sub culture. As distasteful as people might find the 90s Harry Enfield sketches now, The Slobs sum up this 'culture' pretty aptly. I'm having a faaaag.