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

Absolutely not. If children are living in poverty, the only people to blame are the parents that had them knowing they can't afford to look after them!

Depending on school, a lot of extra curricular activities are free or definitely offered as free to selected students (I recall paying for my son to do football a few years ago with an external provider and was talking to another parent who told me how great it was for them to offer training for free!). Generally my children's school now do all clubs for free, even if it is an external provider. Unfortunately the uptake doesn't always get to the groups that you are thinking of. Same with the HAF schemes. They target certain groups but often these groups for some reason do not access them. More research should be done into why.

My belief is that child benefit should be given as vouchers which are restricted in how they are spent. Yes this is very nanny state, but there is always a perception benefits are spent on alcohol, vales or cigarettes so to me if they were given as a generic supermarket voucher that could be used in any store but only in food items then this would shut up the haters and ensure that all children have a contribution to food.

Absolutely do not lift the cap. The country can't afford it. Reeves surely can't say we can afford to increase welfare payments but then say she has to raise income tax. That makes no sense.

Since when has any Government - of any political side - ever felt held to pre-election promises. And I think it’s very different when you get into Government and see the true extent of the shit the country is in.

I can’t bare to see Tories bleating on about what ought to be done when it’s their fault we are where we are. I’m not saying anyone else would have done any better. But Tories did do shit.

We need to tax companies properly. There’s loads of money floating about somewhere.

I agree! Having more than two children is indeed a luxury. If parents choose to have more than two children they should carefully consider whether they can actually afford to have them.

@DoAWheelie I am very well paid and so is DH. We started with nothing and have slaved in horrible jobs to get where we are. We had kids late in life due to lack of funds and career pressure. I hate my career. We have never had benefits to boost our income. We lived in a shared house until we could afford to marry.

If the government gave everyone a UBI now, I would instantly pack in my job especially if there was an uplift for kids! It would be like getting a retirement income early. I’d be absolutely thrilled.

IFS research indicates removing the two-child cap would lift 600K+ children out of absolute poverty and is the most cost-effective way of doing so.

Donating second hand clothing (which happens in some schools anyway) or running government-subsidised foodbanks isn't a long-term solution which tackles the root cause of poverty; inadequate wages in the face of very high living costs.

It's nothing to do with child benefit
It's the child element of universal credit which is significantly more than child benefit, there has never been a cap for child benefit.

I'm torn but generally I do think that people should take more responsibility and manage their contraception better.

And yes I know accidents happen.

No, the cap should remain. I would prefer to see greater support for disabled people, not people having multiple children.

Have you seen the queues for food banks? In my area they stretch round a corner and you have to stand for hours.

You don’t know what you’re going to get and there is a lot of elbowing. You want people with small kids to queue for hours, possibly in the rain, next to drug addicts who are tweaking and being aggressive?

No way should they raise taxes to pay out more benefits! Two children is enough. Having more than two makes it much harder to continue working so this will only disincentive work, reducing tax income further.

Probably not as a priority. If I were going to choose a way to help children in poverty, it would be to raise the FSM threshold to at least equivalent to full time minimum wage.

I wouldn’t say after school activities are a luxury.

• 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).

Besides that many people wont see the lift due to the benefit cap, so its all rather pointless.

Exactly this, its a luxury having mutiple children.

Children on FSM do get access to HAF activities during the school holidays.

They are raising taxes and increasing welfare spending. How is that going to grow the economy or increase productivity?

2 kids is plenty. People who don’t receive benefits don’t get a pay tie when they have another kid, they have to plan and budget accordingly.

Labour doing what they always do. Completely incompetent

They attacked the disabled, saying we need to save billions as we are to far in debt only to lift tbe cap & spend more billions on that. It makes no sense - the cap needs to remain. Shame on the goverment.

Absolutely not. 2 children is plenty when you're relying on tax payers to pay for them.

We should be promoting more personal responsibility, not less.

Experts (see CPAG) are generally agreed that the most cost effective immediate measure for reducing child poverty is the removal of the two child cap. I can't think of many things I'd rather my considerable tax contributions be spent on than lifting children out of poverty, so I am in favour.

Your solutions are odd, showing a strong preference for children in poverty being given hand-me-downs and charity. But children's own parents are, in the majority of cases, the ones who know what their children need, and giving them the money directly allows them to provide those things, and with much less social stigma. For instance you think a solution to child poverty might be food banks stocked with nutritious and healthy food, but does that take into account families where there is insufficient money to run an oven for any length of time, or where both parents are in work and would struggle to find the time to go to a food bank, or families with neurodivergent children who will only eat certain specific foods?

There is nothing to stop you donating your children's clothes to charities if you wish, I do so all the time.

Id like to see minimum wage bought up to a level where universal credit is not needed in order to have a basic existance, including one or two children.

More than 2 children, however, is a luxury lifestyle choice that people need fund themselves and that includes considering possible future changes (divorce, bereavement, disability) BEFORE having a third child.

Agree with @Sirzy . Many people don't take an active decision to have the children they do; and of those who are planning their families, most of those are not deciding whether or not to have children based on child benefit questions. The underlying belief of the policy is that people are having more children because they think it will be a financial benefit. My hypothesis is that the number of people to whom that applies is incredibly small. Personally, as someone who had twins for her second pregnancy this kind of stuff winds me up. (And am at the other end of the parenting scale: I now have three kiddos going to uni at the same time and that is not taken into account when means testing my household, which also irritates me.)