Cap child tax credit after four children, says MP

Being poor does NOT mean you are incapable of cooking a nutritious meal for your dc. I find that suggestion insulting - that I should let someone else decide what food is necessary for my DC to survive, and I am allowed no input into that. And if the school dinners that my dc receive as FSM's are anything to go by - the meals would be woefully inadequate, allow for no personal preferences, and I still INSIST on cooking my dc a proper, home cooked meal every day. Harry, what you are describing is what FSM's are meant to be - hence an even lower amount of IS etc - but I challenge you to go into a variety of local primary schools and sample the meal they provide. And then tell me if it would be enough to satisfy an 11 yo dc from midday till the following morning. . They allow the school cooks less money per dc than they allow for meals in hospital or prison...

threefeet as I've already explained, free hot breakfasts and free hot lunches for all school children.

If we are going to be honest here, the sort of parents who are living hand to mouth and yet still choose to go ahead and have yet more children knowing there will be no increase in funding are going to be the sort of parents where the children are already living in poverty of one description or another.

"No one is suggesting taking anything away from any current children. Just a preventative measure for the future."

If you really think this will stop people having children you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

What it will do in reality is push many children further into poverty.
Why would you want that?

The thing to remember is that the NMW is exactly what it says on the tin. The MINIMUM.

Worker's come from all ages and all sorts of backgrounds. Moaning that the NMW is not enough for raising a family completely misses the point that for some people it's fine.

For a single person, school leaver or a retired person then the NMW could well be enough.

Plus how do you just force employers to raise their wages to the average? Surely an average is the erm....average of both high & low earners. If you raise the NMW to what is now the average then you just push the average further away?? And that's assuming it's even possible. Most employers would probably struggle to simply magic the money from nowhere.

Lastly if you want to raise wages per hour then I'd argue the best thing to do is overhaul tax credits. It's become a huge dodo and has allowed businesses to employ many part time staff safe since tax credits makes up the difference. And it's meant lots of people are put off working full time. I mean why work full time when you can work part time instead? It's great for the person involved of course but no good at all for the economy.

hunty - out of interest what do you then think should happen to the pay of people who are currently on the current 'average' wage? Do they just accept that people they may be supervising earn the same as them now or are they going to want an increase to maintain the differentials hence increasing inflation and making the wage increase to 'average' wages meaningless?

Hunty Bitter. Very bitter.

I'm going to go and buy a cap to doff, so I'm ready for 2013. I'll need to practise my boot-licking skills too.

Surely THAT would encourage everyone whether on NMW or mega-bucks, to HAVE to consider their income before having more dc? (Not that I didn't, but I have explained my personal situation one too many times on these threads to be bothered, TBH).

Then that just leaves the feckless profligate unemployed people on IS or JSA to deal with - OH, hang on, wait a minute - the government already has...LOOK!. This takes care of all the minimum wage jobs, so the Government can just not worry about it - why should they pay the employers to hire people on a LIVING wage, when they can pay the employers to hire them for £1.63 an hour? (The £65 JSA divided by 40 hrs). So then the NMW workers will have no jobs...and will then be forced onto this program. .

The Government really has covered all it's bases in arse-licking big business, and screwing anyone on less than £20K pa, haven't they!

Now, despite being a NMW worker when I am in employment, AND currently having 4dc - I would have NO problem with that IF it was backed up by a change in the NMW laws to MAKE the employer pay the employee a LIVING wage, not an unfeasibly low limit much less than Tax Credits were. A NMW that pays AT LEAST the current 'average' UK wage.

Ive always believed tc should be paid direct to employers.

Alouisee. . .

Dreaming - what about when you are 'on mat leave'? Twice in NMW jobs, I have lost my job through 'restructuring' when just about to start Mat leave - they get rid of the pg person and one other, so that it doesn't look like it's just because they're pg. They then advertise for ONE job to replace the other worker they got rid of. It's done like that so that they can get away with it - and they KNOW you can't get legal aid for employment tribunals, so you can't afford to do one. So you have no rights, and no way to prove it etc.

So you end up with ONE £11.8K income. Plus, with no state help...how do you pay the childcare, for even ONE dc, to go back to work FT? FT nursery here is £52 a DAY. NMW is only £45.68 before tax - which would mean that MORE than one wage would go on childcare - FOR ONE DC. How do you figure that you would be able to survive? Pay rent (no help from HB), council tax, all utilities, travel to work AND food out of LESS than one income if you went back to work? (Because you would be paying MORE than one FT NMW income for childcare).

Sorry, but that just isn't possible. Even with TWO FT NMW incomes - it isn't possible to even have ONE dc without state help. And if every NMW worker in the SE moved to a 'cheaper' area - 1) Who would then do all the NMW jobs that needed doing in the SE, and 2) There would then be so much competition wherever they MOVED to...that the same problems would occur. It would just be MOVING the problem elsewhere.

Tax Credits are a business subsidy, no more, no less.

I agree with Hunty about tax credits being business subsidies.

We can't compete with China, India, Macau or anywhere that produces anything without more than cursory health and safety standards and minimum wages.

How do Germany manage to be so productive in this day and age? Is it because they are not trying to compete with cheap imports and aim for the "Quality" market.

hunty - it would be 2x £11.8k = £23.6k as the child would have 2 parents. agree living here would be impossible, but where my IL's live its very cheap and I would have thought it would be fine.

X-post with hunty

Interesting idea that the Treasury is funded purely from income tax on workers with less than 4 children Corporation tax? Europe? Anything else we might be able to think of? Is it really credible that individual tax payers exchange money between themselves? Remember most benefits/TC's are claimed by low paid workers. Raise the minimum wage and stop subsidising bad employers.

I know - instead of paying Tax Credits to the profligate, useless poor people, how about we tell the Government to start paying it directly to the businesses that employ NMW workers, but then the businesses HAVE to pay a reasonable living wage to their employees?

Would THAT fit your model? Then, no-one's money would go up when they had an additional dc, but the NMW workers would be getting a LIVING WAGE. Which would then enable them to make their OWN decisions about how many dc they have, instead of getting all Daily Fail about it?!

But, the problem is, that minimum wage is SO low in this Country, not a living wage at all, it is LESS THAN HALF OF THE 'AVERAGE' WAGE, which in itself is a level that most people would struggle to survive on without Tax Credits - Average wage is £26K before tax, Minimum wage is £11.8K before tax (and YES it DOES still get taxed, NMW workers aren't exempt, they DO pay tax). Could ANY OF YOU support EVEN ONE CHILD on £11.8K pa WITHOUT some form of Government top-up?

The only reason Tax Credits exist is becauser Labour had a choice - set minimum wage at a level that is sensible to live off, and drive away businesses who could get the labour much cheaper in China or India, OR subsidise businesses in order to keep the UK economy working at all.

All Tax Credits are, in reality, is a business subsidy allowing employers to pay less than a LIVING WAGE to their employees. We are not talking about a living wage in India or China, but a living wage in the UK, before anyone starts that argument, that working for 2p a day and a handful of rice is fine for people in those countries.

Tax Credits = Business Subsidy IMO.

Dreaming,

I actually agree with you. I am not against a little social engineering. We need young people in the 1st world so parents should be incentivised to have children. However there should be a limit. Personally, I would think 3 should be the most.

It is the solution between the trade off between individual choice and expecting others to subsidise your choices that is problematic.

'By the Government?s own estimate, it would cost £404 billion to implement its Climate Change Act ? £760 per household every year for four decades.'

How much does it cost every household to pay for child benefit to families with more than 4 children? Why aren't we told the figures by our "investigative" journalists and the very handsomely paid BBC presenters that we all pay for?

larry - isn't that the case in france? that people who have no or very few children pay a much higher rate of tax than we do here in the UK?

I still think its OK to have 2 or 3 children and have the cost subsidised by other tax payers - its people's right in a civilised society to have children - but that over this is unreasonable to expect others to pay for your choices.

My moral outrage isn't forced larry. It's called having humility.

Wind farms :o

Lovely idea - but when they go wrong it won't be economically viable to repair them, they will be replaced. As some individual units already have. Leaving a trail of Eco bling and green litter across the countryside and out at sea.

Fanny,

Your moral outrage seems a little forced. You don't have 5 children. You made the sensible decision not to. And, you are both hard working and I am sure you would have got on your feet somehow.

The reality is that if the state subsidises large families for those on low incomes, it has to increase taxes on others. For those other taxes, a higher tax rate will make them choose to have less children. Thus, the subsidy of more children for those on low incomes takes children away from those who can only just afford to have them.

For a lot of people, state money is a kind of "free money". Giving someone with 5 children a zero or close to zero tax rate merely makes others pay more tax.