Labour suspends seven MPs over two-child benefit cap

[EasterIssland]

Several labour mps have voted in favour of snps request to remove the 2 child benefit cap and now they’ve* *had the whip suspended for six month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c978m6z3egno

not the best beginning for this new government

@Emmanuelll Maybe not to students who only want a couple of months but go and ask at a care home! Retrain as a social worker. Be an engineer. We have lots of labour shortage industries. Hospitality is another, She could volunteer too. Decent for cv and better than nothing.

Part time workers really aren’t required to be full time. We have millions doing this. Plenty who are trained to be doing higher paid work but don’t fancy the hours. Come retirement age there’s another time bomb looming!

I voted snp but i dont oppose the cap. Surely there should be a cap? And people know it exists so dont have 7 kids if you need to claim benefits for them!! And before i get accused of benefit bashing i myself am now not working and relying on UC hopefully temporarily as i have a severely disabled child. And an older child.

Keir Starmer is quickly becoming my favourite political leader in recent times.

It is absolutely unfair that married couples already have the benefit of a pooled income, but are given tax breaks and benefits on top of that. While single people are tied to their jobs and having to rent accomodation for decades at a time, people in relationships have a much easier time buying their home, and most couples I know go on frequent holidays abroad (once a year, or sometimes even more).

Can we please have a fairer society for single people? I don't want to be paying for other people's relationships.

Yep, destroying the country bit by bit already

@Emmanuelll students only wanting a couple of months need to look at the jobs that others do not want. Factory or care work usually. It is different for students who work all year and just increase their hours during summer.

She has applied for every type of job, believe me. Where I live, there seems to be a shortage.

In hospitality? On a farm? Where are you, roughly?

Can we please have a fairer society for single people?

I’m not single but have been most of my adult life and I totally agree.

One thing that used to really irk me is when all politicians would bang on about being there for and helping “hardworking families”. It felt like single person households were invisible!

I prefer they just say “every household” or “people” or something! I’ve noticed they say that more nowadays thankfully.

There are often two people with money in two single person households and share dc. One is resident parent. Two houses, one family - housing shortage. Not all single families but they do get money!

The housing shortage is caused by greedy landlords, Russian oligarchs, and an impotent Tory government that could not provide more housing. It is not caused by a small number of couples who live apart.

"Families and households in the UK - Office for National Statistics" https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2022

There's around 3 million single parent households as of 2022.

Russian oligarchs don't tend to live in the type of homes most can afford.

There aren’t enough houses and one reason is a family needing two. I don’t think Russians make much difference. Landlords have costs. Better to have housing associations and tenants have no right to buy. That keeps the housing stock available to rent. This is partly why rents are high.

Get Labour building and there could be improvements. NIMBYs will be out in force, there’s no labour available and no land either

You don't know the circumstances of that family that has led to them having two houses. There are many reasons for a couple to live apart, and many of those reasons are valid. I saw a documentary about a couple that had to live in separate houses to cope with an unwell schizophrenic daughter. While I wish homes were easier to buy for single people such as myself, I don't think you are directing your anger at the right place when you specifically single out the unusual cases when two people in a relationship live in separate homes.

Building on green belt though should only be allowed where all brown field sites within a 10 mile radius have already been built on.

New homes (often quite expensive with a very small amount of social housing) don’t solve the problem.

The Government need to back the cleaning up of brownfield sites the building of affordable houses available only to individuals who have lived in the area for 5 years and must be used as that individual’s only home. The government could back 100% mortgages on these properties. It’s not a shortage of properties it’s the shortage of the right properties.

But Russian oligarchs buying up properties to lie empty as some kind of money laundering scam does reduce the number of properties available and pushes prices up generally. I don't thinknthe housing shortage is caused by them though. Or immigrants who often live in HMO.

They really aren’t buying vast numbers of houses or ones that families want. Just get real about this.

Who is paying to clean up Brown field sites? Some cost millions! That’s why many aren’t developed. It’s utterly ridiculous to think this can work unless the government puts in a huge amount. Or who pays? The house owner? I’m seeing vast numbers of unused mills in West Yorkshire. Yes, get on and develop them. Do find the money but house owners will struggle. Ditto in Liverpool.

Russian oligarchs buy properties worth millions, if you can afford homes like this then you're not part of the housing crisis.

Russian oligarchs buying up expensive properties is absolutely not disconnected from the housing crisis. A shortage of all types of housing drives up all property prices. Those houses wouldn't be worth millions in the first place if there wasn't a housing shortage.

Consider this: if you flooded the housing market with very cheap, small, "commie-block" style homes, and housed a few million people in these, there would be less demand for other homes, including homes in the £200k - £500k bracket. The price of those houses would crash accordingly. The point is, that the prices of all properties are linked.

Rubbish! There would still be demand for fabulous houses from the very rich. What’s provided for others makes no difference to them.

The price of the most expensive houses is determined by the market for them. That’s determined by scarcity, location and who has the money. Nothing to do with rental flats that will not get built. I’d consider that people won’t want communist style homes and would still be wanting other homes. If more middle market homes are built, this can affect prices but some houses are always more desirable than others and command a premium. Location and age matter. Big houses in central London, command a big fat premium. They are a world wide commodity. Certainly not just bought by the Russians!

@TizerorFizz You're missing the point that the prices of most homes are artificially inflated by scarcity. If the cost of homes in the UK had risen in line with inflation only since the 1970s, the average home would only cost about £70,000.

It's not as if houses and their buyers exist in distinct brackets. Some people buy homes that they can just about afford with huge sacrifices, whereas other people buy homes that they can very easily afford. Shortages in one sector has a knock-on effect on other sectors. Don't delude yourself by thinking that when people buy up huge numbers of properties, it somehow has zero impact on other property prices.

@shuggles It has little effect unless you were going to redevelop the big house. Russians won’t be buying the £1/2 million estate house. I’m very conversant with the housing market and prices relate to scarcity. Two types: scarcity of that type of house and scarcity of housing in general where people want to buy. There’s cheap housing in plenty of places in the uk but no one wants to to live there.

Prices are not false. They are real to people who buy them. There is no alternative price. So it’s not artificial. It’s real. Until more land is developed or buildings converted, it will stay that way. Desirable houses in central London will probably remain expensive as there’s a finite quantity. If demand outstrips supply, the price goes up. Housing demonstrates this time and time again with the availability of money another issue affecting affordability.

We will see where more homes are going. Remember we have failing sewers and clean water, no GPs, teachers or schools and overcrowded roads. There will be uproar in some areas. Good luck with building - there’s a massive shortage of building trades and materials too. That means higher prices too. High demand - low supply.

Oh, the usual suspects.

https://www.civitas.org.uk/press/restrictions-needed-on-overseas-investment-in-uk-housing-market/

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-foreign-investors-from-buying-up-domestic-propert

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/27/large-investors-drive-up-house-prices-in-europes-cities-study-finds

correct, there’s so much info online backing this up.

The housing shortage was caused by social housing being sold off by Thatcher. People could buy their council houses at 25% of their value where I lived at the time. Hundreds of thousands of social houses were sold off which people then made a huge profit off when they sold them on probably to landlords so blame Thatcher, she started it all. Many years ago social housing was much simpler and easier to get.

I agree with the 2 child benefit rule, sensible parents take into account if they can afford children or not. If parents have an unexpected pregnancy and choose to go ahead with it then they need to be able to support a third/fourth/fifth child without benefits. That’s a choice parents make. Frankly, don’t have children if you can’t support them without benefits.

@RaindropsAndSugarPops Actually it was a max of 60%.

We also need to remember rich people in London pay vat and other taxes. They might well invest here in other ways. Not being welcoming again (Brexit plus plus) is utterly stupid on so many levels. The very rich have little to do with housing shortages.

Not building, selling off property and the economic climate affect housing available, as do divorcing couples. You can find many articles on why foreign investment is a good thing.