to think capping benefits at 2 children is a good idea

[moogstera1]

Child-related benefits may be 'capped' at two children"
*Iain Duncan Smith said the current system, where families get more benefits the more children they have, was among changes being considered.

Families on benefits were often "freed from" the decision of whether they could afford more children, Mr Duncan Smith said, and must "cut their cloth".*

yes yes, before I get jumped on, if both your arms fall off and a previously hard working wage earner is jobless, there should be ( and I imagine would be)a safety net for those who then need benefits and have more than 2 chidren; but, in principle, I agree that working families seem to have to make much more difficult decisions regarding how many children they have than long term non working do, and it's mostly about finance.
The suggestion is that this would not be happening till 2015 and then only to new claimants so no comments about which children should be sacrificed, please.
The idea seems to be to only factor in 2 children wrt tax credits, child benefit

YANBU but I have to say that I think it creates more issues.

Undoubtedly this will lead to a fall in birth rates which will see less being put into the tax pot in years to come. So you could be creating a potential problem in years to come.

The government would need to come up with a plan to dramatically reduce unemployment and redundancy

As someone has already said what would happen in the case of twins and triplets.

You also have the matter of immigration and what rules would apply to these families.

Potentially you could see abortion rates raise to the point where the strain on the NHS eclipses what is saved via benefits.

Why stop at future children ? We could save the country a fortune if we withdrew all state support to every 3rd or subsequent child that's ever been born. So if you have ever had two older siblings, you are surplus to the replacement rate - you cost the honest hardworking taxpayer millions.

To fit in with the new lean mean benefit cutting machine, all 3rd or subsequent children - even the ones who are adults now - should be entitled to no state help whatsoever. No NHS access, no pension, no access to education , no use of the transport system, no benefit of any kind for them or their offspring. Oh, don't come it with " I didn't ask to be born" or "those rules didn't apply then " - your feckless parents should have thought of that before they had HUGE families that they expected the TAXPAYER to support. Why should the hardworking beneficiaries of offshore trust fund millions have to support the children of layabout scroungers, even when they are adults, by just giving away luxuries like access to medical care? Naturally, the state is entitled to claw back any monies you have ever received.

(Disclaimer : of course I am being sarcastic, if IDS ' s political helper goblins are reading and think that any of the above might be workable).

Oh, or here's an idea - why don't we figure out that this is just another policy that will set the just-about-coping-financially against the truly poor ( for that read 'might vote Tory if fed enough Daily Mail bilge' vs 'will never vote Tory hence expendable') - and at 1 billion it will save less money than the Treasury's own error margins ? How about the Treasury get their figures right, and we don't make any children in poverty starve ?

The electorate of this country are bickering like children over how unfair it is that benefit recipients - the unemployed, redundant, people with disabilities, abandoned families, people who care for elderly relatives, kinship carers - are not actually destitute. Meanwhile Cameron and Osborne laugh into their offshore multi million pound tax havens, vote themselves and their fellow MPs a new pay rise, and let billionaires and multinational corporations off their tax bills.

I'm a third child.

Incidentally I am also the most awesome. It's not my parents faults they had to have a couple of test runs before acquiring perfection.

what's worrying me is what the government is really after.

it's a bit like a teenager asking for £50 when they only really wanted £10, and so you end up giving them the tenner.

so what's the tenner for then tories?

Apologies if this has been said, skimmed through but not seen it.
I have 3 children and I work so don't currently claim benefits other than child benefit and from next year family tax credits. DS1 has a disability and I receive DSA for him. But what if DS3 was the child who was born disabled, or had an accident that left him disabled, by the policy that benefits are only for the first two children then he wouldn't be able to receive DSA to cover his needs. Yet as a working parent I would have assumed when I decided to have 3 children I would be able to afford it.

I've not managed to wade through the whole 21 pages of this thread so apologies if this has all been covered...

I was just wondered which benefits it is that increase with the number of kids you have?

I know child benefit does, and tax credits, but aren't they paid to working people?

Might be of interest en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Duncan_Smith

There are a lot of seemingly contradictory ideas floating around on this thread:

• do some people struggle to scrape by on benefits?
• can some people on benefits afford plasmas, holidays, cars?
• are benefits too low?
• are benefits too high?
• do some people have more children to get more money?

Well, I think the answer to all these questions is yes. And here's why:

Situation - entitlement (exc housing and council tax benefit)
No children, seeking employment - £2,925
1 child - £7,216
2 children - £10,602
3 children - £13,989
4 children - £17,376
5 children - £20,763

Clearly, if you have no children, or just one child, the system will happily see you living in poverty. Proper poverty. Loan shark poverty.

On the other hand, if you have four or more children, you will have more disposable income than the average taxpayer.

IDS should shelve his harebrained scheme, his arbitrary cap, and simply change the amounts to make them fair to all. Duh.

He's got four children! Is that what you meant, nametakenagain? That really tickles me...

NameTaken- are you referring to IDS's 4 children?

Well, I'm sure he wouldn't want to be accused of hypocrisy. He should, therefore, provide evidence of the following:

• The mother of children 3 and 4 received no NHS funded medical care at any time during pregnancy, birth, or the post-natal period.
• No child benefit has ever been paid in respect of children 3 and 4.
• No state-funded maternity or paternity benefit has ever been paid in respect of children 3 and 4.
• Children 3 and 4 have never had any state-funded nursery provision, education, medical or dental care.
• Children 3 and 4 have never benefitted from street lighting, library services, waste collection provision, any access to roads or public transport.
• IDS has relinquished all claim to any future state benefits that children 3 and 4 might ever be entitled to.

Because unless he can prove all of the above, he's had more than 2 children and the taxpayer has funded them.

has anyone read that ya novel called the declaration where they take any surplus children and put them in prison special schools and train them to be our servants?

they also are not allowed hot water because they are surplus to requirements and not allowed any of our resources the undeserving scum that they are

could be a plan stirring

NameTaken, and he's a Roman Catholic, so his proposal runs counter to his religion. Oh and yes, small insignificant item at the bottom of the page: his personal wealth is estimated to be £1 million, much of which has been earned working as a high end after diner speaker. Yup, bet he really understands the problems of the poor.

at Kayano.

The fact that the IDS is a hypocrite does not surprise me.

The fact that he has earned a fortune from after dinner speaking has left me flabbergasted. He's a dull, boring, sanctimonious little prick. I really can't believe people pay to listen to him harp on.

Good god in Goven ! .

I can't believe the idiocy of those in government .

They let in hundreds of illegal immigrants , and pay them benefits ( I'm not talking about genuine cases who work and bring valued skills to uk ). They send our money to other countries who don't need it as much as wee do at the moment ( china ect) , they spend on wars , they pay cb to families who are living overseas ( not even in uk ffs ) If they didn't do this they would sort out the financial crisis without resorting to desperate measures . Increase the retirement age to 80 , unless illness requires earlier pension. Make childcare cheaper so it's more affordable to have parents working , only then they could cut cb and no one would miss it . Mainly stop high Hb payments to landlords , one standardised rate for housing £150 for one bed, £200 for 2 £ £250 for 3 £ £300 for 4 bed and £350 for 5 bed + . Stop the expenses for mps ....bus drivers ect can't claim for their houses to be decorated by the tax payer so why should I have to pay for that new kitchen or luxury dog mansion for a mp ?

Do not cut cb for people under 40k .
Personally , my first dh was an accountant , he worked in banks he made a fair bit of money , but my children would have starved and been dressed in rags if was up to that man to give " his" money for their benefit .The Cb fed and clothed the children when their father wouldn't . For what it's worth I also worked , but he would take my wages from me as soon as I got them , I was " allowed" £20 ...just enough for my bus fair into work . ( I wasn't allowed any cash for anything else , trust me I had to bed to be allowed to go out to work in the first place , and wasn't allowed any " friends" from their either .)

Abusive men withhold money , cb is usually paid to the person with care of the children ( mostly mother ) . It enabled me to leave the abuse , if it's cut , all those children and women will be forced into poverty and trapped into abuse forever with no way out..

Well done Torys , you really are a bunch of heartless bastards at times ,who really hate women ....increase tax for the super rich , and cut money that is leaving our country . The country needs someone who understands money a bit better than the glory boys from eaton .

If you recall the tuition fees debacle, they are ALL hypocrites.

Droves - illegal immigrants don't claim benefits. They're ILLEGAL, that means they're here under the radar.

Makes sense on paper.

People are not paper.

People will have babies, even when they can't afford it - hell they even have them when threatened with prison for doing so.

It won't work it will just result in desperate people and desperate people do desperate things.

Mrskbp ... That's they way it's supposed to be .

I do know someone who came here illegally and used the name of someone else to claim benefits and work under ( his relative btw ) . He got away with it or years , until eventually he was caught when his workplace was raided by police /immigration . The £10,000 fine , apparently wasn't enough to put off his employer from having illegals work for him . As for the man in question .he's been deported along with one of his children , his younger kids and wife are still here ( assuming because those children are school age and Some of them were born here ) . His wife was originally from the same country as the man , but I dont know her status she might offically be a British citizen now .

It was a big scandal locally .

Interesting figures Mrs Bethel
3 children - £13,989 does that include Child Benefit?

After I take out the money I pay for house and council tax from my wage (and my house if I were on benefits is cheap enough to be covered completely by housing benefit) my income is below that level. But if I add back in CB we are slightly above it.

Indeed, Morloth.

Well I think the conservatives want to look after their own rich arses and the poor are slowly becoming the scapegoats for the UKs problems.

Its almost like "benefits" is a dirty word now whereas we used to be proud to support our most vulnerable members of society.

Yes some people abuse the system but I seem to recall a lot of higher earners abusing the tax system and bonus schemes and we don't seem to be baying for their blood.

£13,989:
£2,925 income support
£545 child tax credit - family element
£8,070 child tax credit - child element x3
£2,449 child benefit - (£1,055 first child, £697 each for second and third)

Actually, over 25s are entitled to higher income support (£3,692). So it actually comes to £14,756 in those cases.

droves, that's one case about somebody who claimed benefits fraudulently. Or are you suggesting that all illegal immigrants are committing benefit fraud?