To point out that this family ARE on benefits

[barbiecollector]

Not a benefit-bashing thread at all, but I hate how smug these big families are when they say they are not on benefits like they are superior to people who are. In fact, this family get £180 a week in Child Benefit!

Story here: Big family

hollyberrybush how are people with diabetes on benefits? I don't understand.

She does a good job at stretching the budget - I dont think I could feed/clothe 19 people, plus pay the mortgage and bills on £40k

They are claiming what was until today a universal benefit that wasn't means tested and which was introduced in place of the old married man's tax allowance and paid directly to the woman. When it was introduced, it took account of the fact that many married men did not have children and there would be nothing to claim for many couples - that at the time was pretty controversial. Swings and roundabouts. Some people have one child which gives scope for bigger families although this one is unusual.

Actually I think anyone with 16 dc deserves a gold medal and I'm looking forward to the programme this week.

I meant to say, they're entitled to child benefit like millions of other families.

This family were on a programme last year about large families. They only receive child benefit, run their own bakery and managed a holiday abroad. They aren't sitting at home doing nothing all day expecting the state to pay for them through housing benefit, income support, council tax benefit. That is what the difference is. CB until today was a universal non means tested benefit.

I thought Child Benefit was originally going to be a tax allowance to go with married couple tax allowance when PAYE was first brought in, but was changed to a simple payment to the mother, partially because that was easier to administrate and partially as a vote winner for women, so that no matter how feckless the main breadwinner, in the days when that was nearly always the husband, the housewife had some cash coming in that he couldn't possibly spend in the pub before he even got home with the wages. It might be better if it wasn't called a Benefit, but a Tax Allowance.

I think marriedinwhite has put it better than me!

Child benefit was introduces in 1977-79, replacing child tax allowances. It's not a 'benefit' any more than tax credits are a benefit - it's a refund on the tax you pay.

Different governments make different choices about how much tax they take and how they choose to be seen: in general, Labour governments prefer to keep general tax rates higher, and be seen to 'give it back' to us in tax credits and child benefit; Tory ones prefer to keep general tax rates low, so they have to cut tax credits and child benefit to afford to do this.

Whichever a government opts for, it's all sleights of hand political manipulation of the tax bill.

16 children seems a lot of kids for a couple who 'weren't planning a big family' !!

If she is the woman I am thinking of, in that programme she talked about how she loved babies and being pregnant. Maybe it became a bit of an addiction.

I admire their ability to keep things together, but I don't see any reason to applaud their fecundity.

And yes, I find their apparent need to keep having babies a bit odd. And I probably judge a bit too (as I'd understand it if they judged me).

I'm sorry, but tax credits are NOT a refund on the tax you pay! You don't have to be paying tax (or even working) to get tax credits and you can receive more in tax credits than you pay in tax. They were called tax credits so that they didn't seem like a benefit, but they very much are.

£180 a week equals £9360 a year.

They're not claiming anything they're not entitled to, however I do believe that CB should be capped at a sensible number of children, and there shouldn't be an expectation that you can just keep reproducing and the government should be expected to pay up. Entitlement culture at its best.

I also imagine that if they run their own business they probably make use of whatever tax loopholes exist to A keep them within the entitled threshhold and B, maximise their income with minimum tax....

CB was a universal benefit, not means tested until now. They are still entitled to it. I can't see any smuggery going on, it's just part of the report, since the media loves a big-family-on-benefits story.

You ARE benefits bashing OP. No doubt about it. So why?

As has been stated CB was a tax rebate in recognition of the fact that raising children is of benefit to society as a whole and that perhaps the expense ought to be lessened a little bit, for parents.

Would also like to point out that high earners are paying far more into the system than they were getting back in CB, so do object to the idea that families with a high earner are somehow getting freebies off the state. This is untrue - high earners were merely getting back a little of what they'd paid in. All those people who bought the government bollocks about low earners paying the CB of high earners need to have a rethink.

Finally, it really does bug me when people talk about free education and free healthcare. It is not free. It is paid for via taxation. Don't confuse free, with free at the point of delivery.

So they have private healthcare & education too then? If not, they are costing the country and absolute fortune.

It's ok for people to cost the country a fortune when you pay in to it. That's how the process works.

However, I agree that child benefit should be capped to a certain number of children.

I don't think £180 a week for that many kids (12 under 16) is very much at all. That £15 a week per child under 16.

Child benefit a short history.

In 1946 as "family allowances" under the Family Allowances Act 1945, at a rate of 5s (= £0.25) per week per child in a family, except for the eldest. This was raised from September 1952, by the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act 1952, to 8s (= £0.40), and from October 1956, by the Family Allowances Act and National Insurance Act 1956, to 8s for the second child with 10s (= £0.50) for the third and subsequent children. By 1955, some 5,000,000 allowances were being paid, to about 3,250,000 families.[6]
It was modified in 1977, with the payments being termed "child benefit" and given for the eldest child as well as the younger ones; by 1979 it was worth £4 per child per week. In 1991, the system was further altered, with a higher payment now given for the first child than for their younger siblings. In October 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government announced that Child Benefit would be withdrawn from households containing a higher-rate taxpayer from January 2013.[7]

Copied from wiki as I old not be arsed to type it out and remember the dates

but why should it be? HAving sixteen children is a choice. They have chosen to have that many children, it shouldn't be up to the state to support them.

but it's the system that is wrong not the individuals who are just claiming what they're entitled to. Although I do think that having sixteen children is insane.

Education and health care is not free apart, we pay for it in taxes over our entire lifetime the same as we do for pensions.

Wannabe the state does not support them. They support the state just like every other tax payer

I don't have any great issue with the benefit aspect but I'm always a bit about women who are addicted to having babies. I think it's very sad for the conveyor belt of children she's already produced .

I wouldn't want to see CB capped to x number of children - it is paid in recognition of the fact that children need feeding and clothing.

I do agree that having 16 children is quite, quite mad. People argue that 30 children in a class with a TA is too many - quite how everyone gets the attention they need when there are another 15 of you I do not know.