To ask someone to explain how Philpott could claim 60k?

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I should start by saying that I usually ignore the headlines in the Daily Fail about people who are able to claim mind-boggling amounts of benefits as I believe such cases are few and far between. However, I can't help but question the numbers being widely quoted in the press today.

I have seen figures of between £1,000 and £2,000 a month quoted as being the loss in child benefit Philpott anticipated if his ex got custody of their 5 kids. This suggests child benefit is between £40 and £80 per child per week, which it obviously isn't.

I thought unemployed people could claim £53 per week, so even if he was able to also get child benefit for 11 kids, this doesn't add up to 60k. Both the women were working as cleaners, so not sure what other benefits they would get (and be forced to hand over to him).

I know he was getting housing benefit, but they were living in a 3 bed house in Derby, so surely the rent couldn't have been that much.

I know he is a dreadful individual and he clearly had made a decision to live off the state and the women he manipulated, but is there actually any truth behind the figure of 60k or has this been plucked out of thin air?

lljkk I think his house was rented from the council, I vaguely remember reading it somewhere. Plus, he had a conservatory built onto it which I don't see a private landlord allowing.

OP you weren't vile in asking this question, you don't need to explain yourself.

Child tax credit for 11 children would add up to a fair amount. Isn't it about £50-60 per week per child?

i think the house was from Derby Homes which is housing associaton so more or less same as council.

Also i thought he was on some sort of disability - although i am not 100% on this.

I just worked thru the calculator with some mockup numbers for Maread Philpott and only came up with £53 per year, because they had NO qualifying childcare costs. So would be better off claiming income support and all the benefits that allows instead of WFTC. I think the newspapers are assuming some huge childcare elements, too, in their ridiculous numbers.

I may have worked thru numbers wrong, though, someone else can check. I don't think they were bright enough to handle WFTC application, I know it baffled plenty of over-educated people like me.

If Mick Scumpot was claiming any sort of benefit for himself the newspapers would be screaming with specifics about it, no? He is blamed for breeding children & dominating the women so that he could live off of their benefits, rather than get a job for himself.*

The stories say he repeatedly turned his nose up at any sort of paid work offered to him; he couldn't have claimed JSA for long with that attitude.

*I have a GG-grandfather who was accused of exactly the same thing, btw, just in a place & time with no welfare state.

The Maths is not that hard to understand. If the children were allocated the full child tax credits + child benefit + qualified for free school meals (would qualify if no WTC claimed just CTC and you ARE allowed to earn income too as a parent), just this alone is worth around £4000 a year - the figures for CTC and CB are freely available for your perusal, if you are not convinced, CTC is where the large amount of this comes from, not CB. Multiply by 11. Add on housing benefit, add on council tax benefit, add on income support, add on part time work the Telegraph estimated at £7000 a year each female. Add it all up and you'll find that the claims may well be right and if they are and the family had indeed the equivalent net income equating to someone earning £100k gross, that's the top 2% of "salaries" in the UK. If figures are correct, the cash in hand from benefits and 2 small salaries would be over £50k with no rent/council tax, not an insubstantial sum.

FOI act disclosures appear to indicate at least there are only around 190 other families like that in the UK with 10+ children on those levels on benefits. Under the 26k cap per year, if it is indeed carried out, it will mean families roughly with 5+ will get the same amount, 26k in CTC/HB/CTB etc capped, no more, these will be the families hit most by the 26k cap as these are going to be the households where these benefits are over the cap.

Things - the vast majority of the Philpotts income would have been spent on feeding, clothing and housing their many children. Six of these children are now dead. As a 'hard working taxpayer' maybe you feel a bit pleased that your tax money no longer pays to feed and clothe them. Perhaps you wish they had been deprived of money for food, shelter and housing while they were alive, to save the tax payer even more?

Ffs - why are you arguing to deprive the children of some fuckwit parents of the money that is needed to house, feed and clothe them? Haven't those children got a shit enough hand in life as i
T is?

How would they have gotten full housing and council tax benefit though with the women working? And why would income support have been awarded if the mothers worked? I assumed with him being a sahp and both women working they'd get child benefit, child tax credits, working tax credits, and maybe depending on how much was brought in, some housing and council tax benefit but certainly not the full benefit.

He wouldn't have been able to claim job seekers with the women working and income support is paid for single parent families with children under 2yrs old is it not?

DP works and is on a very low wage. We get child benefit, child tax credits and working tax credits, and can't claim any other benefits even when I was looking for work too.

Sorry but this thread is really distasteful

No, he didn't kill the kids for the money

Ffs

This is an invention of people who just find it easier to believe financial motives lie at the bottom of every action of 'the poor'. I expect he stabbed one of his previous girlfriends umpteen times for the life insurance? (Clue: no). He behaved that way because he is a disturbed, controlling, abusive bastard.

Op, it is an interesting area to look into if you can take the blinkers off, which some posters just don't want to do. The family must have been mostly on tax credits and cb, as 2/3 of the family worked, and he was, I suppose, a stay at home dad

Daily mail et al - haters of stay at home parents and claimers of cb.

Maybe they'd be better off hating domestic abusers and violent thugs, but what do I know, shrug.

The obsession over money and benefits is completely missing the point - am saying that not to have a pop at the OP but making a general point.

The real focus should be on how this abusive man was able to continue terrorising women over a period of 30 years without any checks and balances. The judge said after his first conviction that he was "extremely dangerous".

Why aren't more people angry about that?

Oh, snap merci

You said it better.

How would they have gotten full housing and council tax benefit though with the women working?

You wouldn't! While I don't know much about levels of working tax credit particularly for large families, I do know that housing and council tax benefit go down proportionately. I noticed significant double counting regarding housing benefit in one of the TV news programmes.

1 They worked out the rent at £600 a month, when this was a council house so the rent was probably about half this. (And even renting privately on that estate in Derby would have been much cheaper than £600 per month.)

2 They assumed 100% housing benefit which simply would not have been awarded if they were on working tax credit.

I also agree it is ridiculous to claim that he was trying to get custody of Lisa's children for the benefits as some commentators are claiming. He was doing it to punish her for daring to leave him.

Flippinada, I think a lot of people are angry at the media focus on the benefits, rather than focus on the abuse. I watched the news on the day of the sentencing and there was nothing on the judge's remarks and a whole item on the speculative (and obviously erroneous) benefits that the Philpotts may have received.

Yes and the ire stoked by people such as George Osborne who are supposed to know better. George should resign. Seriously

I hope so Cecily

However quite a few people on MN (if you read one if the many threads on here) have argued at length that it is really all about the benefits.

Obviously I mean threads about this case, not just any random thread!

I think threads about these people and what they claimed is really in bad taste and george osbourne and the daily mail should hang their heads in shame as if these childrens lives have been reduced to what they could earn for their father this man and his wife were scum regardless of any benefits. these numbers are plucked from the air 50k here 30 k there does it matter does it really matter

Rather than asking how people can get housing benefit etc and work and get income support, why not look up the rules on income support and how much you can earn on it and how much you can earn and get full child tax benefit etc etc etc, you may just find out how you can earn small amounts AND claim these benefits too, and what is wrong with that! The difference in this family's case is that with so many children, each time one was added, their CTC increased. You cannot blame the family for that either, it's the benefits system which increases CTC with every child and if you're entitled to that full amount, add on CB and free school lunches and that could add up to 4k per year. I'd challenge anyone to find an employer who grants their employee's an extra 4k per year on their salary.

I wish this benefits debate didn't have to be about this family, can it not be about an anonymous family with 10 children who work only a few hours a week or no hours at all?

It's so awful. Nobody ever claims that other domestic murders with a financial element are "the product of the life insurance industry" or "the product of inheritance laws".

As others have said, this man's motives were less about benefit money and more to do with power and control. He didn't want Lisa Willis back for the benefit money but because she had dared to leave him.

I don't know what their income from benefits was because both women worked and without knowing their wage it's impossible to know what the top up was.

I think the figures bandied about in the press are bizarre and seem to swing wildly depending on which paper you read.

Money is a factor in many murders, ridiculous to say that it isn't. Someone was sent down only a few weeks ago for murdering his parents for money and that was quite a high profile case.

I think so jake it all depends in which paper you read it in, this wasn't about benefit money this was about a feckless man who was so angry that his mistress dared to leave him, it was about control he is beyond scum a power mad control freak who thought/thinks the world revovles around him,

Nobody has said that money is not a factor in some or even many murders, have they?

The publicity surrounding the murder of the 2 parents did indeed claim UK inheritance laws were the motivating factor in the murders. If the son hadn't stood to inherit according to English law, would he have done it?

For that awful man from Derby, money was part of the control, the fact the women's salaries from their jobs and their child tax credits went into HIS bank account and of course the subsequent loss of this money is him losing control. The control was financial, psychological and physical, to argue that money was not a motivating factor is quite puzzling, because all the evidence indicates it was.