Being devil's advocate - should there be a cap on the number of children a family can claim benefit for?

[ReallyTired]

Flame throwers ready - play nicely everyone.

I feel uncomfortable about further cuts to the support that families already recieve. Young families have suffered enough. It would be interesting know how other developed countries help their young people.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31743031

There are plenty of people who think we don't have room for people fleeing for their lives from Islamic State. If Britain is full up then surely we should be discouraging people from having any lots of children. I think the labour policy of being more generous to families with child tax credits, pregnancy health grant, generous childcare subsidy has increased the birth rate. Maybe there is an arguement for discouraging people from having more children. I don't know. Many migrants are intelligent, hard working and frankly more of an asset to the country than many native born British people.

However capping child benefit combined with the loss of child tax credits will plunge families into poverty. Children have no choice in being born and should not be punished for the lack of responsiblity of their parents.
The child benefit/ child tax credit system is broke and does not help to allievate poverty.

for the people who think there should be a cap, do you really think it will stop people who can't afford to have children from having children? I imagine that it will for a certain percentage of those people, but for others it won't (for those where it wasn't an active decision).

Those people will then be in bad shape. The kids will suffer.

Those people will then be in bad shape.

But I honestly don't see why I should pick them up.

Sorry, but that's the blatant truth. I wouldn't help them buy a TV for the bedroom or a second car - why should I help them fund another child?

'can't feed don't breed' is already a problem on a planet-wide scale; there are seven billion of us and that is way too many.

the UK is not physically full but due to bad management and lack of planning the infrastructure is already hopelessly overloaded. As anyone who tries to get treatment on the NHS, get their kids into a local school or travel in the south-east knows.

overall we need to:

• educate everyone out of religion, which will crash the birth rate (Yes, Pope, YOU among others). This will also stop a lot of wars. Tiny sample, but I am thinking of the one of my schoolmates who is extremely religious, and has 11 kids and is already a grandmother at 48. And everyone in her circle is quite happy about this.
• use less; that's US, here in the comfy bits
• have fewer kids; yes, that's US, here in the comfy bits. Two will do.

but as we can't put back the ones we have, and the above policies are impossible, I don't know where we go from here.

for the people who think there should be a cap, do you really think it will stop people who can't afford to have children from having children? I imagine that it will for a certain percentage of those people, but for others it won't (for those where it wasn't an active decision).

There's a significant swathe of the population that chooses the path of state-funded childbearing, knowing that they'll be OK as long as they have a child under 5. Someone will be along to say that this is myth fomented by the Daily Mail, but anyone who lives in a deprived area can see this all around them. Of course once this is no longer an option, they will have to look elsewhere.

I think you have to weigh the misery avoided by children who would otherwise be born into these deeply dysfunctional homes against the misery of children here. We can't lift every child out of misery, it simply isn't possible as long as people have reproductive freedom. All we can do is try to minimise it.

the policy of battering women who can't find employment when their child starts school (in a recession, after a gap out of work, with limited availability of hours, with shortages of wraparound childcare etc etc etc etc) actually actively encourages people to have another child. in fairness it becomes a rational bloody decision if you're looking at the risk of you and your first child being made homeless with benefit sanctions, hb cuts etc etc because you can't find a job.

can we be 100% sure that if we found ourself and a 4yo were at risk of being made homeless because we couldn't find a job to fit round school hours and sanctions had left us in rent arrears and close to having the electricity cut off and unable to buy our child enough food we wouldn't consider having another baby to save our existing child from homelessness? if it was actually the only way you could see to keep a roof over your head?

they've made it a rational decision with that gem of abuse recently thrown at single mothers. they went from a requirement to be in work by the time a child was 12 to 4 near overnight without anything in the world of childcare or part time work availability or flexible working etc really changing.

and for what really? what is gained by forcing this woman into a poxy underpaid job that costs the taxpayer more in tax credits and childcare and still having to pay housing benefit, council tax etc than it was costing to have her unemployed? she's not going to pay tax, she's going to use up a precious after school childcare place (massive shortages), a job that could have made a difference to someone in a different situation is gone for the sake of ideology rather than economic sense....

Arbeit macht frei HoneyBadger.....

I dunno tho. I see your point re: it not making much economic difference to either the individual or the state for an individual to work. But equally, I can also see that a healthy SP to an 11 year old who can walk themselves to/from school really, really, really does not need to be sat at home all day on income support just in case. It does benefit one's MH to lead a productive life, and it's better for society if everyone gives as well as takes.

I hate the Tories, but in retrospect Labour were not doing us any favours either by increasing our dependence on the welfare state. I think changes did need to be made.

Why are you assuming that women(?) people (?) are only capable of poxy, underpaid work?

I'd be eternally grateful if the state paid for me to have 4 years off to be a SAHM (realistically, it's way more than 4 though, isn't it - because very few are having only one child). How long do you think the state should fund SAHM-hood? Surely if 4 years off of work is bad for your earning capacity, 12 is far worse.

You've perfectly illustrated why benefits in the UK have become a trap for young women who don't have any direction in their lives.

But I honestly don't see why I should pick them up.

if not you, who else?

because while the people who are responsible are adults, the chief victims will be children. And it may literally mean the difference between a fed and unfed child. The cost of having malnourished children greatly outweighs the cost of feeding them.

It won't stop people having children. Even in the days of the workhouses, there were plenty of children around whose parents couldn't afford to feed them. The difference is that those children died. That was the only societally different outcome. Taking people's money away does not stop them having children. It doesn't stop them even today in countries where resources are plundered away from the poor to a greater extent than they are in the UK. And politicians know this. They know the birth rate is not going to go down as a result of any such policy. They also know that the only outcome is going to be suffering for the people affected. As such, it's a breathtakingly wicked move.

Also, as well as the supposed 'feckless poor', this will catch out the many many people who have the children they can afford but whose life circumstances change. What about the woman who has four kids but then her husband runs off with the au pair and leaves her reliant on tax credits? What is she supposed to do? Or the couple who plan to have three kids, can afford to have three kids, but their third child is born with complex needs and so they have to lose one income in order for a parent to become a carer, thus again making them reliant on tax credits? What are they supposed to do? Or the family whose child becomes disabled after a car accident? Or the parent who develops a life-limiting condition? Or is made redundant? There are so many things that can go awry during the 25 years or so that parents devote to getting their family to the age of 18. Do you really think it's a good idea to, when the best-laid plans go wrong, just shrug our collective shoulders and say 'Well, you can't afford your kids, sucks to be you'?

Better social mobility and encouraging aspiration will bring the birth rate down. Teenage pregnancy has fallen in recent years.

I don't want to see the welfare state made smaller. However it is possible money is not being put to best use. For example scrapping subsidy for college courses for over 25s is stupid. If I choose to resit GCSE English for a better grade I have to pay for the full cost of the course. (I did scrape a pass in GCSE English, but I would love to brush up my skills 20 years later.) many courses have closed due to lack of numbers.

Agree about social mobility, and also about education. The single biggest factor in a population accessing and using effective contraception is the educational attainment of women. How is that supposed to happen with the cuts in funding for adult education and lifelong learning that you are talking about?

cruikshank
I am surprised to find us in 100% agreement on a thread, its quite a noverty! (Normally we fundementally disagree on private rental threads.) The cuts in HE funding means that the courses aren't running even for those who can afford them.

Its not just edcuational attainment, its basic self worth. A baby gives unconditional love and being a mother can be a wonderful experience. There is also the issue of social isolation and confidence. There is the issue that no one is prepared to give these women a chance even if they have good qualifications.

Two.

Yes, it's a novelty and also quite nice!

I actually think it's a national scandal the way that FE/HE funding has been cut. Adult education just doesn't seem to be a priority for this govt. In our area alone, our LearnDirect facility has closed down altogether, and the local college courses are running at a bare minimum. As you say, it's not just the free places that are getting ditched, but the entire provision when long-term study after long-term study has shown that the best way - in fact, the only way that has been proven to work - to ensure that people, at a population-wide level, self-regulate the number of children they have is to have better educated women. If the govt want to cut that, then they clearly are not all about just spending less on welfare, because that is the one way of doing so that will yield the results that they say they want.

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/fertility-analysis/cohort-fertility--england-and-wales/2012/sty-cohert-fertility.html

The ONS on reasons why 1 in 5 women in my generation are childless as against 1 in 9 in my mother's generation.

It does not indicate that benefits encourage feckless fecundity but it does indicate that increased education, employment and independence from men give women choices other than childrearing which my generation have embraced.

I don't know where I stand on this, but in the days of work houses you didn't have free access to sex ed, contraception and abortion,so hardly a comparison that could be used to predict behaviour

I don't need a free place to improve my written English. I do need a place that does not cost silly money though. I feel that it would be better to spend the money of getting GCSE English when the person has the maturity rather than forcing under 19s to sit through GCSE English lessons. (Now I await for someone busy body to tear my spelling and grammar apart.)

I also think that access to CBT and treatment of mental health issues needs to be better. There needs to be better rehabitlation of those who have suffered a mental health crisis to get back into the world of work. Help should be there for everyone who needs it and not just those on benefits.

if not you, who else?

Don't know, but I do know that if I had a say in how my tax contributions were distributed, paying to support children whose parents couldn't afford to have them wouldn't be on that list.

Maybe the parents could walk across Europe to another country that would look after them - that seems to be fashionable at the moment.

give it 40 years, and when there is not enough working population due to low birth rates to fund the level of pensioners at that time

s In forty years, most of the Baby Boomers will be dead (the youngest person who might plausibly called a boomer will be by then 85. Why not regard the two big post-war bulges (the peak of the post-war boomers born 1955-65, and the echo of that in the early 1980s) as exceptional and aim to keep the population at the level implied by dotting 2000 forward?

I think they should divert a lot of the current benefits into things like providing much more free childcare for parents so they can afford to work, better free school meals so kids don't come to school hungry, they should be reducing housing benefit as this just pushes up rents and goes straight to rich landlords. The benefit cap is still going to be £440 in London which is pretty generous and unless you have lots of children it won't affect most people anyway.

But I do think it will encourage people to think before they have more children if they are not sure they can afford them and I think that is a good thing, people taking responsibility for their decisions. I actually think it would be a good idea to pay people to not have children considering that the world population is already too large and unsustainable and in the coming decades there is going to be a lot more conflict from water, housing and food shortages. There is no reason to encourage people to have children in this day and age, especially when we have over 2 million young unemployed. The last thing the country needs is even mor dependents.

If not you who else

I am quite happy to have my family's tax contribution pay towards CB and CTC.

If others are happier to have their contribution attributed to state pensions and related benefits, and the costs to the health and social services of providing for the elderly so be it. I am pretty certain which is by far the higher figure.

What about the woman who has four kids but then her husband runs off with the au pair and leaves her reliant on tax credits? What is she supposed to do?

Her children may well receive support from their father, plenty do, but if not then her biggest problem isn't that she won't get overly generous tax credits, it will be that she chose to give up work and become reliant on someone else. If she still has her job, then she will be able to support herself and will still get help because it will be paid for the first two children. It might also be nice to have a CSA that actually has the power and resources to do its job.

Or the couple who plan to have three kids, can afford to have three kids, but their third child is born with complex needs and so they have to lose one income in order for a parent to become a carer, thus again making them reliant on tax credits?

They should be supported by disability benefits, not tax credits that are mostly given to healthy people.

Or the family whose child becomes disabled after a car accident?

See above.

Or the parent who develops a life-limiting condition?

And again

Or is made redundant?

Personally, I think Jobseeker's Allowance should be reformed, and should be based on how much you earned in the year before you became redundant for a limited amount of time.

We don't need to give out free money to such a large number of people just to catch the few who have valid reason to need their third and subsequent children to be paid for by the state.

can I ask how many people who oppose their taxes going towards benefits are themselves in receipt of any benefit or tax credit?

Does anyone really oppose their taxes going towards all benefits?

I'd have thought we can pretty much agree that some benefits are neccesary in a civilised society.

Osolea, all of the people in my example would qualify for tax credits as they currently stand if the single income they dropped down to was low It's not as simple as 'disability benefits' and 'other benefits'. The woman with four children, for example, would get them even if she was working, as long as her income wasn't over around £34k. She could have merrily had her kids and planned for two incomes to support them, then find herself having to support them on one income, and the state will, as things stand now, top up what she earns with tax credits. The parent who has to stop work to become a carer would similarly qualify under the current rules if the remaining single income the family were living off was low enough. Ditto the parent who develops a condition that means they can no longer work - they themselves would get ESA but the family would qualify for tax credits. Ditto the parent who claims JSA - the money that goes to support the children comes from tax credits.

That's as things stand right now though. If those peoples' circumstances changed now, they would qualify for tax credits. However, come April, anyone who is in a situation where they do not get tax credits now but need to claim them in the future because of examples like I gave, which are to do with a change in life circumstances that they could not have predicted when they had the children they could afford at the time they had them, will no longer get tax credits at the same rate as those who have been claiming them continuously.