Should Labour abolish the two child benefit cap?

[changefromhr]

In two minds about this. Yes for those who find themselves on benefits after having more than two children (job loss, divorce etc) but perhaps not for those who choose to have more than two children when they have never worked (disabled families excepted).

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/11/uk-two-child-benefit-cap-affected-1-6-million-children-last-year-figures-show

Absolutely not.

I have been reading along for the whole thread, and have not voted, but having paid tax (and been reasonably fortunate and educated for 45 years I have happily done so) but now I actually am angrier than I was before I started reading. Where do people start thinking that the taxpayer owes them anything? Why do kind-hearted socialists think the bill for inadequate parenting should be picked up by everyone else?

I do understand it's not acceptable to suggest we line the miscreants up and tape them to the railway line under a high speed train but it is tempting. (And no, I really am not serious).

it should be a deterrent to having more children that they cannot afford without help.

It isn’t though.

The backup plan (rather than “good faith”) should be for that woman to have her own career plan and good salary-sufficient to raise a child/ children independently in the event of affair but also sickness, death etc. If childcare issues prevent that from happening she should not agree to have children until the father agrees to share the cost of childcare while both work in their respective careers.
50% of marriages end in divorce so “good faith” is not a clever attitude - would you board a plane with 50% risk of engine failure?

Ladies don't have babies till you have a career and stash of cash - simple

Which was my decision. I was 42. I had one DC. To continue earning, I needed a full time nanny, and I could not continue to work without one. I needed to be free to travel for work, but a nanny is a domestic help and therefore not eligible for work related expenses. I could have hired a "receptionist" and recovered the cost though. Idiocy

Except if everyone chose this, who would pay for it?

I think most people have some kind of morality to them and realise that the right thing to do is to work to pay for your own children.

@Skskdkdk that's the thing isn't it- I'm not right wing one iota - however I do get incensed at the naivety of others who are like me centre left or even further left who don't seem to get that there are real piss takers out there in the public who know every trick in the book ( and by the way some taking the piss are right wing politically themselves) and it's these piss takers who make it that those in real genuine need often through a change in circumstance often have to jump through multiple hoops to access anything - so far in the last 10 years I've come across several couples with kids where they aren't living together (but are) a couple flogging their £300k inherited house and finding creative ways to hide the cash so they could carry on claiming in full- and two people renting out their rented house at times of peak demand here , claiming full benefit on it and spending weeks and weeks at a time back with - No embarrassment at all- seemed to think it was all one big 'got one over on the system' - I heard this in a cafe but my blood was boiling-whereas others on here would say 'it's none of your business' - but it is all of our business if we are being shafted by people who don't give a shit- and one reason the country is in the mess it's in-

We’re not “shafted”. Last year £23 billion in the benefits budget went unclaimed by people with entitlement. If anyone is being “shafted” it’s those non claimants.

I'd rather benefits money fed kids than got handed over to landlords to fund their private property investments, that's for sure.

Yes, because children in poverty do less well in education & have less opportunities than children who haven't grown up in poverty. Otherwise, those children are going to end up in lower paid jobs, need benefits & then their children grow up in poverty, the cycle continues unless we break it.

The cycle of people bringing up children on benefits whose children go on to do the same because it's "normal" to them.

Evidence?

Someone has to do the lower paid jobs and the UC and child benefit it there to help families so they have enough to live on. The only way to break the cycle is everyone only have the children they can afford. The state only helps people with 2 children so people need to stop at 2. This would go a long way to ease child poverty.

Because so many people are choosing not to have any children we need those that are to have more than two. We have an aging population that is not sustainable. We should be incentivising people to have more children not less.

Paying people who already have not much money to have more children is not the way to solve the population crisis. The focus needs to be on the people who choose not to have any children at all and look at those reasons.

I’m not sure I follow your logic.. there could be many reasons why someone with entitlement does not claim, with them making a conscious decision not to do so being a valid one. Some undoubtably need support to access the support they are entitled to, but that doesn’t change the fact that the many many abusers of the system have left the decent users, and the rest of us “shafted”.

well pretty much everyone I grew up with.

Because when you're working, you're creating 'value' for someone/something. That value is supporting your living costs - or at least going towards them.

The money the state is givng is paid to your childcarer. So the same amount money that taxpayers are contributing towards benefits now supports 2 people to live instead of one: because the 'value' of your work is benefitting - and so being paid for - by someone else.

More practically, imagine you become a childcare worker, and put your own 2 children into childcare to pay for it. Since you can look after 4 children, the same money from taxpayers means that 2 extra children get cared for during the day, allowing their parents to work themselves. The extra 2 children being looked after is the 'value' you have created.

People often get confused and think that spending money helps the economy. It doesn't. What helps the economy is for people to create 'value', ie work.

Agree or make it easier fro financially self sufficient people to have more kids if they want them.

I came from a dysfunctional family but with the benefit of coming from a high expectation community, so it wasn’t a complete disaster. It’s taken years to understand what is normal behaviour. If you come from a family that makes poor decisions you are more likely to make poor decisions yourself (obviously not always the case). People tend to swing one of two ways, copy their parents or do everything humanly possible to not be like their parents (the minority in my experience).

Make it easier for people to have kids by giving them a tax free allowance per child and heavily subsidising decent quality childcare. Take the burdens off them a bit instead of loading more on so that other people can have more children than they were able to. 40% of UC with 3+ children are not in work, kids from workless households are more likely to be unemployed.

Yet again, something we used to be able to afford, now cannot.

14 years of mismanagement.

Labour need to start making a real difference to ordinary people, so 2 child cap, dental services, taxation on cars and houses.... why should a millionaires mansion pay just 2 or 3x what a modest 2 bed terrace house pays?
Why should a carers 16 year old 1.4l SEAT Ibiza pay £100s in tax but a Range Rover Sport 2.7l pays just about the same..... or even worse, an EV costing 100k pays nothing at all.......

My fear is that Labour wont change these things because it doesn't affect them, like the Tories, they can by-pass all of this as they have the money to do so.

Are you single though?

or is your household income higher?

OK. So where do you suggest people live then?
Without private landlords, there would be families on the street as there is not enough houses to go round.
Your statement is one of those throwaway crowdpleasing comments that's very easy to make but not easy to resolve.
I know Labour is planning on building more houses but at the moment it is just a plan and if/when it comes to fruition, it will take years to build enough.
So ... where would YOU house the families in private rented accommodation today?

What you do is buy more private rented properties, build more social/council housing and gradually move families from the private sector to the state sector.
Social housing has been effectively privatised, with no regulation on rents paid, hence so many working families with little money and impacting the local economy.

Obviously hitting on LLs when there is no alternative would be stupid.