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

Where will the children live, what will they wear and what will they eat whilst not at school in that case then?
It's not extortionate amounts of money that they're given, but it does need to be enough for children to live. Improving services like you suggest would also help but not without a baseline of living standards at home. You can't give a parenting class then send 3 children home to a bedsit to eat cheap canned food and expect them to be parented well.

Having three children is not a bad choice, why assume a parent is feckless. Circumstances can change and virtually anyone could end up needing to claim benefits.

The more their useless parents are supported the better chance they have of having better outcomes and not going the same way

Do you really think that's true?

Or is it more
"The more their useless parents are supported, the less incentive they have to support themselves. This leads to a culture of dependency which not many children escape. At the same time, it increases the tax burden on working families, making working even less attractive. Until the whole unsustainable system collapses. "

The question is how to support the children to give them the basics, without giving the parents a lifestyle which beats working. Given that the parents control any money given to support their kids.

I can't help thinking that benefits in kind directly to the children is the way to go. And state-run childcare (similar to schools) as I said above, so that working families can afford to have kids too - with the cost spread over their whole working lives, and no way for absent fathers to avoid it. And a restructuring of benefits and taxes so that there's a clear lifestyle benefit to working - which I think has been lost. You can't decide as a country that the lifestyle you get when working NMW is considered the minimal acceptable lifestyle for anyone to have (and hence give benefits to get everyone up to that level): otherwise what's the point of working?

I hear you about wondering why you bother, @Bunnyasmyname I do believe that the effort and energy you put into life does make a difference to your children. They're lucky to have a great mum who teaches them to live life well.

Yes 👍

the poster explained the man’s position, as a serial bum who’s never held down a job, and I think that’s what makes him feckless. Not using contraception when you are as big a lazy bum as the poster described, and having 2 additional kids you cannot feed, is feckless too. Being a weed head and not a functioning adult, feckless. Read that posters whole post.

Thanks for this - I fully explained the situation. These children were planned while they were both on the dole. They never had any intention to work at all and have had two in two years.

That's not circumstance, that is a lifestyle choice.

The more you support the feckless the more kids they have

Nope, 0.36% less 3 plus child families since April 2017. Parents are not having extra children for benefits.

Good, that is the way it should be.

Small but measurable is how they describe it.

www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/fertility-impacts-two-child-limit

It's not a reduction of 0.36%, it's that the percentage of births which are 3rd or subsequent births is 0.36 percentage points lower.

There are 5% fewer of those births than there were previously. That equates to approx 5600 fewer children per year, or 1% of total births in the UK.

It's about 3 times less change than they expected, based on how births previously increased when benefits increased. They suggested that 50% of those people affected didn't know about the cap, so that might change as it becomes better known. However, they also said that it might be cultural and religious reasons which result in people not changing their behaviour.

The estimated cost to remove the cap is £3.6billion in 2024/25

That’s stat isn’t quite what you think, as above.

But what does ‘for benefits’ actually mean?

I live in an area where it’s quite common for people to have kids and not officially live together. Though they do. Next door but one had her third not for the direct benefit but because she was under pressure to work. Her partner works but doesn’t, officially, live there.

I imagine by many of the measures of child poverty, her family meet them. She knew about the third child rule. She didn’t do it for additional benefits. But she did it so that she would be able to stay at home for a good while longer.

My cousin has five children, for the same reason. Child 3,4 and 5 born after the rule was introduced. I think sometimes when you live in an area where this doesn’t happen you might be surprised how many people do it and how many people are very open about doing it. Not for the direct money, but to continue living as they are.

During the pandemic a family I know were constantly complaining about people getting furlough and benefits not going up, before benefits did slightly. They were genuinely struggling. But again that’s because they said her partner didn’t live with them and both he and her worked cash in hand. She did nails out of her home and obviously couldn’t anymore. They struggled because their income got cut to just the benefits she claimed. Rather than the benefits, plus his income plus hers. Again, she had a third child after the 3 child rule to be able to put off, officially, working.

It’s really not a simple answer. It’s not as easy as looking at how many families had 3 children and now how many do. And saying that proves it has no impact. You need to look at demographics and deeper into the reasons why it might still be beneficial to have more than 2 children for some people.

I don’t know whether the cap should be lifted or not. But I am yet to see any really good source data that proves it’s effective or proves it’s not effective and should be lifted.

The estimated cost to remove the cap is £3.6billion in 2024/25.

That figure is disputed - for instance

Scrapping the policy this year would cost the current, Labour government £2.5bn, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

source;BBC

I have seen figures, which I cannot immediately find, saying it is 0.14% of the annual budget.

Even Nigel Farage - believe me when I tell you I am not a fan - has spoken out against the cap

It is immoral to expect children to go hungry because their parents have had a change in their circumstances, or even because their parents are feckless. Immoral and wrong.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Agreed that it's absolutely immoral and wrong for children to go hungry for any reason at all.

It's also profoundly unfair for working families to restrict how many children they have because they can't afford another, whilst their taxes fund non-working famies to have more children than they can have themselves.

Both those things are true.

The question is how to avoid both those situations. I don't think that throwing more money at benefits is the answer.

100% agree with everything you say.

asking people to have some personal responsibility and cut their cloth is a rational and sensible thing to do.

The truly wealthy in this country do not pay their fair share, and we have an underclass in society that are perfectly happy for their lifestyles to be funded by the state. And that is paid for by middle class people who are nowhere near as well off as they should be

Then why aren't we going after the v wealthy, instead of the v poor?

It's a bit of a kick in the teeth to go to uni, work hard at your career only to be hit with a 50% tax rate and for it still to be a struggle to get on the property ladder. And I get that it's even harder when you are poor but we have created incentives where wages are so stagnant and the benefits system so badly designed that it punishes people who are genuinely disabled and need help but also rewards people for having too many children

A 50% tax rate is for paye income above £125k, hardly MC or struggling & many genuinely in need don't get the help they are entitled too because there isn't enough extremely low paid workers to provide the care they require, so they languish on waiting lists, forgotten.

People are not rewarded for having children, unless you mean '000s in childcare fees..... funny isn't it, we are all happy for 10s of billions to be spent on childcare subsidy yet begrudge the very poorest children getting some extra help.

As far as i can see it, if the argument is "Don't have children you cannot support" then that applies to people who want to work but cannot afford childcare but of course its the MC's getting this handout, so it doesn't count......

I never said it was one or the other. I would like to see more wealth taken from the wealthy precisely because I think it is unfair that the middle class seems to solely exist to fund everyone else.

The tax rate is 42% after 43k. That's hardly loaded. Everyone I know who works professionally carefully budgets and have smaller families.

The perennially unemployed I know just spit kids out. They do not care at all.

Waiting lists are long precisely because of a lack of staff, particularly in the NHS.

Would you like to have a look at the employment statistics of middle class kids vs scheme kids brought up by unemployed folk? If you are born and raised on a shit hole with parents who choose not to work you are likely to end up knocked up or locked up and at the very least fucked up.

And I'm sick of society saying that this is ok and somehow should be encouraged.

Well, the answer isn't to exacerbate the situation of the poor by cutting benefits, the answer is better schooling, education, healthcare etc etc both for parents and their children.

If you believe that the unemployed just spit kids out, then the 2 child benefits cap isn't working is it?

The poorer people i know that have children, go on to work in shops, building sites, care work, delivery etc etc you know the sort of jobs we were all praising as "essential" just a few years ago, whilst many of the M/C's all hid at home on Furlough and SE trades all claimed their £10k in benefits, whilst still working.....

The children (i know) who don't work, seem to be young men who stay in their bedrooms gaming half the night and supported by their parents, all anecdotal, not sure how common it is UK wide.

I would like to see Benefits still paid to those who get work, at least until they are back in the swing of things, the taper is super high, over 70% so far higher deductions than even the most heavily taxed worker.

We also need work schemes for the long term unemployed, many of whom are unemployable atm, Thatcher had some great schemes to help anyone who was unemployed for more than 6months, these schemes paid a decent wage too, now we just seem to expect people to "get a job" no, business won't employ them without some sort of work history.

We also need to look at why it is so easy to work in the Back Economy and make it far harder to do so.

that applies to people who want to work but cannot afford childcare but of course its the MC's getting this handout, so it doesn't count.

No, the reason it's different is that it's the people paying the tax who get the handout. So it's a way of spreading the cost of the expensive nursery years over your whole working life and also sharing the cost out fairly, with absent fathers not able to avoid their share.

Rather than working people giving a one-way handout to non-working people for something they can't afford themselves.

Rather than working people giving a one-way handout to non-working people for something they can't afford themselves.

7 out of 10 children living in poverty have at least one parent in paid work.

Two-child limit and the benefit cap fail to meet their own aims, study concludes

Many working people get benefits! Why do people ignore that.

And if they're on low income, they already get their childcare heavily subsidised so they can do that. I'm suggesting that childcare subsidy should be available at higher incomes too so that there isn't a cliff edge and higher income parents can also afford to work and have children.

But everyone pays tax of some sort or another, so your argument doesn't hold water.... plus of course workers without children don't get this handout, regardless of tax paid.

No, its because people who get benefits like to keep them but at the same time, don't like other people getting help that they don't get.

...and most people on "benefits" are in work, the solution is to up wages to incentivise, not slash benefits, business over the last decade or so have in the main, made massive profits and have kept them.... how many workers in the food industry rely on benefits, whilst the companies they work for, make billions in profit? same for Amazon, Utilities, etc etc, ftse250/500 have seen director pay soar.

Its inequality that drives poverty.

What madness is this??? if you prioritise your career, you really shouldn't be expecting handouts for your life choices, bare in mind, many in these roles will get v generous maternity benefits from their employer.

You want people on 100k plus to have subsidised childcare, meanwhile, the carer looking after the frail, working 40 plus hours per week, much of which is unpaid, is sick with stress and putting themselves into an early grave.

@Alexandra2001

We also need to look at why it is so easy to work in the Back Economy and make it far harder to do so.

Fully agree with that. It's far too easy these days to work "under the radar". The "Black Economy" is the largest component of the official Tax Gap, running into tens of billions. Brown did a lot of damage to our tax collecting/managing system by the botched merging of the different tax agencies closely followed by centralising and closing down the local tax offices which meant very experienced and knowledgeable tax inspectors were made redundant in their hundreds, if not thousands, all to be replaced by lowly paid, lowly skilled call centre workers who mostly havn't a clue!

When I started in accountancy in the 80s, self employed and small businesses would expect a "visit" every few years, sometimes it'd be a VAT inspector, sometimes a PAYE/payroll inspector, less frequently they'd get an income tax/corporation tax routine investigation. During the last 20 years, not a single one of my clients has had a VAT nor PAYE/payroll inspection and only a handful have had any kind of income tax/corporation tax enquiry - and every single one of those was handled incompetently by HMRC who ended up, in every case, with no extra tax collected as they completely missed the blindingly obvious errors/underdeclarations that any half competent tax inspector would have spotted a mile off!

It's good that the new Labour govt look like being serious about shoplifting and forcing the police to take action. I'd love them to do the same with the black economy and force HMRC to turn back the clock and go back to doing what they always used to do. And yes, they need a lot more resources and manpower to do it, but lets have the extra staff at the coalface doing inspections rather than more and more diversity managers in head office! More local "real" tax inspectors would easily be able to generate multiple times more revenue from tacking tax avoidance in the black economy than their wages and overheads!