To think the 2-child benefit cap is fine?

[RealHousewivesOfTaunton]

I was surprised to find out today that the 2-child benefit cap doesn't affect the housing element of UC or child benefit. With that in mind, what's the big deal with the cap? Parents need to take responsibility for not having more children than they can afford. The welfare state is still there if things go wrong.

I didn’t mean the mum, I meant the kids when they grow up, as a response to the person I was quoting.

Problems is, the cap affects children and women (vast, vast majority). With today's news of violence against women and girls now being at critical, this poverty inducing cap needs to go.

Don’t have three or more kids and you will never have to worry about the cap.

the issue is not that I don’t understand what a net contributor is, the issue is your sneering assumptions about the personal circumstances of a person simply because you disagree with their politics. It’s illogical and it’s arrogant. Your tax bracket doesn’t give you moral or any other kind of superiority, so get over yourself. If you don’t understand that I doubt google will help you, such a pity.

Both should have kids and be supported to be economically productive so they can look after them. Maybe a compromise is support for children to age 5 - and only support for 2 once all kids over 5. Since that will mean all kids in school and parents can work to look after kids they choose to have.

Sudden events can happen and the welfare state could support for 12-18 months - which is a safety net. Support of multiple kids to 18 by the State does not promote independence and a growth mindset.

Regardless of fertility decline, we don't need people have children that the State (I.e. us all) have to look after in entirety until adulthood.

On a global scale, slowing population growth helps climate change!

Two children is enough- end of.

Going by the majority of posts on here people seem to struggle with one and think it’s hard.

85% of people agree with you OP.

Actually the Tory governments of the past 14 years have deliberately set out to create a narrative where the slightly less poor are encouraged to despise the poor and blame them for all the economic woes of the country. The narrative that “we” are paying for “them” is precisely what they wanted to promulgate. I absolutely made an assumption that you were in the former category but it’s not illogical. I notice you haven’t said I was wrong.

And I do believe it is morally superior to want to care for the weakest and most vulnerable in society.

But the solution to this situation doesn’t need to be benefits in the sense of cash transfers? Free childcare and care for your aunt would have enabled your mum to work. Getting rid of the benefits cap doesn’t necessarily get rid of the barriers to economic participation (in fact I doubt that it would, given the cost of childcare - economically it would make more sense to focus on that).

I don’t really understand what point you are making in your first paragraph but most men don’t leave the country to avoid child maintenance. Some men do leave the country but I’m not really sure what can be done about it and I don’t think legislation around child poverty should be based in the assumption that if men are asked to pay for their own children then they will flee abroad unless there is evidence that it’s a widespread problem and we are literally better of with the £5 a week situation. The state collecting maintenance would remove the control that men currently have by withholding money.

I’m not sure what the situation is now with disabled parents and I have no plans to make the dead pay maintenance. My mother got “widowed mothers allowance” but I don’t think that’s a thing now. I don’t think CM policy should be based around the dead really - most separated dads aren’t dead and should pay. I’m not actually a policy maker so I have no plans to do anything. I just don’t think you can increase money going to the children of single parents under the current system because there is a disincentive to increase income and it is far to easy to hide income and to make choices such as being financially supported by a new partner to avoid payment.

Wouldn’t that just lead to the taxpayer paying absolutely massive amounts of public money to compensate for useless dads? I can’t see how the government would get all of that money back - the dads would still either cheat the system or, if they’re on benefits or low wages themselves, be unable to pay. You could prosecute them but then that just fills the prisons (or further hampers their job prospects, or both).

Idk. The government manages to collect council tax, income tax, capital gains, VAT, corporation tax etc. Student loans get collected. I don’t think you need to fill the prisons - there is a huge sector of society - the majority in fact, who prefer to pay bills than get a custodial sentence. Maybe they will get a second job, cut back in other expenses. Maybe they can actually afford it but are “self employed” - like the example I was actually replying to. Either the dads pay, the government pays or the kids live in poverty. My preference is the dad’s pay. At the moment there is too many ways for them to not. The worst option is the poverty one imo. I’m not in the system - I’ve never claimed benefits or CM - but was under the distinct impression that the current system for calculating maintenance by parents income rather than actual expenses was a bag of shite. I don’t mind being wrong.

Agreed - there are many things that need to be fixed in this country.

But until we fix the major systemic problems this cap shouldn’t be in place.

I think there are better ways to manage the benefits bill than allowing children to drop into poverty simply because there are 3 or 4 in the family or more. it seems to me its targetting the most vulnerable in society for something they have no control over.

Sorry, but still not understanding the 2 child benefits cap. I even watched the Martin Lewis video.
Do you get £287 a month for each child? Is that just money off tax if you are working? Or is it money in your pocket if you are not working? Plus child benefit?
and if the cap is removed it continues to be £287 a month for however many children?

I think I am not understanding this at all. If you have a good website to explain it to dummies I would appreciate it. I can’t see why we still have child benefit.

I don't understand why it only applies to rent and not a mortgage. I sold up at a loss and had to move back home for 8 years and take on 2 jobs which I still do 🙄

Something who has no control over - the children or the parents?

The parents come before the children - and the target is at those who make the choices.

Benefits bill aside - All children are impacted by the choices of their parents in life. This is but one of them.

Very sad but very true.

Absolutely Yes to support but handouts on behalf of Deadbeat Dads is not it.

Other mechanisms are rightly being looked at.

well if you care to notice my post history on this thread which is right between your barrage of self-righteous posts you’ll notice that i don’t believe that welfare should be capped.

Not because I’m Lady Bountiful of the City with morals only money can buy, but because the failure to invest in childhood will compound intergenerational poverty and make bad outcomes worse on every metric you care to mention.

I also don’t live in Britain so I am not a net contributor to British welfare, unsurprisingly enough. You are however very safe in assuming you’re a higher earner than me (that’s so important to you isn’t it?) choosing instead a profession that actually benefits society rather than that beacon of moral rectitude, finance! And as an upper middle income earner I pay more tax than I should and receive no welfare benefits whatsoever.

I don’t take issue with investment in children, I take issue with your comments.

🤣🤣🤣 good for you but most people aren’t happy to work and pay tax for people to have numerous kids they can’t afford and hold their hands out.

People should provide for their own kids. Like why have multiple multiple kids if you can't provide for them?

"Circumstances change". Ok. Have contingencies. Have savings

It's difficult to explain but if you claim universal credit either as a single parent or a couple it will state on the claim all the different elements it's broken down into, so say for l arguments sake ,your a couple with two children under five one parent working full time in a low wage and you get £1000 / month universal credit
You ill get so much for rent g, so much for each child, and the couple element ,
And yes that's cash in your pocket psid in one lump sum ( I'm plucking amounts out of the air because everyone, s circumstances will be different.

Thanks @x2boys it’s much more complex than I initially thought. You can get a lot more benefits than I realised.

YANBU. I think it would be obtuse to try and say that the two-child limit doesn’t go at least part of the way to deterring families from having multiple children on benefits to avoid working or as a life style choice. I know several families and indeed generations of the same families that have had many children in this manner and whatever people like to claim it was a problem. It doesn’t make a person heartless, out of touch or child-hating to say that - it’s simply a fact. To state otherwise is absolute nonsense. I’m aware that there are exceptional circumstances that can’t be helped but if we are being totally honest this rule wasn’t put in place for unfortunate families who worked and lost their job for example. They were not the problem. It’s for people who have used having children to take advantage of the benefits system for years because they were allowed to do so before the two-child limit was introduced. It was a policy that received a huge amount of media coverage and the rule was well advertised to people for many months before it became law. You’d have had to have been living on Mars for you not to have been aware that it was coming in and that was 7 years ago. Yet, still people are beyond the realms of stupidity to have babies that they know they can’t afford and have the audacity to claim how unfair life is when the fact of the matter is the only thing that is unfair is that selfish parents put theirselves over their children’s wellbeing because they know that they can’t afford to keep them. People need to start accepting responsibility for their actions and stop blaming other people for their thoughtless actions. Something definitely needed to be introduced because the economy simply couldn’t afford it. You have to decide where to draw the line somewhere whether it’s two, three, six or any other number of children before it were capped. If everyone were allowed to sit on benefits and claim for as many children as they wish where would we house these children and where would they go to school? The country would be bankrupt - more than it already is. It’s not a workable or sustainable situation and change needed to happen somewhere along the line. Sadly there will always be people who suffer in life no matter what you do.

@Shoopstoop i assumed you were the poster who I initially replied to, who said:

I completely agree with it. Hopefully it stops people having more kids then they can afford and expecting us to pay for them

If you didn’t say this, and don’t actually think it, why are you arguing with me? I think we actually agree about why there shouldn’t be a welfare cap.

And really there is no need for such passive aggressive personal attacks even if we did disagree.

It's not just the 3rd child that suffers though. Whatever income the family has caters for all of the children and all of the adults, so if it's insufficient, everyone feels the consequences of that. There's a lot of mentions of "3rd children" or "children" living in poverty, and I'm guilty of repeating that myself, but the reality is it's the entire family unit languishing in poverty because of this draconian nonsense.

What a silly post.

All us taxpayers give "handouts" to other people's children whether their parents are on benefits or not. How do you think children's healthcare and education is paid for? Child benefit?

Of course there's an element of politicking at play.

It's not a good look that you have an enormous majority, yet still feel the need to three line whip an opposition amendment, AND then hit the handful of dissenters with a 6 month expulsion. Just reinforces the perception that Starmer is a thin-skinned dictator who can't overcome even minor dissent within the party for fear of the papers ripping him to shreds.

It's important for the SNP especially, because the Labour leader in Scotland has been tying himself in knots over this and we're under two years away from a Scots GE.

It's curious how there seems to be a generalised acceptance that the UK is full of these multi-generational feckless families, yet when it comes to actually tracking them down, even the likes of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation find it surprisingly difficult to actually locate them.