Do you think we should life the two child benefit cap?

[Marshmallow4545]

I believe that the majority of people think that the cap should remain and child poverty should be tackled in different ways.

Personally I would like to see children on FSMs allowed free access to after school extracurricular clubs and activities. I would also provide more poor families with access to food banks and would look to stock these with a range of healthy and nutritious options either through donation or state funding if required. I would also look to recruit volunteers to offer advice on health and diet in these places. I would provide clothing and school uniform banks with high quality, second hand clothing that kids would actually want to wear. I have some branded 'fashionable' stuff my kids have grown out of that's still in great condition that I would happily donate.

All of the above in my view is preferable to lifting the cap and would be more effective in tackling the impact that child poverty has on the child.

So AIBU that the two child cap should remain and we should look at other more direct ways to tackle child poverty?

Why are you free to post on here whilst accusing someone else of “having too much time on their hands?” What point are you trying to make - you don’t work!

I'm retired. Still pay tax though...

Retired.

The child benefit cap should stay and alternative methods found to support children of families in work.
We have to encourage work not benefits!

The unemployment figures are at 5m now.

Who exactly do people think are going to fund the BLOOAATED….welfare state.

We are on the point of an IMF bailout and if that happens there’ll be no discussion because external forces will be dictating what and how much we can spend.
Restructuring and cutbacks will be forced upon us.
We need to reduce immigration and get our NEET’s 16-24yr olds out of bed. We’ve been tooo soft.

I do wonder if there should be some form of conscription to give our young some structure, backbone and a feeling of self worth.

Some lateral thinking is required to help uplift poorer families.
We need to encourage communities to pull together open village halls, help each other not keep chucking taxpayers money about ad lib.

All industrial parks have a landlord /the units are leasehold and as part of planning regulations should be forced to include a nursery on site enabling parents easy drop off.

I can’t even believe that £millions have been sent to Ethiopia to fund training for tax inspectors ….WTAF.

I work but doing a later shift. Not everyone inms on a 9-5 you know. In fact it's less than 10% of the population that works mon-fri 9-5

Schools in France manage to provide hot meals to all children so that none are hungry in school. That's a better system than child-allowance where the money can be spent on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling etc. rather than on the children.

The state should focus on solutions that directly positively impact the children in order to break the cycle of poverty.

State-run creches would be a huge investment but are also the most effective way to help children out of poverty.

The human brain is at its most powerful for the first five years of our life which is when children usually start primary school with poor children already 1-2 years behind middle-class children and this disparity grows every year thereafter, resulting in 25% of children (almost all from working-class backgrounds) giving up on their own education by age 11 or 12...

This is a colossal waste of human potential and we all pay much much more for it later as many will be unemployed for decades, have chronic mental health problems, become involved in crime etc.

Thank you! Yes communities should look after each other and help each other out.

Yes and France are facing IMF bailout and political disaster

I had 3 children with my well paid husband. One of my children is disabled and I care for them. My husband left me.

I am in an abusive relationship and my partner forces me to have sex to get me pregnant

I was raised in a family where starting a family at 18 is normal and it's all I know because no one has cared enough to teach me differently

I'm a single parent teacher who despite working full time needs to use a food bank

Some awful judgements on here about how people end up in the situations that they do. Also the suggestion of forcing people to use food banks feels one step away from poorhouses to be honest. Children are not at fault in any of these circumstances and that some of you would sit and let children go hungry is quite frankly beyond my comprehension.

It should not be disabled people v large families v the feckless poor v migrants v this weeks right wing newspapers villains of choice. This is how the billionaires who are really in charge keep attention away from them. And that includes Mr Farage and friends.

No. The only people who seem to be able to breed recklessly are people who can have children without any thought as to the costs.

Not sure why you’re replying to me, I also don’t work 9-5.

The media and organisations with a direct self interest (as well as some posters here) love to use the word 'poverty' as a homogeneous condition affecting innocent people.

Poverty is such a wild condition affecting families very differently yet all are falling under that same label.

There is a big difference between the poverty experienced by an immigrant single mum whose lost her husband and has to feed her 5 kids when not entitled to the recourse of benefits and the middle class mum of 4 kids from 2 or 3 different dads, who gets £1,000 a month in CM, claims disability benefits for 2 of her children, whose own parents take her and the kids on holiday etc...

Yet both those extreme families fall under that same category of 'poverty'.

We need to invest more in supporting the former and less to get those able back to work.

Just a thought, why don't you get a contraceptive implant or coil. I can understand not having packets of pills laying about but " secret" contraception works

You’re right that it’s not ‘visible’ anymore at the point of payment for the child, but some parents still perceive stigma around signing up at all. Even getting some parents to sign up to what they’re entitled to is a challenge.

First of all, Child Benefit isn't capped to 2 kids. What we're discussing are the elements of UC and child tax credits which have a 2 child cap.

If the money is spent on healthy food, children's clothing and gas/electricity then virtually all of this will be VAT exempt or chargeable at 5%. Unless you envisage it being spent on cigarettes and alcohol where you might have more of a case? The money is spent in shops and for services. And funnily enough, household spend involves more than children's clothing and utilities. Some households may (perish the thought) buy VAT-rated goods and services. Such as fabric to make children's clothes. Or the services of a boiler engineer to ensure you can keep your children's home warm. Or even the occasional takeaway pizza as a treat. What their money won't be doing is sitting in an offshore bank account, or tax-free ISA. The shops and companies they spend their money on are also taxed in various ways and pay VAT on aspects of the things they provide. The economy is circular, not linear.

There is absolutely no guarantee that this will have a net positive impact on the economy.
A number of highly reputable economic analysts and orgs disagree, based on their detailed research.

Where are your workings to show that lifting the Child Benefit cap will make sure that children are allievietated from the disadvantages of poverty? The work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the CPaG, the IFS, the Resolution Foundation.

you are simply attempting to shut down discussion and alternative ideas...Your confidence that none of this is workable just suggests you have an agenda and aren't open to thinking creatively. I'm asking you to expand further on why you believe your suggestions are workable and more cost-effective, which you're confident they are. That's attempting to widen discussion.

I'm all for different ideas. I want to know what those ideas are based on. Asking for provision of facts is not "an agenda". If it makes you feel uncomfortable having to discuss your ideas in more detail...well, that happens in life and work every day.

I'm so sorry to hear about this! I hope you can leave the abusive relationship as soon as possible. Sadly abuse often involves financial abuse too so lifting the cap won't necessarily help a lot of cases like this.

Food banks are absolutely not one step away from the poor house and would prevent children going hungry. In fact it's a way that financially abused women can access food for their children without access to money.

That's their issue.

Most people receiving these benefits are already working very hard, they’re just in minimum wage jobs or are single parents (through no fault of their own) so only have one wage. UC has tough sanctions already for those who don’t work - the payments are stopped if conditions aren’t met.

It's not an effective policy. If people really cared for children they would want every child fed, so supply food vouchers as a large part of the payment. Why should children suffer because their parents chose to be selfish?

Because you are the one asking why she was free to post and suggested not working

Not for that reason - the main reason France is struggling is due to state pensions.

State pensions were put in place in the fifties during the post-war boom where the population pyramid was inverted due to the war - there were 5 tax-paying workers for every pensioner, now there are not even 2 - 1.7 to be exact.
Many state employees were able to retire at 55 including my father-in-law.
That's not sustainable for any economy.

Baby-boomers had the best life-experience of any generation in the history of mankind.

Yeah exactly my eldest has fsm almost 10 and has no idea because it’s all booked online, the other kids have no idea or the dinner ladies or teachers.
There’s no stigma this isn’t the 1990s, even when I was in secondary school meals were paid for through fingerprint. It must be over 20 years since anyone had stigma from having free meals

I don't know about the 2-child cap, but you are right in that there should be other ways to help children from poor families. If I had all the money in the world, it would take the form of state-run boarding schools, Mon-Fri, with a release to the family on the week-end. Entrance would be only for the truly poor, not like crafty ones on bursaries in the school where my dc went. Uniform, all in equal position, all from the same background, with motivating teachers. I think there is no other way of being lifted out of poverty other than by proper education.

Have you not read the various posts? The poster I replied to accused another poster of having too much time on their hands (yet seemed in some strange way to think she didn’t). The poster was the one who said she didn’t work.

I didn't mean Child Benefit. I meant the benefit cap that relates to children. Sorry, should have been more clear.

These are such strange examples of how a family in poverty might spend their money that I'm struggling to take them seriously. None of the families I know make their own clothes. It is often cheaper and more efficient to go to Primark or use Vinted and buy bundles. Most of the population doesn't have the skills or equipment to whip up loads of children's clothes.

They also don't pay to get their boilers serviced. This will either be paid for by the Council or private landlords. You would only pay for your own service if you own your own home.

The takeaway pizza is contentious. Yes, people like a treat but lots of families can't afford this at the moment. It is cheaper and healthier to buy one from the supermarket or whip up your own using VAT free ingredients. I'm not sure many squeezed families facing a tax bill that forces them to cut out all of these sorts of luxuries would be delighted to hear that families will use their increased benefits to fund a takeaway.

No, you are asking me for fully costed and detailed plans as though I am a government department. I obviously don't have the resources and expertise to do this, nor does any private individual. This doesn't mean the plans are bad or that they aren't clearly going to be less expensive than £3.5 billion a year. Especially when there is flexibility built within them and scope to find the most cost effective way of for example delivering healthy food to families.