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?

Yes I do. More money in the pockets of people that will actually spend it isn't a bad thing, quite apart from making sure children don't live in poverty.

Unfortunately too many people just can't fucking stand the thought of it.

Not sure if I misunderstood that post so ignore!

I think the point is that it’s not fair. If a couple are at work they wouldn’t get a pay rise if they decided to have a third child.
You have to live within your means.

But most people receiving the child element of UC are working extremely hard in minimum wage jobs. They are the people cleaning your hospitals, helping to teach your children and caring for your elderly relatives. It’s just that minimum wage isn’t enough to pay for the basics with the rising cost of living.

But ma tax dollars!

British values eh.

I don’t think people are saying ‘we shouldn’t be offering these benefits because I personally can’t claim them’.

Theyre saying ‘I have had to make decisions around family size based on affordability, so why are low income households excluded from having to make these choices’.

There are people saying exactly that. Why should I be limited to 2 kids when they get paid to have 3.

There is a proven link between vaping and smoking and socioeconomic deprivation. This reflects my experience as I mix with lots of different families and those that are poorer are much more likely to do both of these things in my social group. They also tend to drink more which again is backed up by studies. Many of the families don't have anyone working FT.

There are absolutely poor families that put their children first though too. The difference between the ones that don't and the ones that do isn't money. It's often attitude and education. I have seen some parents make unbelievable sacrifices for their children. Sadly I have also though seen parents living in so called poverty being unbelievably selfish. We need a solution that reflects this mixed picture, not one that assumes all parents have got their children's best interests at heart and put them first.

"We can't afford it. The welfare budget has to be cut".

Around £18bn was lost to the Treasury 2023-24 through corporate tax evasion and avoidance alone. Adding SMEs and individuals, that figure rises to about £35bn.

48% of the Welfare budget is pensions and pensioner credits. That proportion will soon hit 50% and continue rising.

Brexit has cost the UK economy around £140bn, shrinking it by at least 4%, with an estimated loss of tax revenue of £80bn. Trade (import and export), productivity and job maintence/creation are down and will stay down.

Whatever the topline figure for spending on UC in a given year, virtually ll the money goes straight back into the economy, adding to tax revenues.

"Austerity" measures under Tory govts from 2010 fuelled the leap in government debt, and stifled growth, productivity and national incomes.

Cutting public spending because "we can't afford it" doesn't work. The "cost" of public spending isn't black/white, either/or.

We have 3 beautiful DC. Never received a drop of child benefits or whatever as we earned too much.

I don't think "they spend money on addictive substances which they can't kick because they live crap lives and possibly took up at a young age due to aforementioned crap lives" is a slam-dunk as an argument for "therefore their children don't deserve the possibility of nice things".

I think that there's research that parents mostly spend the money on their kids anyway, so it's a moot point.

And tbh, they should have both. Money from their parents and investment in food, education, safe communities.

Basically if you want to live in a nice society INVEST IN THE CHILDREN.

Exactly. So it’s an issue with businesses not paying people enough to live.

I doubt many people have a third child on the basis that they can’t get a bit more money from the state.

I do have some sympathy for people who support the two-child cap. Of course people should be responsible and avoid having kids that they can't afford, of course they shouldn't just have as many kids as they like and expect the taxpayer to stump up and pay etc etc.

But ultimately, it doesn't appear that the policy has actually had any substantial impact on the family planning decisions of those who are dependent on welfare benefits, so the children are still being born.

And it isn't the fault of those children, or indeed their older siblings, if their parents have - for whatever reason - had more children than they can realistically afford. Those children deserve to flourish and thrive as much as any other child deserves to flourish and thrive, and frankly, we need to invest in them so that they don't get stuck in the same poverty trap that has caught their parents.

Allowing kids to grow up in deprived households in the UK in 2025 is utterly inhumane, and it is the ultimate in short term thinking for our society. We should be bending over backwards to give these kids a better start in life so that they can make better decisions than their parents did.

So someone working hard in a minimum wage job should be entitled to have as many kids as they like topped up by other taxpayers but those on higher incomes need to plan their families according to their means 🤔. No, in this day and age of easy access to contraception and abortion everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves at some point. I am also highly sceptical that increased child benefits will improve the long term outcomes for the majority of kids in these situations. I don’t support lifting the cap at all but I would rather see funding via vouchers or the like to ensure it actually goes towards the kids, obviously more expensive to implement such a system in practice.

possibly making the one child they could afford's life a little harder, to let someone else have more.

This really shows the prevalent idea that the two child cap in some way prohibits people from having more children, and that lifting it will therefore result in some kind of surge in the birth rate for people on UC. In reality, lifting the cap is about saving children who already exist. We already know that the cap doesn't work as a disincentive to having children, which is a good thing, because we already have a declining birth rate.

There is so much contradiction in these arguments. We have a declining birth rate which means we need people to have more children. But once those children are born we want them to live in poverty as some kind of punishment to their parents for having them. Growing up in poverty makes it less likely that they'll grow up to be productive, financially contributing citizens because we know childhood poverty has a massive adverse impact on classroom attainment and future prospects. At the same time we don't want immigrants coming to the UK to fill jobs and pay taxes.

So what do you want? Who do you want bearing the future burden of paying taxes and funding your own pensions / retirement etc? It's not immigrants and it's not poor kids in this country, so what is the long term plan?

I think if you want people to take things seriously and make better decisions and not be bailed out by the taxpayer you gotta have people suffer just a bit to make the reality real for them. Otherwise they'll never learn

I'm aware of the studies. I simply offered my anecdote as it differs from yours.

Some parents are selfish, some of them will live in poverty and some of them won't. That isn't going to change no matter what unfortunately.

Things are usually based on a majority and the majority of parents do have their children's best interests at heart, low income or high income. I'm not sure there is a solution that can completely solve the issue, especially as some selfish parents don't live in poverty so it wouldn't apply to them anyway and their children will fall through the gaps as do many children.

What are the stats on larger families in poverty? Who are they? They’re missing from this story.

Where are they mainly located? Are they disabled/unable to speak english/lack education? In which case, can targeted schemes help them better?

But also, in 5 years time, will this genuinely mean we will have fewer children in poverty - because if it boosts the median household income then won’t the measurement for poverty also rise?

I think tackling housing should be the priority. It eats up huge amounts of income for low earners. We need massive social housing growth.

Yes, well they all promise earth before they're elected, dont they? All elected government's do this. Did anyone actually believe that Labour government would not raise taxes?

Don't be ridiculous! We know that lifting the child benefit cap will cost us £3.5 billion. I think we can confidently state that what I suggested will cost less than that. Your suggestion that nobody can suggest any alternative than just blindly throwing taxpayer money at families unless they have undertaken some thorough analysis of costs is unrealistic and designed to thwart sensible discussion and debate. You know it would require the government to invest many thousands of pounds to even begin to cost out alternative schemes but that doesn't mean they don't have merit.

Of course those organisations are in favour of lifting the two child cap in the same way that disability charities are against any cuts to PIP and the RNLI are in favour of more public funding for life boats. If we added up everything all of these types of organisations are in favour of it would be more than our GDP.

We are in lots of debt. We don't just have loads of surplus public money hanging around. That £3.5 billion will come from real humans making real sacrifices. We will potentially see other vital services cut to pay for it. You are not being kind advocating for this, you are being financially reckless.

We need more economically active and productive people. We don't need more dependents. It has been proven time and again that joblessness is intergenerational. 41% of the families impacted by the cap don't have a parent working FT. The stats suggest these kids won't be the ones that will economically support future generations but will grow up to be an additional burden on the state themselves and probably go on to have lots of kids that also won't work.

There are absolutely poor families that put their children first though too. The difference between the ones that don't and the ones that do isn't money. It's often attitude and education. I have seen some parents make unbelievable sacrifices for their children. Sadly I have also though seen parents living in so called poverty being unbelievably selfish.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make when I spoke of disadvantage being a state of mind and sub-culture, not just about money.

There are first generation immigrants who had very little but encouraged their children to study hard and supported them. Many of those second generation children end up doing very well for themselves.

My mother's family (British) were quite poor, but my grandparents encouraged their children and gave them strong moral and work ethic - they've all done OK in life and furthermore, encouraged their own children to do better.

I

The birth rate might be declining but high levels of immigration are increasing the population year on year.
i don’t think we should be encouraging people to have more children .

I agree, having children is a choice. How can they consider lifting it whilst at the same time constantly trying to target the disabled?
I have M.S, I didn’t have a choice.

We only had one child, we couldn’t really afford to have more so we’re happy with our choice and haven’t been a burden on the state. If people want more than two crack on, but don’t rely on taxpayers to foot the bill for them all.

I wish the government would invest time and money having proper sanctions on dead beat dads (it's usually dads) and forcing them to properly pay for their kids. Benefits payments to children should be higher, but this money should be collected from the absent parent, perhaps via HMRC then paid out to the mother. Any benefits payments should not be dependent on the dad paying (as they're too unreliable) but money should be aggressively removed with proper sanctions from the absent dad.