£25,000 benefits cap

[Xenia]

Average family has £26,000 to live on including housing. So from 2013 the most benefits available for one family will be £26,000 including housing benefit. Sounds like a sensible plan. Well done George Osborne. How did we ever get to a contrary position in the first place?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11463435

Is there going to be a regional element to this? My best friend lives in Central London and I live oooop north... when we were both single and both earning the same amount, I seemed to have literally twice her disposable income...

If you lower the benefits available then I Can see it leading to poorer families not being able to afford to send children off to University. It is already happening with fees and loans etc.

You also find tha kids from a poorer background often don't get the practical or monetary support from their parents. I save for the kids with their Child benefit to help give them a cuishion for their higher ed. If you took away my CB then I would not be able to save.

WRT university.If the new x3 fees does become a rality does that mean your average graduate will owe 9k x 3 for tuition plus loans for maintenance?So 27k plus living expenses?Who can afford that?

Riven, My friend works as a Nursery Nurse and gets 13K a year and she lives in a council block of flats with her kids.

In contrast my benefit claiming neighbour lives in a three-bed semi in SE London for free whilst the council pays £1200 per month rent. She has a boyfriend who works and she just dropped out of uni at tax payers expense.

I live in an identical house and pay a £750 mortgage.

We all live within 100 metres of each other. Who is living the life of riley?

bb100 - the landlord who is charging £1200 a month rent

My concern is also for very big families whose cultural/religious practices don't allow contraception. Obviously, we should all take responsibility for the size of our families and not have more children than our employment can support. But in such scenarios it's usually the fathers who take the decisions and the mothers who are left to reap the consequences...

I agree with Breastmilk. I am about to have my first, at 32 and as someone who works fulltime as a sec. school teacher I will just about make ends meet, with savings.I don't think I will have any more children, as I think it would be too difficult to support them financially. Last week, i was sat in a waiting room at the hospital with three mums-to-be all under the age of 20, two without jobs discussing available financial help to them. When the 18 year old (who I taught up until 2 years ago!) indignantly questioned how she could be expected to bring up her child on what she received from the state, I had to shake my head in disbelief...

Well I am sorry but if you cannot afford children don't have them!!! There is nothing worse than some idiot with 10 children living on benefits - why should the tax papyer pay for them!!!! This ccountry is overpopulated enough. Don't say they are the future taxpayers because in most of those cases they are the scroungers!! If they had a job they might not have so much time for pro -creation.

We could afford our children perfectly well when we had them (well DS3 not so much so - but we were claiming benefits when I had him). Funnily enough he was concived while I was working 3/4/5 sometimes 6 nights a weekm and exH was working 6 day weeks day time - we still found time to pro-create

Things change - I now currently have to rely on the state (can't say my tax I put in - as a care worker on minimum wage I didn't put much into the pot)

GBP26k a year in benefits is a lot of money. I would like to have seen the benefit level at GBP10k for single people, GBP15k for single mothers, GBP20k for couples with a child and a limit of GBP25k for those with more than one child.

As someone who was earning GBP30k a year when I lived in England, I didn't even bring home GBP22k a year after tax and NI. I took on two other jobs so I could buy my first place and kept my legs shut to prevent an accident happening. Girls should try this method of contraception - its 100% effective at preventing pregnancy.

Many benefits aren't for scrounging adults, they're for kids. Total income with housing benefit of 26000 is derisory for a family with two kids living in London. That's why any 'working family' on that would get considerable tax credit (which this government will abolish).

Benefits should be needs-tested, and that makes a cap stupid as needs can vary so much from household to household. Children being made homeless because other adults find their parents feckless is not a way forward.

Um Scottie lots of people hit hard times after they have kids. Workhouses are a horrid, horrible idea!

You do know who actually filled those don't you? Not the feckless (there was always criminality) but single mums (often those abndoned by aprtners) those with LD, the elderly, people with MH problems......

Okaaaaay.

fabulously progressive idea.

'Obviously we want people to be economincally active, but to say that they're cutting the deficit by getting people off benefits into work is a little misleading as many of those on benefits will end up in low paid working and getting the extra help. So in terms of cutting budgets it will reduced the DWP's housing and JSA/IS budgets, but increase the HMRC's budget.
'

That's a short term view though isn;t it? The kids are kids for a few eyars after which you'll qualify for zero if you're working. So it does pay, and it also emans kdis grow up ina working environment, you will hire in childcare.... oh they 9rightly) know what they are doing.

Scottie stop believing the shite you read ffs

well I'm sorry that I had sex with my husband and the contraception failed Want2be - are you suggesting that married couples shouldn't have sex just incase one of them/they end up on benefits in the future??

26k a year might seem like a lot - but as I pointed out earlier I live in a LOW rent area would get 23k in benefits if I were to work 40hrs a week in a minimum wage job.

Yes that includes tax credits - but a large bulk of benefits that "scroungers" claim if they have children is CTC. Another major one that I get now, and would continue to get on 40hrs a week minimum wage is HB - no not the full amount but about 75% of my rent would still be paid.

want2b you woudln;t get anywhere to live in the UK for those amounts- how long since you were ehre? There's no real chance of LA housing for most (here there is a waiting list of 30k!) so it's pribvate rents or homelessness, and that is the amount included in the figure.

Polly Toynbee included something in her article about rents continuing to rise (and hence payments to HB landlorrds) even when house prices generally were falling. Interesting food for thought.

We pay £6k for a rent in one of teh cheraper parts of Wales; in many parts of England you'd not get anything for under £12k per annum.

Now, clearly to me LA housing is a decent starting point in changing things.

As for homnelessness / minimal benefits / etc....

if the kids are there they deserve the basics of a decent life. Whetehr we think they should be born or not, once they exist then that should be the situation. I have sympthy for those looking at people who ahve no interest in ever working and feeling anger; I have none with anyone who would ever allow a child to suffer in the pursuit of that.

For info for thsoe that don;t know, ther eason for the CTC portion is that in the old days you got IS for kids; now you do not, it is paid via TC's instead.

It's not an additional benefit to the IS of old but an instead-of (IIRC adults still get IS)

'GBP15k for single mothers, GBP20k for couples with a child and a limit of GBP25k for those with more than one child.'

Hmm.

So, you would support a system where Dad was better off is he abandoned Mum with the kids, moved in with someone new (so a couple) and got her pregnant?

interesting carrot-stick debate there......

I agree 100%. It is not the fault of the child, and they should not be made to pay. But should there be an incentive to have less children if you can't afford them? I mean, it is obviously fairly new to me having to budget for a child, but I ask myself, how can anyone afford to have 4 or more children? Unless it gets cheaper with each child?? To me a child is a right, and with that comes a massive responsibility. Should we not try to marry those two concepts up a bit more? Sorry - I realise I sound like a preachy school teacher...!!

not true - I would be able to claim less - but you can still get WTC and HB as a single adult with no dependent if you're on a low wage.

WTC can be claimed even if you don't have children. And someone working those same hours as single person would still be getting more in WTC than they pay in in NI/Tax

And yes in a few year (well DS3 is only 3 so quite a few yet) I will cost the government less working than not working.

But you have to look at the wider picture, but people aren't going to stop having families when my children are grown up.

There are always going to be people in low paid jobs that need the WTC.

And lets not forget -there have to be jobs for them to take.......

It's set an awful lot lwler though mama; certainly ehre you would not get a penny of HB as an adult without children. It's set on a bedsit rate.

yes sancty - adults still get IS/JSA/ESA (delete as applicable)

Travis

I have four. We had a decent job in the family when they were all conceived though, and thought we always would have.

We will again indeed; this is a blip (and still an employed one before anyone starts).

It does get cheaper with each child; you re-use, put 2 in a room, tehre's very rarely 4 under school age so childcare starts to drop off or you might give in, be a SAHP or a hire a nanny.....

I woudln't ever encourage people to keep producing on benefits but equally many people already have a larger family when something goes wrong, or they experience contraceptive failure. I remember MaMo's threads when she conceived; I know it ws not a decision taken lightly! But if you employ someone to sit and look atevery case history- ah yes Sancti and her dh were both employed until.... it surely would cost mroe than providing support for the kids anyway?

there's also a very basic argument about bringing people within a society: if Mum and dad have eight kids they can ill afford we might all preach but by cutting things too tight we run the risk of eight kids who feel they are not a part of society, that they have nothing to repay, no reaosn to work or behave responsibly: thus multiplying teh problem hugely. far better to provide adequate cover and bring those children back into the responsible fold, no?