May I respectfully suggest to Tory Jeremy Hunt that if the poor "stop having kids they cannot afford" that high earners should stop taking highly paid jobs if they cannot afford the tax?

[HeftyNorks]

All these tax avoidance schemes to help the poor darlings. Or do morals not apply if you are rich enough?

Then neglectful behavior results as it currently does with intervention from social services.
These children will be getting fed at school with their free school dinners, the teacher know which kids need an extra bit of fruit to take home, a double portion etc.
Look at Karen Matthews receiving benefit for all those children and yet giving her kids a packet of crisps for their tea. Throwing money at the likes of her is a disaster.

How is selfishness and greed relevant?

I work 60 hours a week and have done since leaving university 22 years ago. I do this to provide for my modest family. I have two children. You are asking me (personally) to subsidise a feckless teenager churning out masses of children. How is it greedy for me to object and curb the number of other people's children I have to provide for?

I'm going to put my oar in and stir the pot here.

Britain (and the rest of the world too) is highly over populated and as such all people rich and poor, should be thinking twice before having large families.

I'm not suggesting a 1 child policy a la china (which is a giant flop anyway), just being sensible is all.

"Then neglectful behavior results as it currently does with intervention from social services."

Exactly. Children who would not have been classed as neglected prior to their parents' benefits being cut will be taken into care.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep a child in care?

A hell of a lot more than it would to pay their feckless parents benefits for them.

FFS.

I really don't know what to think about this one. I know I don't like the concept of the undeserving poor, especially when no one EVER seems to criticise the genuinely indeserving rich- those who inherit wealth, prosper from morally unacceptable business decisions etc.....

Proposing that people don't continually pop out babies isn't so ridiculous, but making families homeless and making the existing children pay for the 'undeservingness' of their parents is an appalling idea.

Housing benefit is the problem isn't it? ie the property bubble, the greed of private landlords/ buy to letters etc. Anyone who sees bricks and mortar as ££££ instead of as a HOME

UNdeserving rich....

Quattro have you read my posts? I explictly said I was not talking about individuals, but the very rich and big companies who have huge resources

My family and I are exactly like you. I have already said benefits should be capped.

Did I say anything about taking them into care ? A much better plan would be to employ somebody else on minimum wage to knock the door at 7am, get the kids fed bringing the food with them, dressed, washed and out the door to school.
Pick them up and take them out and cook tea, do homework, read and put them to bed.
Feckless parents can sit on their arse and watch all this if they like but what they will not get is any money.
Suddenly having another baby isn't quite so attractive to all but the dickheads who only want the tiny baby not the child. God knows what you do about them.

You can't stop people having children though. The whole world should only be having two children each, if you look at the resources left on the planet. But who is going to enforce that?

"Children who would not have been classed as neglected prior to their parents' benefits being cut will be taken into care."

An although they may not be currently classed as neglected they often are anyway, the number of kids that get booted out in their teens because teenage boys actually eat and therefore cost money is a disgrace.

You can't stop people having them, but you can stop rewarding them for their efforts.
I truly think the removal of the sure start £500 and the HIP will have an impact.

1 "the poor " may not be poor because they're wasters etc but because they are under valeued by society .for example the poorly paid hospital cleaner ,dinner lady etc may add more value to their community than a chief excecutive , professional footballer or tv celebrity. wages do not necessarily relate to actual worth.

2 the rich have always to some extent supported the poor whether it be through charitable hospitals, schools etc or through their employment of numerous house maids , footmen ,butlers etc in a bygone age

3 if we follow mr Hunt to his logical conclusion there will be no nhs maternity care for those having their 3rd or more child and no nhs care for 3rd born children and their younger siblings.

dickensian britain here we come !

mamatomany, you are advocating paying foster carers minimum wage. Or are you happy to have children sleep at their neglectful parents' homes?

Brilliant.

Minimum wage carers still cost more than benefits for surplus children, BTW.

I think a home help type arrangement would work since we are talking about the parents refusing to fund the children's welfare rather than hurt them aren't we ?
For me it's not even the money i'd pay double the benefits if they couldn't be spent on cigarettes for example, if i see another child with fucking nike trainers on whilst the dad or mum is carrying a bag of frozen crap food I may scream.

"I think a home help type arrangement would work since we are talking about the parents refusing to fund the children's welfare rather than hurt them aren't we ?"

Are we? I think you first mentioned 'neglect'? A home help costs the state far more than paying parents benefits does.

As an aside, would this job be available to said feckless parents who did decide to go and get a job to pay for their children's welfare? Perhaps they could then pay someone else to look after their children? Perhaps that someone else could be another feckless parent who... can you see where I'm going with this?

"For me it's not even the money i'd pay double the benefits if they couldn't be spent on cigarettes for example"

Hmm. I thought cutting benefits was a money saving exercise? I thought we didn't have an endless pot of money? Or is this about something else?

Can we be clear about the reasons behind the benefit cuts?

Because everybody seems to have their own agenda...

I just bumped into our local councillor outside the newsagent's. She told me that she was and at her last council meeting because instead of building a dozen homes, the council is obliged to build two five-bedroomed houses on the allocated land to accommodate large families.

This is by no means a Tory councillor, before anyone says anything, but she was dismayed when the housing department reported that there is the mindset among a lot of people that they want a house not a flat - and the way to get that is to have more children.

Oh please.

The council would not have to build any houses at all if council housing stock had not been sold off under the last Conservative government.

"As an aside, would this job be available to said feckless parents who did decide to go and get a job to pay for their children's welfare? Perhaps they could then pay someone else to look after their children? Perhaps that someone else could be another feckless parent who... can you see where I'm going with this?"

We've been doing this for 10 years in the form of paying tax credits for nursery places and i do still think it's preferable to people being paid to sit at home.
At best it ensures kids who's parents might otherwise not look after them, somebody does and at worse it keeps peoples skill sets up to date and a sense of achievement.

Thatcher made a lot of people secure in their own homes and self sufficient plus you had to be in work to qualify for a mortgage to buy the council house in the first place.
In terms of removing the state intervention/dependancy she did what she set out to do.

Tethersend. Are you saying that it is cheaper to leave children with neglectful parents than to take them into care and therefore we should keep paying the same benefits to these neglectful parents rather than care? If that is my understanding then I disagree. If kids are being taken into care for the right reasons, then we should pay more as it would be a far better outcome for the poor and take money away from the parents who do not deserve it. I would far rather my tax is spent in that way.

'Can we be clear about the reasons behind the benefit cuts?

Because everybody seems to have their own agenda...'

Look, first and foremost, cuts are needed because there isn't enough money left in the pot. Simple.

But there are other reasons why welfare reform is important, and why shouldn't that be the case? There doesn't have to just be one simple reason for everything. The welfare system in the UK has become a joke, quite apart from the fact that its unsustainable. The benefits system is unrecognisable from its original purpose, and for many families it has become a way of life, and doesn't provide the incentives to work, because people can be no better off by working, or certainly not significantly better off.

I don't understand why these issues become so polarised. It would be interesting if people put forward suggestions rather than just ranting that they wish the cuts wouldn't happen.

eg I liked the idea from the poster about putting money towards mentoring the children of feckless parents who don't want to work. That's the kind of practical solution which could work, rather than ploughing money into sustaining a life on benefits. The fact is, those of earning are paying tax anyway - I pay many hundreds every month - and I'd far rather it was used productively than squandered, seeing as I have no choice but to pay it anyway.

And as for 'selfishness and greed' - amen to quattro's point above. What is selfish about objecting to the idea that some of the population should limit their own family, in order to support other people's choice to churn out children without the means to support them?

I am a teacher, and a couple of years ago, we had a 16 year old girl at school get pregnant.Two years later she was living in a house with her bf, neither of them working, paid for courtesy of the taxpayer. During this period, we also had a few members of staff who became parents. One of them couldn't afford to take his full two week paternity entitlement. One woman really didn't want to return to work, but couldn't afford not to. These were responsible people who had waited until their 30s before embarking on a family.

Can anyone not see the irony in that?

The mindset would change though if there was nothing in it for the adults and the embarrassment of being known at your child's school as the one who wouldn't feed her kids, most decent people would be mortified.

mamatomany, I don't have enough time left in my life to tackle your misapprehensions.

fsmail, I am saying that there are parents who are not good parents, but adequate parents who will become inadequate parents if/when their benefits are removed.

I'm not sure if you have any experience of the care system, but for it to provide a 'far better outcome' for children within it, the children need to have come from pretty terrible situations (which they currently do).

"take money away from the parents who do not deserve it."

The parents might not 'deserve' it- but isn't the money for the children?

"Morality is only subjective for those who want a reason to excuse their behaviour."

Unpacking the idea of subjective morality a little. Muslims believe it is immoral to charge interest for lending money. So a British muslim, wishing to comply with his moral code will seek out mortgage deals that are islamic-friendly. A non-muslim does not regard bank interest as immoral and British law does not deem bank interest illegal. Just because the muslim regards the activity as immoral does that mean the non-muslim or the bank are acting immorally for charging interest?

No..

Companies have a duty to comply with the law of the land and they also have an obligation to make a profit for their shareholders. If they can assist the latter by shipping out their call-centre to Mumbai rather than employing people in Britain, is that also immoral? Some would say yes. Others would say it's a commercial decision.

Tax is not a moral issue, it is a legal one. Pay the tax due and you have discharged your legal duty. If society thinks the law itself is immoral (there is such a thing as a bad law) or that the law is weak ... we change or tighten the law.