Cap child tax credit after four children, says MP

[SardineQueen]

here

One of nadine's friends!

I'm not surprised to see this from a conservative MP, as ever I think this sort of thing is a terrible idea - children don't choose to be born and by restricting benefits in this way you are punishing the children for something you disapprove of the parents doing. And as I understand it the number of people with no work ever and loads of children is actually very low? So this sort of policy doesn't actually save much money at all. Can't remember where I saw that though.

I am sure there will be some who disagree. I thought that people who post here might be interested anyway.

Yes I declined an invitation to a parents evening at school to tell us the perils of drinking, smoking and the Internet.

Right - most people I know that have 3+ dc and are on benefits, don't WANT any more dc, but they have an issue of one sort or another with hormonal contraception (it doesn't agree with everyone - poor people don't want to get fat and moody or depressed due to contraception either), and their PCT has set arbitary age limits on sterilisation.

In my PCT, they will not put you on the waiting list for sterilisation UNTIL you are :

40 with no dc
38 with one living dc
36 with two living dc
34 with three living dc
32 with four living dc
30 with five living dc.

They will not even put you on the waiting list AT ALL if you are under 30 years old, even if you have MORE than 5 living dc.

I am 30yo, with 4 living dc. I have a disability - epilepsy - and my medication interferes with hormonal contraception, and I can't have the coil for other, medical reasons. When I am using hormonal contraception, even when taken properly, due to my meds, where other people would have a 98% chance of NOT getting pregnant while taking it properly - it is only a MAXIMUM of 85% effective in my case. Yet, due to my age, I cannot even get put ON THE WAITING LIST FOR STERILISATION in my PCT. (I have another 18 months to go before I am 'old enough' to be put on the waiting list )

And a vasectomy is all well and good - but most men in my area WON'T have a vasectomy, and the PCT won't do it unless the man has at least 2 living dc.

And also, say you have 2 dc, your DP has a vasectomy, then he leaves you. You then go into a new relationship with another man - who HASN'T had a vasectomy. If you have contraception issues - then it is an easy step to see how people end up with 3+ dc in those circumstances.

Al, that's the sort of thing I am talking about, yes.

Had a similar spirited discussion about healthy eating and patrolling/policing of lunchboxes.

How the fuck does someone on Minimum wage SAVE to 'make sure they have enough savings to keep them afloat for a year or so before they go over, say two children?'

Or are you saying that the working poor shouldn't have dc at all, mumblechum1? Because there is no way that someone on £11.8K pa before tax can afford to save enough money to do that. Not even for ONE child.

Eugenics, much?

These threads always boil down to the same thing - the poor should not have dc at all if they cannot financially support them without state help, which given the, frankly, laughable level of wages that is paid to NMW workers, means they can NEVER have dc.

And what about those who HAVE dc before, say, redundancy, or relationship breakdown?

we have 5, my dp works and we are not on benefits, we have a morgage etc, we are not well off but we get buy and are entitled do a small amount of ctc, no working tax credits. we certainly dont get free school meals, i have never heard of getting them just becaus eyou have 4 or more children?! i think thats rubbish.

i wouldnt miss the ctc we get for baby no 5 tbh tho i imagine some people would and that is the problem.

re contraception i cant use any hormonal contraception due to a condition i suffered after no 4. no 5 was planned tho.

as dp and are both young, 32, and 34 they wont consider sterilisation for either of us despite us having 5 children! tbh its not what we want, we dont want any more but it seems very final and we are still young enough that we may reconsider in a few years, i very much doubt it tho!

there obviously is a problem wiht the benefits system the way it is, how you change that without children suffering tho i do not know!

but i do think we need to look at the bigger picture and maybe deal with the tax dodgers/avoiders etc rather than picking on the easy target who are the vulnerable in society anyway.

how about before they have children, they do something so ensure that they are earning MORE than minimum wage??? or that they have a long term partner and are in a secure loving relationship, thus reducing the likelihood of the father running off and leaving them, so therefore they have two incomes coming in. Obviously things happen and there will always be people that fall on hard times, but there are many others, such as my foster childs mother who should just not be so bloody feckless??? no??

There are some people who will never earn much more than the minimum wage. Are we saying chat because some jobs pay a shit wage and some schools do such a bad job with our young people that they can only do those jobs that they are never entitled to have children.

I really feel for those who the pill doesn't work and no help from pct re permanent methods. If it were us I would be backing up with condoms.
We all know people who do have children purely for the benefits these children gain them then drag them up into clones of themselves. They are the ones these measures are targeted at. Not the vast majority who have fallen on hard times.

Waiting is not always a good thing. My dp and I have waited until we were in our minds able to afford a child and until we thought we could provide the best environment for that child. I suspect I have left it too late and my dp will never have a child of his own. Waiting was a huge mistake .

The minimum wage should be high enough to support a family on.

If you ban a whole section of society from breeding, and that section is the minimum wage workers, who is going to be serving your coffee when they retire? Who will be caring for your children, your grandparents, who will be cleaning your offices, serving your food? Nobody will want to do it. Nobody WILL do it.

Teachers not rewarding achievement is a myth or a sign of a poor school.

teenswhodhavethem - the MAIN reason for the disregard of maintenance for enefits purposes was for cases like mine. If you have a CSA assessment against an NRP, the DWP would have to assume that you were being paid the money each week. So if you got £30 a week maintenance, and they let you keep £20, but deducted they other £10 a week from your IS, all well and good, yes?

NO! If you have an NRP that doesn't pay - you are then LOSING that £10 a week - you are not getting it from the DWP with your IS, and you are not getting it from the NRP either. Which just leaves you £10 a week worse off. Their computer systems couldn't cope with that, especially in situations where the amounts were greater than that - and the Government were left with only a few options :

1. Ignore the fact that some lone parents were having significant amounts deducted for maintenance that wasn't being paid, leaving those dc well below the poverty line (in some cases, they were being paid, say, £85 a week - which meant that though they CLAIMED IS, they didn't actually GET any money from the DWP as it was all being deducted for maintenance - but their NRP wasn't paying the maintenance, leaving them with NOTHING to live on)

2. Spend Billions on updating their computer systems in ALL departments, including the CSA, to ensure that those in the above situation could PROVE they weren't actually getting any money for maintenance, even though they were meant to, so that they could stop the deductions from their IS.

3. Disregard maintenance for the purpose of IS.

And THAT is why the disregard is in place.

HTH.

of course i am not saying that those on minimum wage should be banned from having children. There are lots of people who only earn that who are bringing up children perfectly well. I am saying that if you want to have a baby, you have to be responsible for providing for it, and if you don't earn much you just have to prioritise your baby- for example- not smoking etc.

I just think there is a real underclass (and i say underclass as I don't know what else they could be called as they don't work) of people in the UK who have never worked and don't take any responsibility for their own children and this has to stop. There are families of three and four generations of wordlessness, and I actually don't think they should be allowed to keep repeating this cycle.

Mumblechum1 - I have been totally unable to get any sort of life insurance since my third dc was 2 weeks old, and I was diagnosed with epilepsy. Even when I was working FT (for NMW). Because the premiums when you have got uncontrolled epilepsy were more than half my monthly wages after tax. I have had no life insurance for 8 years now. Eating is more important.

And teenswhodhavethem - I disagree with the CSA policy WRT CTC - been there before, it's the most stupid crappy rule EVER, to take away what is classed as a payment for ONE set of dc to make sure they are not below the poverty line to give to another set - who may not even BE entitled to CTC as a family because the RP's new partner earns too much...

Totally agree with what scarletts said, my dsil has just had a baby, it wasn't planned but never mind these things happen. neither of them work yet they both smoke, both have phone contracts, sky plus etc. Benefits should not be maintaining that, they are all luxuries.

Alouisee - No Child benefits for the children of feckelss fathers. WHAT a way to punish the children for the sins of their fathers. What if you are NOT AWARE of the dc that your current partner is NOT paying for? What if he (Like my DD's father) manages to get two women pregnant at the same time, with neither woman being aware of the other? What if he LIES and tells you he has no dc.

WHY should the CHILDREN in those situations suffer? There is already no maintenance being paid for them, if there is then no state benefits being paid for them either, and the mother is unable to find work - should she abort, or let her dc starve?

FFS, Alouisee, I KNOW you have some pretty sanitised views of the world, but seriously? You would willingly watch an unemployed Lone parent, sitting on the street in front of you, begging you for a slice of bread to feed their dc, and you would respond with "NO, you shouldn't have had a child with someone who walked away from you / had other dc since he was with you that he has also refused to pay for / cheated on you / abused you - You are the scum of the earth, no go away and starve quietly"???!!!

It's odd, isn;t it, how the vast majority with four or more children ar either 1) reasonably well off or 2) On benefits of some description.

The vast, VAST majority of those in the middle restrict their families to two or thre eor less. Because they can't afford anymore.

Odd too, don't you think that so many people on benefits have unplanned pregnancies/problems with contraception/new partners and new babies etc etc.

When you live in a system that actively rewards you to have more kids, well, you get what we all see around us and have to live with and pay for .

hunty . In Britain today, every baby is a choice.

Quite apart from the love of eugenics, even if you wanted to enforce this insane plan, you should bear in mind that there have been cases of women who've had hysterectomies going on to give birth. It is possible if ovaries are not removed; embryo can develop on eg liver and be delivered by CS.
So blame for not using contraception is misplaced.

babies are a choice yes, unless you end up with twins, you cant choose that, but what happens after you have them isnt always a choice, loss of jobs, long term illness etc none of these are things that people actively choose.

julia not exactly groundbreakingly common is it?

Straw man argument if ever I saw one!

and we use condoms as we cant use hormonal contraception, odly enough after having pnp caused my a hormonal imbalance and having to have an emergeancy mri as they thought a i had abrain tumour to cause the imbalance. then struggling to get well again i am not willing to risk my mh by using hormonal contraceptives. hopefully as we use the condoms correctly and a baby that still isnt sleeping through at 11mths old, means that sex doesnt happen all that often, but if we did get pregnant then i would be in one hell of conundrum as i dont think i could go through with an abortion, neither does dp (and it would be partly his decision as well) but we dont have enough space in the house/car for another and cant afford to move etc.

I was using an extreme example to make the obvious point that contraception of every kind is actually unreliable HTH

Can't you find a few big cardboard boxes 4mad?