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.

lockets- i was being sarcastic. i have to say, i don't have any middle class friends with more children than they can afford and certainly not five!!!! how can it be that they are all able to manage not to get repeatedly pregnant??

I've long argued that child benefit should be capped after a certain number. Personally I think it should be 2 but i know others will differ.

It's everyone's right to have as many kids as they like. But nowhere does it say that the government should pay for every extra child.

I'd also like to see benefits frozen for the number of kids you have when you enter the system. So if I have three kids and start claiming income support/JSA then I get whatever the going rate is for 3 kids. If I then decide to have another child, that's my choice. But the government will continue to pay the same amount of benefits (ie. a family with 3 kids).

Given that we don't have endless pots of money, i can't see how anyone would find the above unfair.

I wonder how much is paid in tax credits for fifth children in workless households. Presumably you would have to be the 5th child of both adults in the house.

Interesting lockets, I wonder why that's the case in your health board?. Vasectomies are free in most parts of the UK under the NHS - you can read more about it here

I know they are not 100%, which is why we also use an additional form of contraception.

as far as I am aware, anyone with more than four children automatically gets free school meals, certainly the case in the school I went to, and also, if both parents are in such dire straights as discussed above, they will be getting free school meals.

look at a permanent form of contraception. While a vasectomy may not be 100% effective at least it takes the responsibility away from the parents, and there is also sterilisation.

• you are not listening. Nothing you do can guarantee you won't get pregnant, other than to abstain. and how does the responsibility fall away from the parents? Will the doctor offer to raise the child?

I also think its very mean to think that children would be better off without their parents if they aren't rich.

This thread is RIDICULOUS! I honestly can't believe that people can think like this.

I accept that saying that the middle classes don't repeatedly have contraceptive failures is a generalisation, but come on, in reality how many boden clad mothers, or even just full time working mothers, do you know that have five or more children and are relying on tax credits to support them all???

lets get real.

motherpanda- it is not about being rich- it is about living in poverty. If you are that broke, it isn't fair to keep having children, and it isn't fair to bring a child up like that.

middle class - do have big families and unplanned children, but i wouldnt say they rely on tax credits, because most of their income comes from their high paid jobs.

How many working (the key i in the word working here) class people do you actually know who solely rely on tax credits? Or are you making assumptions based on what you read in the daily mail - because I for one can say that I only know the full financial details of my own family.

so where shall we set the cap for taking children away from their families? £20,000 and under and you're off?

also, by responsibility away from the parents by having a vasectomy, I mean the parents won't have to worry about remembering to use condoms/ take the pill etc, so it should be more effective.

I'd be very interested to know how many of the parents of 5 children or more had vasectomies much earlier in their breeding and used additional contraception and then went onto have more than 5.

I'd wager about 0.0001% - if that

Vasectomy is a very effective (99.85%) birth control method. Only 1 to 2 women out of 1,000 will have an unplanned pregnancy in the first year after their partners have had a vasectomy.

so 0.15% - higher than you thought.

Working classes can have as many children as they like as long as they can pay for them.

My point is that if a parent is relying on a fifth lot of tax credit to keep the child out of poverty, then they shouldn't be having a child. They should only have children if they don't need that fifth lot of money coming in to be able to feed and clothe everyone to a proper standard- and by that I mean such basics as being able to buy your child a school coat for the winter.

I would go as far as to say that if they are unable to do that, how are they meeting their childs needs??

Regardless - putting a child in care is much more expensive than providing tax credits, so what you propose is silly (unless you want to go down the route of forced abortions)

Please will someone think of the children! You don't get free money for having children, you get money to support your children.

I thought we were trying to eradicate child poverty in this country - please know that living under the poverty line doesn't mean you are bad parents.

It's a matter of the deserving (hardworking) and undeserving poor - how do we distinguish these?

I'd like to see more benefits paid in vouchers - I received milk vouchers when pregnant with dd2 as we were at our poorest then and the extra milk certainly came in handy. That way, the kids will definitely benefit and parents will not be able to spend it on cigarettes/drugs etc. I don't think anyone begrudges the children being supported once they're here; but I think there is a certain suspicion that the money given isn't always filtering down to the kids as it should do. That would reduce the need to limit the numbers of children covered - it seems uncomfortably close to eugenics to forbid the poor to have kids. That said, the only middle-class people with more than 4 kids that I know personally are v v religious (and none of them live on benefits, no). So it's hard not to wonder if the current set-up does incentivise v large families.

I am thinking of the children, sometimes it is better for the child to be taken to live with foster parents who can ensure all aspects of a childs development are met, and a huge part of that is financially based. I fully understand that parents have rights too, but in the long term, living in extreme poverty can do real harm to a child, and I think the childs rights have to be put first.

Vouchers is a constructive idea breadandbutterfly- as long as parents got to pick what they need, and the values ie clothes vouchers, energy vouchers, food vouchers etc

because it would be awful to be stuck with £100 of clothes vouchers if you really needed to top up the gas.

interestting gven that the Guardian article last week of the draft welfare bill (Lors Level now) caps it at 3 anyway

scarletts LMAO you do know they can;t even find foster carers for the kids whose lives are at risk sometimes, and that being taken from your aprents if likely to be more damaging than poverty?

cigarettes and drugs? is that what people think of us now? if it weren;t for the boys i;d have given up and ended it long ago doesn;t matter how hard I try to be decent, give back, find ways to work- arer = on benefits = accused of all manner of crap.

Oh we were on about £40k in Wales when ds4 was born

Fucking redundancy; fucking autism; fucking depression

Now 8Nieguy's* system- capped at wherever you are (after 2 anyway) I agree with

I'm bloody hardworking, I don't expect the state to look after me, but i'm very grateful for the fact that they do. I think people who want the support to be taken away are very selfish and lack empathy.