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.

Three feet. Allow me to enlighten you.
I dont need to use my imagination my friend.
In my 44 years on the planet i have found myself in more than the average amounts of situation wjhen i required support.
A few examples which match the ones you have given are.
I escaped from dv with 2 ds's-had to be housed by the la and claim benefits.
I had breast cancer when i was 27 and had 3 dc's-was remarried by then-and lost my income cos couldnt work due to chemo and was only casually employed.
Most recently my baby was born with severe health needs and i have had to take extended UNPAID LEAVE to care for her.
Oh yes and not forgetting the fact that ds2 is currently needing dyalisis and the family members including myself are being tested to be live donors. I will be taking unpaid leave to care for him and possibly ds1 if he is a match.

I still think it is reasonable not to continue to have childen if you cannot support them yourself!!

Be very careful who you call ignorant in future.

In fact im so pissed off with your accusations i am going to report your post.
You are on here banging on about peoples rights etc whilst making huge assumptions and sweeping statements about strangers.
HOW DARE YOU.

ThreeFeet - your arguments are beyond tedious, beyond ignorant and beyond the pale. I'm fairly certain that the bullshit you came out with last night is a personal attack. I'm also certain that you're being deliberately obtuse about the whole discussion.

This has got to be a quick one as I'm about to go into a meeting.

Firstly, hands up, I hadn't read the thread properly. I'm relieved to hear we haven't got to that point (yet).

ledkr you likened going from 2 wages to 1 wage to people losing benefits at the breadline. What I found offensive was the idea that people already struggling to just get food on the table should change their "lifestyles" when they are already in extreme povety. I will reply to your PM later.

larrygrylls "I don't think anyone has suggested penalising the children" pushing families further into poverty will penalise children, how could it do anything else?

niceguy2 "We all have to live within our means and not expect the state to continually pay for something we decided to do. Yes accidents can happen but that's not the state/taxpayers fault is it? Why should they foot the bill?" because, for a startm, if we live in a society with more people living in poverty it will affect us all. And will likely cost us allo more in the long term, with all the problems which come with poverty (e.g. NHS bill due to bad health)

Alouise I can assure you I'm not trying to attack you!

Must go, I'm annoyed I've got drawn into this, I have too much to do!

This is going well, then...
This idea is eugenicism, whether or not it's dressed up in a common sense frock. Most reactionary ideas are portrayed as 'common sense'. This time it's done by income but it could be race, culture whatever. There's usually someone available to be the target of pious disaproval. Single mothers are passe, go for claimants. Preferably 'fraudulent' disability claimants. Or foreign factory workers. Anything but the shower actually running the economy. They're too tough.

threefeet Going from 2 to one wage is often worse than being on benefits.

If one is forced to take unpaid leave from a job then they will not recieve any extra money and still pay for prescriptions,Dental treatment etc.

Most people on maternity leave take an immediate cut in wages which gets worse as time goes by.

Currently if i claimed tax credits on my husbands income we would recieve a reasonable amount but as i have a job we cannot. Despite not being paid from it for around 5 months.

ll the above examples are of my family having an extra child with a reduced income and managing.

The proposed changes to tax credits are talking about income staying the same after the birth of a 5th child,not reducing.

Your assumption that anyone who agrees with this is ignorant,or not ever experiencing hardship,is insulting and ignorant. Most people who hsve strong opinions on the benefits system being exploited do so not through ignorance but wth first hand knowledge of hardship.

It is you in this case who appears to know very little about real hardship,with your assumptions and full scale defence of anyone who claims any benefits.

I am not going to fully argue against these measures - I can see a need for something to be done, in certain circumstances, BUT if they put this into place, how long will it be before they drop the amount of children that low paid workers are 'allowed' to have? And where will they stop? Three? Two? One? None?

This is dangerously close to the start of an insidious process to limit the amount of children the poor can have - which, to my mind, is eugenicism.

I can see the logic of paying SOME of the income for people on benefits (Which I don't class Tax Credits as, BTW, after all it is a BUSINESS SUBSIDY to let employers pay less than a living wage to their employees) in vouchers, to ensure that the money gets spent on what it should be spent on. But the main problem with that is that a system like that will not allow for any flexibility - for example, say, the DWP may give out shoe vouchers for a cheap shoe shop like Shoe Zone - where ALL their children's shoes are an 'E' fitting. I have dc that have 'H' fitting feet - and would be unable to get an 'E' fitting shoe ON THEIR FOOT. So I either have to buy their shoes from Clarks or independent shoe shops. And for one of my DC's - his feet are so wide he has to have his boots specially made, as the NHS should be providing them, but don't now - yet the orthotist tells me he still needs them. If I was to get shoe vouchers for a £15 pair of shoes - it wouldn't go very far towards buying a £120 pair of extra-wide Piedro's.

And there is no affordable system that would allow for that amount of variation between dc. What about DC who need to be on a Gluten-free diet? You CAN get some foods on prescription - but home-made GF bread is much nicer than shop-bought. And it is MUCH more expensive to feed a dc on a GF diet than it is most dc.

It would be the lack of flexibility in a system like that that would push SOME dc into poverty. Not all, and not all families who have 5+ dc, but surely in this day and age, even pushing ONE child into poverty is unacceptable - even if their parents ARE irresponsible?

There will always be 'scroungers' in ANY country with a Welfare state. The big question is, is whether it is OK to adversely affect the genuine claimants in order to stop the 'scroungers'?

There are some people in a similar situation to me that I look at and just go WHY? People who have 4 dc like me, but have never worked, have no intention of ever working, and laugh at people like me who TRY to go out to work.

I HAVE worked in the past, and I WILL work again - I fully intend to be back at work PT when my 9mo DS3 is 3yo and gets his vouchers to make the cost of nursery less. I may not be able MEDICALLY to work FT, but that doesn't mean I can never work again. I may have a 13yo DD who still needs supervision at all times, but I am hoping that is not forever, and in 3 years time, hopefully she will be at the stage of an NT 12yo who can be left at home for a few hours after work. Right now, finding SN childcare is not happening, but that doesn't mean I will never work or pay tax again.

I don't really have the full solution to this, maybe paying TC's to the employers and making them pay a LIVING wage would help, but that in itself would cause more problems as has been mentioned upthread. However, I am of the opinion that no dc should be left below the poverty line simply because of the actions of their PARENTS. It is not their fault, they did not ASK to be born, they had no choice in the matter, so why should they suffer? And why SHOULD those who have fallen on hard times be made to stand out and be stigmatised by only having vouchers to spend rather than money like everyone else? It's a very complex issue, and I can't see ANY solution that will work for every person affected.

Threefeet, there of course has to be a balancing act between supporting those who need it and what the taxpayer can afford.

And right now the balance is all fucked up. Why? Because quite simply we are still borrowing way more money than we raise in taxes. So as a nation we have a choice to make. More taxes or less expenditure.

More taxes seems out of the question. We have already one of the highest tax burden's in Europe. Increasing taxes will also mean less cash for people to spend and hit their confidence, thus choking the economy exactly when we need growth to help us out. So that leaves the government being forced to spend less.

And that means we must place some limits on what we spend. So to me, capping the amount of benefits we give out is an obvious one. So capping benefits at 4 children (which is what's being discussed) might not be ideal....in an ideal world where money is no object. But in the real crappy world which we all currently live in, it sounds like a sensible balance to me.

And that, niceguy is it in a very neat nutshell.

Well done niceguy what a nice guy haha.

Nicely put NiceGuy.

I can't believe that people are calling this eugenics.

One of the nice principles of government coercion in this country is through the tax (and by extension, the benefits) system. Taxes are set to encourage us to do what the governments (vicariously, the electorate) want us to do. This is far more humane than just slapping a law on us.

I believe that a responsible and moral government should be discouraging large families from dependent families (especially 5x5 families). This is a far cry from China's one-child policy because it is proposed to be via the tax/benefit system rather than the direct rule of law.

larrygrylls

You rude, rude and very wrong little man (or is it woman?). That is probably the single most personally offensive post I've ever read on mumsnet. By all means disagree with Julia, but by calling her a 'stupid, stupid woman' you come across as unbelievably rude and patronising (and sexist? - echoes of David Cameron there...) - and also stupid, because you are yourself wrong. (Note: don't criticise others for their 'stupidity' unless you're extraordinarily sure you've checked your facts first.)

Eugenics is (dictionary definition) "the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). "

You'll note that the definition goes well beyond the "death camps and forced sterilisation" that you suggest; you appear to be confusing eugenics with genocide, possibly? The actual definition is far, far wider, and thus includes, for example, everything from use of modern reproductive technologies eg producing babies free from various genetic disorders, to funding for families with children. Indeed, it seems absolutely clear that removing funding for the poor to have children would act as a serious 'discouragement' to them to do so.

Here's Wikipedia:

"Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things to many different people. Historically, the term has referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia. To population geneticists the term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without necessarily altering allele frequencies; for example, J. B. S. Haldane wrote that "the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent".[37] Much debate has taken place in the past, as it does today, as to what exactly counts as eugenics.[38] Some types of eugenics deal only with perceived beneficial and/or detrimental genetic traits. ...

The term eugenics is often used to refer to movements and social policies influential during the early 20th century. In a historical and broader sense, eugenics can also be a study of "improving human genetic qualities". It is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose goal is to improve the gene pool. "

Which arguably is what is behind attempts to restrict numbers of children that the poor may have.

In short - you are perfectly entitled to state that the number of children the poor should have should be restricted (just as we are to judge you for those attitudes, by the way).

What you are NOT entitled to do is to rewrite the English language in your attempt to make this point and to humiliate and patronise a fellow poster.

breadandbutterfly

You are wrong. The word inheritable is key here. Being dependent on benefits is not an inheritable trait, ergo, restricting benefits cannot be a policy of eugenics.

They key is gen, genetics. Inheritable.

Case dismissed

Larry,

Calling another poster a 'stupid woman' is inappropriate. I have reported your post.

New Labour very successsfully perpetrated a myth that the Tories were the "nasty" party,

What do you mean "were" they still are

No, HarryHill (do like your username though not your politics, BTW :) ) - you are missing the point that many people (yourself?) think that those on benefits are inherently inferior, hence should have less right to 'breed' (their attitudes - clearly expressed, and in such language, on this very thread - not my own, I should add!).

I do agree with you that that attitude is nonsense - nevertheless, this thread has made it abundantly clear that some people do seem to see those on benefits as some sort of innate underclass, rather than just ordinary people exactly like themselves who've hit a tough spot.

Which I'm sure you'll agree with me is the real situation. I'm sure you'll agree with me also that for that reason it would be most unreasonable to refuse to pay for the children of ordinary people just like us who may have hit a temporary bad patch.

Do as you would be done unto etc.

Fascinating article in the Spectator about eugenics and the welfare state.

I was aware that many of the Fabian socialists were eugenicists, but I never knew that Beveridge and Keynes were members of the Eugenics Society.

This is something the article says about Beveridge

"William Beveridge, later to emerge as the midwife of the post-1945 welfare settlement, was also very active in the eugenics movement at this time. Today, Beveridge is generally portrayed as a kindly, avuncular figure, one almost dripping with compassion and benevolence. But his roots were in a particularly hardline strand of eugenics. He argued in 1909 that ?those men who through general defects are unable to fill such a whole place in industry, are to be recognised as ?unemployable?. They must become the acknowledged dependents of the State... but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights ? including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood.? And that, except for the loss of fatherhood, has effectively been his legacy."

www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5571423/how-eugenics-poisoned-the-welfare-state.thtml

People call the Tories teh 'nasty party', but some of these left wing global warming types don't seem all that cuddly

www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/21/obamas-science-czar-considered-forced-abortions-sterilization-population-growth/

"As first reported by FrontPage Magazine, Holdren and his co-authors spend a portion of the book discussing possible government programs that could be used to lower birth rates.

Those plans include forcing single women to abort their babies or put them up for adoption; implanting sterilizing capsules in people when they reach puberty; and spiking water reserves and staple foods with a chemical that would make people sterile.

To help achieve those goals, they formulate a "world government scheme" they call the Planetary Regime, which would administer the world's resources and human growth"

The Planetary Regime? Is that what will "save the planet" for us proles?

And wasn't it the extreme left in China who instigated a one child policy?

Yes, it was that Chairman Miaow.
Lucky they hadn't invented "global warming" at that time. That would have been right up his street.

Bread,

The point you make about benefits being for ordinary people who have hit a hard time is exactly what they were for. What they were never for was to subsidise people who have never worked and never intend to work. Unless you decide to become like the threee monkeys, you cannot deny that these people exist and are a drain on society as a whole.