The two-child benefit cap is social cleansing. Starmer must end it - Rosie Duffield

[IwantToRetire]

In an outspoken challenge to her leader, Labour’s Rosie Duffield says Tory rules penalising women with three or more children are worthy of The Handmaid’s Tale

Key points

• Labour MP condemns “anti-feminist and unequal” legislation, especially its “rape clause”
• Sir Keir Starmer has said scrapping the law is unaffordable at present
• More than a dozen backbenchers are forcing the issue with an amendment to the King’s Speech
• Like her friend JK Rowling, Duffield has previously attacked Labour’s record on women

The two-child limit is a feminist issue. It is a heinous piece of legislation and the reason above all others that I was driven to stand as a member of parliament. With the introduction of such a sinister and overtly sexist law, I was propelled towards Westminster to stop it.

article continues at https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rosie-duffield-mp-two-child-benefit-cap-scncpn9dd

and at https://archive.ph/5On4a

I am in the top tax bracket.

I'm talking about people who live off investments, have off shore accounts, employ lawyers for the sole purpose of avoiding tax, giant corporations. True wealth. They don't pay their fair share.

This is all very strange.

First of all, a tiny percentage of top earners pay the best part of the tax revenue.

Secondly the money they spend goes back into the economy. If we take your example with the yacht, then where do you think yachts come from? They don’t materialise fully formed from the ether, they are built, manned and this is all money and work places.

Thirdly, the money invested doesn’t just sit there looking pretty. Investment leads to again, work places and revenue.

We should separate people (personal tax) from giant corporations (corporation tax) as they are two distinctly different things worthy of two different conversations.

People who live off investments still have to pay tax on the income generated from those investments, and having an offshore account doesn't negate this.

Also, we should understand that tax avoidance or tax minimisation is completely legal. If we don't like it, we should change the law to reduce the occurrences of it. Yes, people in that position pay accountants a great deal of money, however that in itself is fuelling the economy as those accountants pay tax etc. I would do exactly the same in that position as would everyone here, I'd wager.

Also, those same wealthy people live in huge houses and pay large amounts of stamp duty, large amounts of council tax, large amounts in restaurants etc.

Whether you view what they pay as fair or not, you have to concede that they contribute a vast amount to the revenue generated by taxes, and we would be significantly worse off without them.

We are already trying to combat this with immigration.

Ice cold and politically speaking, keeping the 2 child benefits cut is a measure of birth control for the poorest in our society. .. but it is also a measure for the justification of higher immigration rates.
The end goal isn't to raise, nurture and educate the next generations of professionals but to buy them from other countries.

The number of professionals we need may well change in 18 years as the dc born now grow up

Imagine graduation 20 odd years from now and what AI is doing. We should avoid seeing many young people unemployed

Agree with all your points here.

So children should live in poverty because the parents need a stick to make them work harder? How come that same stick doesn’t apply to 2 child families in the same situation? You are showing that you actually have zero understanding of what reality is like for people who have to claim benefits.

Sorry you've lost me.

Half the time they have more disposable income than the people who don't qualify for benefits as the latter are slightly above the threshold or will pretend that they are both single parents.

Many children live in poverty because of their parents choices.

No amount of UC / taxpayers money would change that.

We need to help get people out of low level jobs so they want to work. Training and study for adults would be a good investment

'Low level' jobs will always exist and there will always be some people who are unemployed or between jobs.

If you want to find some money, do something about domestic violence which costs the UK an estimated £66 billion a year.

What does that even mean? Of course money would change that. Or are you trying to imply that poor parents are all abusive and wouldn’t spend that money on their children/living costs?!

You have to have some people (quite a lot of them actually) working in “low level jobs” or the country will come to a grinding halt.

The bigger issue is that wages haven’t keep up with inflation for decades so more and more people in “low level jobs” are having to be supported by the government. That’s not their fault. Sort out the ever growing wealth gap, and make sure people are paid a reasonable wage that broadly keeps up with inflation and we wouldn’t have this issue.

Not all yachts are built in the UK, let alone sailed in and and out of UK ports.
Why do you think Sunak keeps his investments in the USA? far better returns than investing in the UK.... he also pays just 20% on the 2m he made on these last year.
Any UK investor will be using their ISA allowances to help reduce their tax bill to zero, only takes 5 years of a couples allowance to ring fence £200k from tax.

Funny how the vast majority of us earn less in real terms than in 2010 (& hence pay less tax) but the wealthy, despite paying all this tax, have seen their after tax earnings multiply many times.

I work a low level job. I work checkouts in a supermarket. I'm also a carer to my autistic 4yo daughter. luckily for me my OH earns enough to cover everything and afford us a comfortable enough life. We won't be going to the Maldives anytime soon but we're ok with that.

When my children are older and all in school my plan is to retrain and do something I'll actually enjoy, but my low level supermarket job has kept my cv free of gaps for years while I've raised my children. I could in theory quit and be a SAHM but I do eventually want a career and I don't want career gaps to hold me back.

I used to want to be a midwife, but now I'm unsure. I'm more leaning towards a nursery practitioner, teaching assistant or social worker.

You do know that Starmer's tax returns have been published? He earned around £360k in 2023 and paid about £120k tax. Similar for 2022.

Additionally, investing in a particular stock to get a better return is sensible and is nothing to do with where tax is paid. If you have any form of private pension, it is likely that this too will invest overseas for better returns.

And as for ISAs, that's the same point I made earlier. This is entirely legal. You could do the same thing. If your beef is that he earns more and has sufficient funds to save in an ISA, that's a completely different thing (and unreasonable).

If poor people spending 100% of their earnings is great for the economy, why are countries like Bangladesh not doing better?

It is people that save and invest that deliver higher living standards for everybody. Their capital is allocated to productive parts of the economy and creates innovation and growth.

Poor British people buying food is no different to poor Afghanis buying food. It doesn't do much for any economy.

A tiny per centage do not pay the best part of the tax revenue, at most it is 50%. And they gain far more from their tax pounds than most of us. E.g. they are more likely to get benefit from foreign diplomacy including embassies and consulates abroad, from the armed forces when they travel (keeping the peace somewhere), from the legal framework that operates not just in their home country but protects their investments internationally. They also gain from the wealthy's welfare state esp in the UK, where they do not have to provide health insurance or benefits to their employees, they can rely on good policing where they live to keep out less pleasant elements of society, they can use the legal system easily etc.
Investment has a return. And is not necessarily made where the country needs it, nor even in the wealthy's home country, and often not to the benefit of the country invested in.
The rich also get tax breaks on school fees, and are able to make economies of scale on all their purchases e.g. even haute couture houses will give discounts if the order is big enough or the customer rich/influential enough.
Finally, lots of people buying small things, going on cheap holidays etc generates more income and more work than a few very rich people doing very expensive things in places most of us do not live.

Bangladesh is poor because it floods, they do not have enough industrialised infrastructure, there is corruption in government, which means companies/people are reluctant to invest.

How can there be industrialised infrastructure if everybody spends their money and never saves and invests?

Where do you think industry gets its profits? It’s from having customers for its goods and services. The profit is then invested in infrastructure - unless it’s a spectacularly stupidly managed business that puts dividends ahead of investment. Shame the water companies don’t understand that.

It seems to me that this also mixes personal with company. People who pay personal tax don't have employees, so you are talking about two different things.

From a personal tax perspective, 30% of income tax is generated from the 1% earners. The next 30% is generated by the 90-99% earners, and the next 40% is generated from the 50% to 90% earners, thus 90% of tax income comes from the top 50% earners, with 60% coming from the top 10% earners. So that's basically everyone earning more than 30k is contributing to 90% of the tax income.

I would submit that, actually, people claiming benefits gain far more from the tax pounds of the 1% than the 1%, or the top 10% do. Additionally, everyone can rely on good policing due to their tax pounds (or at least, we could if we had good policing).

There is an argument that more people are employed by package holidays than private jets, but I would put forward that there is a similar amount of tax paid (VAT, wages etc) when one considers the cost of a private jet compared to a package deal.

And who owns industry? It's the people that save and invest.

Your argument in simply nonsense.

No point in owning industry without any customers. Try engaging your brain.

What? Starmer? i'm talking about Sunak, our former PM, he paid 20% on earnings of almost 2m last year (exc his PM salary)

Where did i say ISA's were illegal? its a loop hole that should be closed, ISAs (PEPs) were originally a means for those on modest salaries to save a little tax free, not for the wealthy to ISA wrap their investments

Yes pensions are primarily invested overseas, its gone from about 23% a few years ago to approx 2% now, its a huge issue for the UK.

You pretty much have replied to something i never wrote......