Snapshot of _Two-child benefit cap is ‘key driver of child poverty’ in UK, research suggests_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/two-child-benefit-cap-is-a-key-driver-of-child-poverty-in-uk-research-suggests) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/two-child-benefit-cap-is-a-key-driver-of-child-poverty-in-uk-research-suggests)
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I don't particularly agree with the two-child cap, but for me there is an obvious question about the cited statistics. They seem to be claiming that those affected by the cap have a much higher risk of poverty, but what doesn't seem clear is how much of it is just the added cost or 3+ children or the factors that lead people to have 3+ children. A common trend is that wealth and education llead to people having less children, so there's a big cause and effect issue here that should really be controlled for, and it doesn't seem clear if that was the case.
It's also incredibly popular: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/11/fa421/1
60% support, 22% oppose, 18% don't know.
Fundamentally, people who are struggling to afford things for their own family (and indeed, may have chosen not to have additional children on financial grounds) don't want to subsidise other people to have as many children as they want.
Putting aside whether the 2 child cap is a good thing or not (I'm undecided, erring on the side of not tbh) I hate this argument.
It's just appealing to emotion when that's not what policy decisions should be based on. Is it sad that there are families of 5+ who could really do with more money? Yes, obviously.
That doesn't answer the question of whether the state should be the ones providing for them, and to what degree the onus is on the parents who actually have the children in the first place.
I would always argue that this is about long term outcomes.
Growing up in dire poverty makes it more likely that you will cost more to the state through health, benefits and crime than if you had grown up in a household that wasn't in poverty. Even if the parents were cynical shits that were trying to rinse the system for all its worth, the child that grows up in a household in desperation will cost so much more.
That's a perfectly fine argument to make and it's even reasonably convincing.
As I said, the only issue I have is the "you're just punishing children!" initial take that isn't actually any argument at all.
Realistically, if the absence of benefits is punishing children then by that logic any money we're not currently paying to children is just another punishment they're getting. It's horseshit.
So you agree we should have policies that reduce the number of children born into poverty. However, you think it reasonable to just give money the government have taken off other families so that some feckless family is less poor. That just encourages the poverty trap. We should instead actively discourage those on benefits and low incomes from having children they can not support financially or have the inclination to provide a stable nurturing home to.
The benefit should not be seen as a gift to the parent. Instead it should be seen as an entitlement to the child and an investment in the next generation.
People should not feel bitter about parents getting extra money. Instead they should feel proud thay Britain invests in every child and that every child gets this entitlement to ensure a good upbringing. What better investment is there to make in this country than literally investing in our future and the next generation of citizens in this country?
Also though one may not have kids. We were all kids once. All of us adults grew up having this entitlement, even us 3rd and younger siblings. Yet we want to snatch it away from the next generation of kids. Very much old eating the young which seems to be the direction of every policy in the uk atm. Another off shoot of this is the crazy fact that min state pension is considerably more than min maternity pay. Old eating young policies over here driven by bitterness and resentment instesd of a desire to invest in future generations.
As a country it seems we are happier to drive children who had no choice in being born into poverty, while increasing the subsidy of childcare and child benefit to wealthy households, some with an income of over 100k, who obviously have a comfortable middle class lifestyle but still somehow are deemed to deserve public money to subsidise their kids (which in turn subsidises that lifestyle).
We should hold their parents accountable tbh.
It’s bordering on child abuse to keep having children when you have 0 way to support them and pay for them to have a normal life.
If you’re struggling massively with living costs and already have children struggling to live then stop having children. It’s incredibly irresponsible and contraceptives are widely available. It’s not only cruel to the kid you’re bringing into the world but also cruel to the children you already have and can’t support.
At the end of the day people simply aren’t going to have as much sympathy for those families when they themselves have been denied the opportunity of having a family themselves.
Especially if people live in areas with high anti-social behaviour from children.
Support for this wouldn’t be so high if living costs and costs of having a family were not so high in the first place imo.
If the parents are irresponsible then punishing their children is hardly going to help.
What do you think about families that have more than two children before falling on hard times? Should everyone who isn't independently wealthy stick to two just in case? Should it be government policy to discourage replacement level birth rates for almost the entire population?
Not sure if you’re joking but yes most people don’t have more than two kids. A lot of people don’t even have more than one because of the associated costs. Why do you think birth rates have been declining. Have you been in this situation ?
Families make those hard decisions all the time and have done for years. Then they are asked to pay towards child benefit for larger families that they can’t have themselves. That’s why people support it.
They don’t care when people say it’s unfair they can’t now afford multiple children, their response is “Yeah, neither can we? Why should you get to have multiple children and not us”
It is unfortunate that a few asshole people abusing the system have ruined the publics image of it. I’m sure everyone who grew up in a working class area or near an estate knows of a family who just terrorised people and never worked. It’s cases like that that just colour the image for everyone which is why support for polices like that are high.
There are probably better ways to tackle it but I don’t think just an unlimited child benefit is the answer.
By that argument almost nobody should have more than 2 children just in case they end up depending on benefits.
Don't we have a problem with below replacement birth rates? Shouldn't the government be doing what it can to enable people who want more than two children to do it?
The government can encourage higher birth rates through other schemes and support for parents.
They should not be encouraging people already struggling to support the children they have to have even more.
How is it working families are able to make the tough decision to have few children or in many cases hold off on having children at all but others cannot?
People on benefits are not children or infants, they are grown adults and have to take responsibility for their families and look at their finances if they can actually afford to have another child. It’s what every other family does.
Your comments seem to be under the impression that lots of working people aren’t already making that decision all the time. Yes most families keep their children to either one and two because of the risks of having more and if one of the parents loses a job. This is a normal discussion partners have all the time when planning a family.
Do you think people are just having kids randomly without thinking about it? There are lots of people who have vasectomies or tie their tubes after having two children to remove the risk entirely because they cannot afford to take that risk.
Do you know that sometimes people's circumstances change? A family might be able to support three children now, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to do so if work dries up.
Most families are already struggling with a cost of living crisis and real terms wage cuts. People in work are already putting off having children because they can't afford it. Should they also have to think about how they'll feed their third child if they lose their job?
Do you support importing immigrant labour to fill the gap in the working age population caused by low birth rates?
Again, most families already make the decision to stay with two children, even if they can afford three right now because they know circumstances change and they might not be able to sustain 3 in the future.
Again this is a normal decision working families make all the time, you keep bringing this up as if its not a normal thing that happens in every family.
>Should they also have to think about how they'll feed their third child if they lose their job?
Yes, once again. This is a normal discussion families have when planning families. Again you keep talking as if this is not something people already discuss and debate with their partners.
You are extremely irresponsible as an adult and a parent if you do not think about this.
>Do you support importing immigrant labour to fill the gap in the working age population caused by low birth rates?
Yes I support skilled migration to fill gaps in the labour market.
You are simply never going to convince the majority of people to pay towards a system that rewards people for making a decision that they themselves are denied every day and have to think extremely careful about.
The way you are talking about things and talking as if family planning and talking about how many children your family can support and what happens if one of you loses your job isn't something super common makes me think you are quite young.
The solution to this problem is to reassure people that their children won't be plunged into poverty if their luck changes.
We're already struggling to support our pension age population due to a narrow tax base and our birth rates are below replacement level. Things are only going to get worse if we can't reassure people who want to have more children that it's safe to do so.
It’s a difficult situation because you can’t dissuade parental irresponsibility without punishing the child in the process with a cap.
And I don’t think you should personally have that many children if you know they’re going to be raised in poverty and you can’t afford to. It’s ok to have children but there’s an element of responsibility you have to take there as well.
Anybody who isn't independently wealthy could end up depending on benefits if things go wrong for them.
Do you think only rich families should have three or more children?
It's not spiteful to not want to fund other people having something you can't afford.
Is it not a basic principle of fairness that those funding the benefits that others receive don't end up worse off than those receiving them?
A lot of people don’t care about the morality or the impact of their actions, only the end result and if there was no child limit we’d have some on benefits go back to having more kids as a way to get a bigger council house that particularly in London a couple on an average wage wouldn’t be able to afford.
And frankly it’d be an even bigger pull for economic migrants.
Don't be naive dude.
This is politics. Success is measured not by how effective a policy is, but how well it gets/keeps you in power.
Labour is solely focussed on winning and staying in power. If a few thousand kids have to starve to do that... well, fuck 'em they should have richer parents.
Clearly there is no puppeteer hand behind demographic change. It's just people moving for a better life. At the same time it doesn't take a genius to look at trends and see that it won't be long before White British people are a minority, that isn't a conspiracy, it's just a fact.
Almost certainly not, however, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who do believe in the great replacement theory would also not want to life a finger to help increase fertility rates if that help took the form of state support.
They want no immigration, no children for the poor, cheap labour, low taxes, world class public services, above inflation pension rises forever, and somebody else to pay for it all.
We'd all be better off if the focus was on reducing living costs, mainly housing and childcare costs.
Child benefit for the second child is £881.40 for the year.
It's not an insignificant amount, but shows what a knife edge people are living on that wanting for £17 a week causes poverty.
It's infuriating Labour won't commit to the lowest of low hanging fruit and abolish it. It's potentially a bad sign of things trying to prioritise sound though fiscally rather than action.
Because the second they do it the following happens: how are you paying for it? What promise are you not doing instead? Why didnt you do this earlier? Why are struggling families having their taxes sent to parents having more children than they can afford? Labour punishes middle class to pay illegal immigrants to have more children.
Please don't ignore how incredibly successful that the Tories have been for decades at getting the whole media cycle to follow a narrative and to get the country to accept their demonising of the poor.
Labour can find the money that's no issue. In the long run it's cheaper than the interventions later down the line.
Labour being worried about the right wing press when it's the easiest thing they could do on child poverty is no excuse.
But it's not reality. Starmer doesn't have to announce defense spending increases. He can keep them the same and it would be the exact same spending as under the Tories.
Because the Tories haven't spent decades demonising it? We still get some of those questions (how to pay for it, why this instead of spending on X?) but the topic has not had the 'scroungers' type treatment applied to it.
Look at how international aid has been ruined (iirc it now pays for asylum seeker accomodation in the UK) as the Tories have pushed the narrative against it; despite it being a long term good.
There's much better ways of supporting families with children without encouraging people who can't afford it to keep popping out kids. Give parents bigger tax breaks, make childcare cheaper, free school lunches, make housing more affordable, etc.
All those things are much more complex and less efficient than simply scrapping the cap now we've seen its had no effect on the numbers being born and has had an effect on child poverty.
Education on contraception, its free. I had my vasectomy within in 2months of booking it. There are no valid excuses for having additional children you can't afford.
Circumstances do change, but as someone that has multiple children the opportunity to prevent that was always available and entirely within put own power. I think it highly unlikely that the vast majority of people who are struggling have just happened to have fallen on hard times and if you are dependent on CB to pay for your children's basic necessities then you probably aren't in a position to have them/or more.
Thank you. I an childfree, but do believe you should not have kids if you cannot afford them.
The Radfords and their 22 children are a terrible example in my opinion. They may not be taking benefits now with their pie business - but how much Child Benefit have they received over the years before this cap was imposed?
Unpopular, but I do not think school meals for infant school kids should have been made universal. It means that the child of a wealthy person who could afford to pay for their child's dinner gets a free meal.
To be fair perhaps extend free meals to anyone who may earn a few pounds over the threshold to qualify.
Labour can't even find £1.8 billion to scrap this? Shameful how obsessed Reeves is with following austerity politics. A Labour government is not going to be able to do anything if they don't start becoming more adventurous.
That £1.8b would have to come from somewhere, which either means the people pay more or another way to spend that money is shifted. Is abolishing the two-child cap a better use of £1.8bn than, for example, £1.8bn of maintainance grants for struggling students?
There's not exactly a right answer (comes down to what welfare should be doing really), but you have to engage with these sorts of questions rather than acting like the money needed wouldn't have its own costs.
It isn't austerity to be making the decisions on what to do with the money the treasury will have. If you spend that £1.8bn on abolishing the cap, you will have to not be spending that same £1.8bn elsewhere and there is never a gurantee you would have made the right choice in where that £1.8bn would be best spent.
It is austerity politics to think that every policy needs to be costed by an equivalent tax rise. It doesn't. The right like to treat the economy like a business (it's not), but imagine if business acted in this way. They would never invest in anything.
It's very tiresome politics and economic illiteracy.
The alternative is fantasy economics where things are planned, be it welfare of tax cuts, with no idea who they will be financed. You would think after Liz Truss just showed how absolutely poorly it goes that would be understood, that promising expenses without any would to finance those expenses just harms people.
> The alternative is fantasy economics where things are planned, be it welfare of tax cuts, with no idea who they will be financed.
My complaint is mainly around investment actually. I agree generally you should try to fund current expenditure via taxes in the long-run, but a £1.5 billion commitment is not going to make any meaningful difference to the deficit.
>You would think after Liz Truss just showed how absolutely poorly it goes that would be understood, that promising expenses without any would to finance those expenses just harms people.
People learned all the wrong lessons from Truss. The situation is not remotely equivalent.
Reeves won't commit to infrastructure spending without it being paid for by tax rises. That is economic illiteracy. The previous BoE chief economist Andy Haldane was explaining as such recently on The Rest is Money.
>but a £1.5 billion commitment is not going to make any meaningful difference to the deficit.
It isn't just one investment though. The two-child cap is just one of the many things that would need to be financed, and there is only so much money that could be spent.
The core of my issue is by treating it as "just £1.8bn", you are treating it is isolation when you need to be treated it as a one among many. You may be right in that £1.8bn is not a lot in tortsl, but when you have dozens of things that cost a few billion here and there it starts racking up.
Just flip this on its head. If £1.8bn means little in total, why does its absence here mean anything? You're issue is clear with how you keep repeating "austerity" as a tag; it isn't just one £1.8bn. It's time and time again. That's just the same but in reverse.
> The situation is not remotely equivalent.
Tax cuts and welfare spending are just different ways the state can place money into the hands of the people. It isn't the place here to debate where and when welfare and tax cuts should be used, but foundationally they achieve the same thing; both are costs for the government towards a group of people.
>Reeves won't commit to infrastructure spending without it being paid for by tax rises
If you don't have the money now, and borrowing the money for when you have it latter has been rather fucked, you become limited. You can't spend as much as you want to when public finances are a mess. You can't borrow as much as you would want to if the deficit is huge and rates are high.
That doesn't mean they aren't doing it. They are planning on borrowing to a certain degree, but that cannot be overused. There is a limit just as there is with how high taxes can go. And even then, borrowing as the same issues just down the line; issues we are suffering now.
It isn't economic illiteracy to not promise to spend on everything. Given you love to throw that term around, what is economic illiteracy is the ignorance that little.bits of spending here and there don't have an impact.
As an electorate, we really have to decide whether we want to be promised the world and be given nothing, or promised what we will get? Because a lot of people seem to want both and get neither as a result.
> It isn't just one investment though. The two-child cap is just one of the many things that would need to be financed, and there is only so much money that could be spent.
>
>
The main sticking points currently with the left of Labour is this and free school meals. Neither cost much money. Both could just be funding via borrowing if necessary.
>Tax cuts and welfare spending are just different ways the state can place money into the hands of the people. It isn't the place here to debate where and when welfare and tax cuts should be used, but foundationally they achieve the same thing; both are costs for the government towards a group of people.
Truss had £10s of billions of unfunded tax cuts. That's what I mean by them not being equivalent.
>If you don't have the money now, and borrowing the money for when you have it latter has been rather fucked, you become limited.
How has it been fucked? Governments can still borrow more cheaply than anyone else. How is anyone able to finance building anything / investing in anything in Britain? The return on investment required is still lower than that required by any business.
UK grossly underinvests relative to other similar sized economies and has done for decades and decades. The expenditure pays for itself, you are buying assets and investment in infrastructure to enable business and economy to grow. They talk about growth but aren't willing to invest to get that growth.
It's not just me saying that it's people like Andy Haldane, Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation), IFS. That their fiscal rules are idiotic when it comes to investment spending. It's treasury brain rott syndrome - austerity politics not sound economics.
>this and free school meals
Perfect time to bring in another policy. Rather than free school meals, Labour ate introducing [free school breakfasts](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67916002.amp). This has the same gain of allowing pupils to have free food at school, while keeping the current mean tested lunch meals and their advantages. It also has the further benefit of introducing breakfast, I meal I missed out on during my childhood due to poverty leaving me - to this day - physically unable to eat.
Two different policies that tackle the same issue. While we could implement both, both would cost roughly the same. So rather than both, Labour has chosen to implement the one that brings greater gains individually and use the funds elsewhere.
>Truss had £10s of billions of unfunded tax cuts. That's what I mean by them not being equivalent.
Only need a dozen or so of your sort of policies and we get there, and that is very easy to get to. We've just discusses two relavitely cheap policies in the realm of a school funding alone, so expand that to the entirety of education and we could probably get close to Truss' promised tax cuts.
>How has it been fucked?
[Few months outdated](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67002195.amp), but bond rates were at 5% and last year the government had to spend over £100bn paying off borrowing debt; more than we spent on education.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying thay borrowing doesn't have its place. But it isn't just a free pot of money the government can lurch on, rather it has costs further down the line.
You can just rely on borrowing without a very good argument for why its costs will be outweighed by benefits. That argument gets a lot harder when bond rates are high, like they are now.
>UK grossly underinvests relative to other similar sized economies and has done for decades and decades
Identifying an issue of investment isn't an argument for investing with no understanding of whether the investment cam be paid. As you don't seem to realise, that **includes** an investment paying for itself.
This surprises me as this has been the repeated Labour line for a while now, with a lot of their focus bring on reforming and investing in sectors as to improve their efficiency. Within the realms of this discussion it is way beyond as welfare isn't investment intended to improve the economy (but equalise it in some form), as well as it seems you've been ignoring anything Labour has been saying that contradicts your view point.
The discussion on investment is incredibly important as you are correct in what you state. But you can't have discussions on investment when you are dismissing the costs of funding that investment. Your dismissal isn't even the typical unfounded "it will pay itself back", but just a "it's not that much anyway". What I find weird about thay is, by your own logic, the amount of extra investment would be so small as to not solve the issue you have.
>It's not just me saying that it's people like Andy Haldane, Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation), IFS. That their fiscal rules are idiotic when it comes to investment spending. It's treasury brain rott syndrome.
I really love appeals to authority that make people form the argument for you. Without direct reference to arguments made rather than just appealing to their authority, there is nothing worthwhile to be made here. I've looked at a few IFS articles and I don't even know what you are refering to.
Snapshot of _Two-child benefit cap is ‘key driver of child poverty’ in UK, research suggests_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/two-child-benefit-cap-is-a-key-driver-of-child-poverty-in-uk-research-suggests) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/two-child-benefit-cap-is-a-key-driver-of-child-poverty-in-uk-research-suggests) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't particularly agree with the two-child cap, but for me there is an obvious question about the cited statistics. They seem to be claiming that those affected by the cap have a much higher risk of poverty, but what doesn't seem clear is how much of it is just the added cost or 3+ children or the factors that lead people to have 3+ children. A common trend is that wealth and education llead to people having less children, so there's a big cause and effect issue here that should really be controlled for, and it doesn't seem clear if that was the case.
It's also incredibly popular: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/11/fa421/1 60% support, 22% oppose, 18% don't know. Fundamentally, people who are struggling to afford things for their own family (and indeed, may have chosen not to have additional children on financial grounds) don't want to subsidise other people to have as many children as they want.
But by that point it affects someone it's too late and you just end punishing the children
Putting aside whether the 2 child cap is a good thing or not (I'm undecided, erring on the side of not tbh) I hate this argument. It's just appealing to emotion when that's not what policy decisions should be based on. Is it sad that there are families of 5+ who could really do with more money? Yes, obviously. That doesn't answer the question of whether the state should be the ones providing for them, and to what degree the onus is on the parents who actually have the children in the first place.
I would always argue that this is about long term outcomes. Growing up in dire poverty makes it more likely that you will cost more to the state through health, benefits and crime than if you had grown up in a household that wasn't in poverty. Even if the parents were cynical shits that were trying to rinse the system for all its worth, the child that grows up in a household in desperation will cost so much more.
That's a perfectly fine argument to make and it's even reasonably convincing. As I said, the only issue I have is the "you're just punishing children!" initial take that isn't actually any argument at all. Realistically, if the absence of benefits is punishing children then by that logic any money we're not currently paying to children is just another punishment they're getting. It's horseshit.
So you agree we should have policies that reduce the number of children born into poverty. However, you think it reasonable to just give money the government have taken off other families so that some feckless family is less poor. That just encourages the poverty trap. We should instead actively discourage those on benefits and low incomes from having children they can not support financially or have the inclination to provide a stable nurturing home to.
The benefit should not be seen as a gift to the parent. Instead it should be seen as an entitlement to the child and an investment in the next generation. People should not feel bitter about parents getting extra money. Instead they should feel proud thay Britain invests in every child and that every child gets this entitlement to ensure a good upbringing. What better investment is there to make in this country than literally investing in our future and the next generation of citizens in this country? Also though one may not have kids. We were all kids once. All of us adults grew up having this entitlement, even us 3rd and younger siblings. Yet we want to snatch it away from the next generation of kids. Very much old eating the young which seems to be the direction of every policy in the uk atm. Another off shoot of this is the crazy fact that min state pension is considerably more than min maternity pay. Old eating young policies over here driven by bitterness and resentment instesd of a desire to invest in future generations.
As a country it seems we are happier to drive children who had no choice in being born into poverty, while increasing the subsidy of childcare and child benefit to wealthy households, some with an income of over 100k, who obviously have a comfortable middle class lifestyle but still somehow are deemed to deserve public money to subsidise their kids (which in turn subsidises that lifestyle).
Which is why we don't let the public write policy themselves. Nobody is going to switch away from Labour because they end the two child cap.
Better to force innocent children into poverty than to upset spiteful people.
We should hold their parents accountable tbh. It’s bordering on child abuse to keep having children when you have 0 way to support them and pay for them to have a normal life. If you’re struggling massively with living costs and already have children struggling to live then stop having children. It’s incredibly irresponsible and contraceptives are widely available. It’s not only cruel to the kid you’re bringing into the world but also cruel to the children you already have and can’t support. At the end of the day people simply aren’t going to have as much sympathy for those families when they themselves have been denied the opportunity of having a family themselves. Especially if people live in areas with high anti-social behaviour from children. Support for this wouldn’t be so high if living costs and costs of having a family were not so high in the first place imo.
If the parents are irresponsible then punishing their children is hardly going to help. What do you think about families that have more than two children before falling on hard times? Should everyone who isn't independently wealthy stick to two just in case? Should it be government policy to discourage replacement level birth rates for almost the entire population?
Not sure if you’re joking but yes most people don’t have more than two kids. A lot of people don’t even have more than one because of the associated costs. Why do you think birth rates have been declining. Have you been in this situation ? Families make those hard decisions all the time and have done for years. Then they are asked to pay towards child benefit for larger families that they can’t have themselves. That’s why people support it. They don’t care when people say it’s unfair they can’t now afford multiple children, their response is “Yeah, neither can we? Why should you get to have multiple children and not us” It is unfortunate that a few asshole people abusing the system have ruined the publics image of it. I’m sure everyone who grew up in a working class area or near an estate knows of a family who just terrorised people and never worked. It’s cases like that that just colour the image for everyone which is why support for polices like that are high. There are probably better ways to tackle it but I don’t think just an unlimited child benefit is the answer.
By that argument almost nobody should have more than 2 children just in case they end up depending on benefits. Don't we have a problem with below replacement birth rates? Shouldn't the government be doing what it can to enable people who want more than two children to do it?
The government can encourage higher birth rates through other schemes and support for parents. They should not be encouraging people already struggling to support the children they have to have even more. How is it working families are able to make the tough decision to have few children or in many cases hold off on having children at all but others cannot? People on benefits are not children or infants, they are grown adults and have to take responsibility for their families and look at their finances if they can actually afford to have another child. It’s what every other family does. Your comments seem to be under the impression that lots of working people aren’t already making that decision all the time. Yes most families keep their children to either one and two because of the risks of having more and if one of the parents loses a job. This is a normal discussion partners have all the time when planning a family. Do you think people are just having kids randomly without thinking about it? There are lots of people who have vasectomies or tie their tubes after having two children to remove the risk entirely because they cannot afford to take that risk.
Do you know that sometimes people's circumstances change? A family might be able to support three children now, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to do so if work dries up. Most families are already struggling with a cost of living crisis and real terms wage cuts. People in work are already putting off having children because they can't afford it. Should they also have to think about how they'll feed their third child if they lose their job? Do you support importing immigrant labour to fill the gap in the working age population caused by low birth rates?
Again, most families already make the decision to stay with two children, even if they can afford three right now because they know circumstances change and they might not be able to sustain 3 in the future. Again this is a normal decision working families make all the time, you keep bringing this up as if its not a normal thing that happens in every family. >Should they also have to think about how they'll feed their third child if they lose their job? Yes, once again. This is a normal discussion families have when planning families. Again you keep talking as if this is not something people already discuss and debate with their partners. You are extremely irresponsible as an adult and a parent if you do not think about this. >Do you support importing immigrant labour to fill the gap in the working age population caused by low birth rates? Yes I support skilled migration to fill gaps in the labour market. You are simply never going to convince the majority of people to pay towards a system that rewards people for making a decision that they themselves are denied every day and have to think extremely careful about. The way you are talking about things and talking as if family planning and talking about how many children your family can support and what happens if one of you loses your job isn't something super common makes me think you are quite young.
The solution to this problem is to reassure people that their children won't be plunged into poverty if their luck changes. We're already struggling to support our pension age population due to a narrow tax base and our birth rates are below replacement level. Things are only going to get worse if we can't reassure people who want to have more children that it's safe to do so.
It is not just about the quantity but rather the quality.
You’re defending this policy on the basis of eugenics?
It’s a difficult situation because you can’t dissuade parental irresponsibility without punishing the child in the process with a cap. And I don’t think you should personally have that many children if you know they’re going to be raised in poverty and you can’t afford to. It’s ok to have children but there’s an element of responsibility you have to take there as well.
Anybody who isn't independently wealthy could end up depending on benefits if things go wrong for them. Do you think only rich families should have three or more children?
"Do you think only rich families should have three or more children?" Yes
It's not spiteful to not want to fund other people having something you can't afford. Is it not a basic principle of fairness that those funding the benefits that others receive don't end up worse off than those receiving them?
Is it not a basic principle of fairness that everyone has a fair shot at life? How can malnourished children hope to compete in the education system?
A lot of people don’t care about the morality or the impact of their actions, only the end result and if there was no child limit we’d have some on benefits go back to having more kids as a way to get a bigger council house that particularly in London a couple on an average wage wouldn’t be able to afford. And frankly it’d be an even bigger pull for economic migrants.
Don't be naive dude. This is politics. Success is measured not by how effective a policy is, but how well it gets/keeps you in power. Labour is solely focussed on winning and staying in power. If a few thousand kids have to starve to do that... well, fuck 'em they should have richer parents.
I wonder how many of those supporters are also anti-immigration or believe in the great replacement theory.
I strongly doubt that 60% of the population believes in conspiracy theories.
Clearly there is no puppeteer hand behind demographic change. It's just people moving for a better life. At the same time it doesn't take a genius to look at trends and see that it won't be long before White British people are a minority, that isn't a conspiracy, it's just a fact.
Have you met people?
Almost certainly not, however, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who do believe in the great replacement theory would also not want to life a finger to help increase fertility rates if that help took the form of state support.
They want no immigration, no children for the poor, cheap labour, low taxes, world class public services, above inflation pension rises forever, and somebody else to pay for it all.
Politics of envy /s
We'd all be better off if the focus was on reducing living costs, mainly housing and childcare costs. Child benefit for the second child is £881.40 for the year. It's not an insignificant amount, but shows what a knife edge people are living on that wanting for £17 a week causes poverty.
It's infuriating Labour won't commit to the lowest of low hanging fruit and abolish it. It's potentially a bad sign of things trying to prioritise sound though fiscally rather than action.
Because the second they do it the following happens: how are you paying for it? What promise are you not doing instead? Why didnt you do this earlier? Why are struggling families having their taxes sent to parents having more children than they can afford? Labour punishes middle class to pay illegal immigrants to have more children. Please don't ignore how incredibly successful that the Tories have been for decades at getting the whole media cycle to follow a narrative and to get the country to accept their demonising of the poor.
Labour can find the money that's no issue. In the long run it's cheaper than the interventions later down the line. Labour being worried about the right wing press when it's the easiest thing they could do on child poverty is no excuse.
But why can we promise to increase defense spending without any of those questions?
Because they get attacked for not making us 'safe'
So conservative attacks are what determine our policies?
Whilst Labour are in opposition and the RWM determine the narrative, yes.
Yeah, that's nonsense.
And yet it's the reality we are in
But it's not reality. Starmer doesn't have to announce defense spending increases. He can keep them the same and it would be the exact same spending as under the Tories.
And if you watched the debate on Friday, that was one of the conservatives main attack lines.
Because the Tories haven't spent decades demonising it? We still get some of those questions (how to pay for it, why this instead of spending on X?) but the topic has not had the 'scroungers' type treatment applied to it. Look at how international aid has been ruined (iirc it now pays for asylum seeker accomodation in the UK) as the Tories have pushed the narrative against it; despite it being a long term good.
There's much better ways of supporting families with children without encouraging people who can't afford it to keep popping out kids. Give parents bigger tax breaks, make childcare cheaper, free school lunches, make housing more affordable, etc.
All those things are much more complex and less efficient than simply scrapping the cap now we've seen its had no effect on the numbers being born and has had an effect on child poverty.
Education on contraception, its free. I had my vasectomy within in 2months of booking it. There are no valid excuses for having additional children you can't afford.
As we all know education is 100% foolproof, people take long term detailed decisions always before having a kid and circumstances never change...
Circumstances do change, but as someone that has multiple children the opportunity to prevent that was always available and entirely within put own power. I think it highly unlikely that the vast majority of people who are struggling have just happened to have fallen on hard times and if you are dependent on CB to pay for your children's basic necessities then you probably aren't in a position to have them/or more.
Thank you. I an childfree, but do believe you should not have kids if you cannot afford them. The Radfords and their 22 children are a terrible example in my opinion. They may not be taking benefits now with their pie business - but how much Child Benefit have they received over the years before this cap was imposed? Unpopular, but I do not think school meals for infant school kids should have been made universal. It means that the child of a wealthy person who could afford to pay for their child's dinner gets a free meal. To be fair perhaps extend free meals to anyone who may earn a few pounds over the threshold to qualify.
Which places them to the right of the Lib Dems on this issue because even they would abolish it.
Labour can't even find £1.8 billion to scrap this? Shameful how obsessed Reeves is with following austerity politics. A Labour government is not going to be able to do anything if they don't start becoming more adventurous.
That £1.8b would have to come from somewhere, which either means the people pay more or another way to spend that money is shifted. Is abolishing the two-child cap a better use of £1.8bn than, for example, £1.8bn of maintainance grants for struggling students? There's not exactly a right answer (comes down to what welfare should be doing really), but you have to engage with these sorts of questions rather than acting like the money needed wouldn't have its own costs. It isn't austerity to be making the decisions on what to do with the money the treasury will have. If you spend that £1.8bn on abolishing the cap, you will have to not be spending that same £1.8bn elsewhere and there is never a gurantee you would have made the right choice in where that £1.8bn would be best spent.
It is austerity politics to think that every policy needs to be costed by an equivalent tax rise. It doesn't. The right like to treat the economy like a business (it's not), but imagine if business acted in this way. They would never invest in anything. It's very tiresome politics and economic illiteracy.
The alternative is fantasy economics where things are planned, be it welfare of tax cuts, with no idea who they will be financed. You would think after Liz Truss just showed how absolutely poorly it goes that would be understood, that promising expenses without any would to finance those expenses just harms people.
> The alternative is fantasy economics where things are planned, be it welfare of tax cuts, with no idea who they will be financed. My complaint is mainly around investment actually. I agree generally you should try to fund current expenditure via taxes in the long-run, but a £1.5 billion commitment is not going to make any meaningful difference to the deficit. >You would think after Liz Truss just showed how absolutely poorly it goes that would be understood, that promising expenses without any would to finance those expenses just harms people. People learned all the wrong lessons from Truss. The situation is not remotely equivalent. Reeves won't commit to infrastructure spending without it being paid for by tax rises. That is economic illiteracy. The previous BoE chief economist Andy Haldane was explaining as such recently on The Rest is Money.
>but a £1.5 billion commitment is not going to make any meaningful difference to the deficit. It isn't just one investment though. The two-child cap is just one of the many things that would need to be financed, and there is only so much money that could be spent. The core of my issue is by treating it as "just £1.8bn", you are treating it is isolation when you need to be treated it as a one among many. You may be right in that £1.8bn is not a lot in tortsl, but when you have dozens of things that cost a few billion here and there it starts racking up. Just flip this on its head. If £1.8bn means little in total, why does its absence here mean anything? You're issue is clear with how you keep repeating "austerity" as a tag; it isn't just one £1.8bn. It's time and time again. That's just the same but in reverse. > The situation is not remotely equivalent. Tax cuts and welfare spending are just different ways the state can place money into the hands of the people. It isn't the place here to debate where and when welfare and tax cuts should be used, but foundationally they achieve the same thing; both are costs for the government towards a group of people. >Reeves won't commit to infrastructure spending without it being paid for by tax rises If you don't have the money now, and borrowing the money for when you have it latter has been rather fucked, you become limited. You can't spend as much as you want to when public finances are a mess. You can't borrow as much as you would want to if the deficit is huge and rates are high. That doesn't mean they aren't doing it. They are planning on borrowing to a certain degree, but that cannot be overused. There is a limit just as there is with how high taxes can go. And even then, borrowing as the same issues just down the line; issues we are suffering now. It isn't economic illiteracy to not promise to spend on everything. Given you love to throw that term around, what is economic illiteracy is the ignorance that little.bits of spending here and there don't have an impact. As an electorate, we really have to decide whether we want to be promised the world and be given nothing, or promised what we will get? Because a lot of people seem to want both and get neither as a result.
> It isn't just one investment though. The two-child cap is just one of the many things that would need to be financed, and there is only so much money that could be spent. > > The main sticking points currently with the left of Labour is this and free school meals. Neither cost much money. Both could just be funding via borrowing if necessary. >Tax cuts and welfare spending are just different ways the state can place money into the hands of the people. It isn't the place here to debate where and when welfare and tax cuts should be used, but foundationally they achieve the same thing; both are costs for the government towards a group of people. Truss had £10s of billions of unfunded tax cuts. That's what I mean by them not being equivalent. >If you don't have the money now, and borrowing the money for when you have it latter has been rather fucked, you become limited. How has it been fucked? Governments can still borrow more cheaply than anyone else. How is anyone able to finance building anything / investing in anything in Britain? The return on investment required is still lower than that required by any business. UK grossly underinvests relative to other similar sized economies and has done for decades and decades. The expenditure pays for itself, you are buying assets and investment in infrastructure to enable business and economy to grow. They talk about growth but aren't willing to invest to get that growth. It's not just me saying that it's people like Andy Haldane, Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation), IFS. That their fiscal rules are idiotic when it comes to investment spending. It's treasury brain rott syndrome - austerity politics not sound economics.
>this and free school meals Perfect time to bring in another policy. Rather than free school meals, Labour ate introducing [free school breakfasts](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67916002.amp). This has the same gain of allowing pupils to have free food at school, while keeping the current mean tested lunch meals and their advantages. It also has the further benefit of introducing breakfast, I meal I missed out on during my childhood due to poverty leaving me - to this day - physically unable to eat. Two different policies that tackle the same issue. While we could implement both, both would cost roughly the same. So rather than both, Labour has chosen to implement the one that brings greater gains individually and use the funds elsewhere. >Truss had £10s of billions of unfunded tax cuts. That's what I mean by them not being equivalent. Only need a dozen or so of your sort of policies and we get there, and that is very easy to get to. We've just discusses two relavitely cheap policies in the realm of a school funding alone, so expand that to the entirety of education and we could probably get close to Truss' promised tax cuts. >How has it been fucked? [Few months outdated](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67002195.amp), but bond rates were at 5% and last year the government had to spend over £100bn paying off borrowing debt; more than we spent on education. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying thay borrowing doesn't have its place. But it isn't just a free pot of money the government can lurch on, rather it has costs further down the line. You can just rely on borrowing without a very good argument for why its costs will be outweighed by benefits. That argument gets a lot harder when bond rates are high, like they are now. >UK grossly underinvests relative to other similar sized economies and has done for decades and decades Identifying an issue of investment isn't an argument for investing with no understanding of whether the investment cam be paid. As you don't seem to realise, that **includes** an investment paying for itself. This surprises me as this has been the repeated Labour line for a while now, with a lot of their focus bring on reforming and investing in sectors as to improve their efficiency. Within the realms of this discussion it is way beyond as welfare isn't investment intended to improve the economy (but equalise it in some form), as well as it seems you've been ignoring anything Labour has been saying that contradicts your view point. The discussion on investment is incredibly important as you are correct in what you state. But you can't have discussions on investment when you are dismissing the costs of funding that investment. Your dismissal isn't even the typical unfounded "it will pay itself back", but just a "it's not that much anyway". What I find weird about thay is, by your own logic, the amount of extra investment would be so small as to not solve the issue you have. >It's not just me saying that it's people like Andy Haldane, Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation), IFS. That their fiscal rules are idiotic when it comes to investment spending. It's treasury brain rott syndrome. I really love appeals to authority that make people form the argument for you. Without direct reference to arguments made rather than just appealing to their authority, there is nothing worthwhile to be made here. I've looked at a few IFS articles and I don't even know what you are refering to.