Is this fair?

GrannyGravy13

Allira

I'm not sure about food vouchers, unless they can be used discreetly.
I remember children being embarrassed because others knew who had free school meals and who didn't.

The food vouchers during the school holidays for those on free school meals come via an email with a code that is scanned at the checkout.

Good. Is that throughout the UK?

I always remember that boy who was asked by the Childrdn's Commissioner if he enjoyed the school summer holidays.
He said no, he didn't because he didn't get a dinner in the holidays 😥

Definitely in England Allira

Oh my goodness, R. is wrong if she does and she is wrong if she doesn’t. Give her a chance, the others had 14 years.

The UK has the lowest tax rate in Europe, if you want a lower taxes think of the USA and then pay your health bills etc. The sick in some cases finish on the streets because they have had to sell their homes for medication.

So, yes kick out Labour and vote in, 3x millionaire, Farage who not only spent time in Russia and steered the UK out of the EU but is also friends with Trump.

“After the budget and the removal of the cap she was pleased to say their monthly income would increase by £900.” 5 children.

I don’t understand this calculation. It’s £26.05 for the first child and £17.50 for subsequent children.
According to Gov calculations £112 per month for first child and £74. 75 for subsequent children.
So £112 + 4x £74.75 ( £299). = £411
Not an insubstantial amount, but not £900.

J52

“After the budget and the removal of the cap she was pleased to say their monthly income would increase by £900.” 5 children.

I don’t understand this calculation. It’s £26.05 for the first child and £17.50 for subsequent children.
According to Gov calculations £112 per month for first child and £74. 75 for subsequent children.
So £112 + 4x £74.75 ( £299). = £411
Not an insubstantial amount, but not £900.

You are posting about Child Benefit which is payed for all children.

RR has lifted the Universal Credit benefit which was capped at two children. Totally different benefits 🤷‍♀️

Oh, thank you for explaining GG13, not something I have much experience of.

Yet the vitriol on Mumsnet towards older people is phenomenal! According to most of them on there we are all rolling in it, big house, and multiple cruises and holidays, not to mention my £35.000 per year pension. Oh ma sides....I b***y wish!

I'm not sure we have the lowest tax rates in Europe

I totally agree with the OP. When I was younger I took on extra work when I needed more money. People today know how to work the system but it’s the fault of the government. I have to admit the older I get the more right wing I’m becoming.

I’m disappointed (🙈) that the initial plan to remove WFA for those above pension tax credit and start the process of reducing PIP was so badly managed

Some people believed cancer patients would lose pip and other benefits.

Had there been a proper process, with clear stats and information I suspect the majority of Labour mp’s would have supported.
The benefit bill isn’t sustainable.

Homestead62

Yet the vitriol on Mumsnet towards older people is phenomenal! According to most of them on there we are all rolling in it, big house, and multiple cruises and holidays, not to mention my £35.000 per year pension. Oh ma sides....I b***y wish!

This tax break on those on the new State Pension will upset them even more.

I do not understand a lot of the thinking behind some of the decisions this Government has made in successive Budgets.

But, but, but. What if the parents are in work, have a good income, a nicwe house and decide to have a third or even fourth child, then something goes badly wrong: an accident, an illness, unemployment.

How do you feel about the 2 child cap in those circumstances?

M0nica

But, but, but. What if the parents are in work, have a good income, a nicwe house and decide to have a third or even fourth child, then something goes badly wrong: an accident, an illness, unemployment.

How do you feel about the 2 child cap in those circumstances?

Yes, unexpected circumstances can happen to anyone, as I already said.

Sudden changes in circumstances can happen to anyone, loss of a job, illness, and of course a safety net should be there but it is defining the line between safety net and lifestyle choice that is the conundrum for Governments.

38% of people needing to claim Univeral Credit are working. That says a lot about our low-wage economy, that working people need to claim benefits to survive.

No child asks to be born, has any control over how its parents behave or what size of family they chose to have.

Universal Credit amounts to around £75 a week per child.

Scrapping the two children UC cap is estimated to cost around £2.3 billion. It’s about the same as paying the Winter Fuel Payment. I figure if the government can return to paying all pensioner households £200 or £300 every year whether they need it or not (and only those individuals with incomes in excess of £35,000 will pay it back), then they can also do this small thing so that fewer child go hungry.

Around 40 million people in the UK pay income tax. If one subscribes to the notion that tax funds public spending (I don’t but it’s how most think of it) then it means every taxpayer paying around £1 a week to cover that £2.3 billion so that children don’t go hungry. The government has just paid me £200 WFP = £4 a week.

Some of the comments on this thread make me very sad indeed.

Francis Ryan writing in The Guardian:

There are moments in politics to celebrate and there are moments to not be complacent. Sometimes, it is both at once. Eight years of campaigning, court cases and a change in government have at last rid the country of the scourge of the benefit limit. Hundreds of thousands of children will be safer; their parents less afraid.

And yet the energy it took to get here and the backlash it has already provoked show starkly how progress is an uphill battle. Decency is not a simple sell. Prejudice and resentment are, sadly, much easier to spread. The most obvious of truths – that every child matters, that some things go beyond partisan point-scoring – are, to some, not obvious at all.

Cheer the victory today. Tomorrow, the fight continues. The two-child limit is at last abolished but the sentiment that created it is alive and well.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/27/two-child-benefit-limit-abolished-budget

No child asks to be born, has any control over how its parents behave or what size of family they chose to have.

As has already been posted on this thread.

Doesn’t that man that 52% of the people claiming Universal Credit aren’t working because they don’t need to. They have enough money to live comfortably without having to bother.

I wonder why the 32% carry on?

62% 38%

68% of 8.3 million on Universal Credit.

That’s just over 5 million people who can live without having to work just on this benefit.

Did the two child cap stop people on benefits having three or more children?

You are all so gung ho for being cruel to children by leaving them in poverty, and punitive towards their parents and, frankly, it is horrible to read.

No punitive treatment has ever stopped poor people reproducing, the Victorians tried very hard with their dreadful poor law, but it didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.

Of course, what would be helpful would be to have a government which prioritised investing for growth and full employment, and which actively worked to ensure that the money it spent into the economy was more equably distributed by preventing the wealthy from sucking it all in their direction by way of excessive wages and profits and a much lighter tax regime.

But that would also need a population who abandoned the household budget myth, stopped fixating on government ‘debt’ and had at least a rudimentary understanding of how money actually works in the national economy. Because it is the public’s ‘beliefs’ which hold government back as much as it is poor economics.

Around 40 million people in the UK pay income tax.
That includes many pensioners.

Prejudice and resentment are, sadly, much easier to spread.
That is so obvious when you see the amount of prejudice and resentment against old people by younger generations. It really is quite alarming.

Every child matters Of course they do and you're right, they do not ask to be born but the question is not about the children who deserve our help, but why do some people have more children than they can properly care for?
Most young people don't in fact.

Why do people have more children than they can care for?

If you decide to have a benefits lifestyle then it makes sense to continue to have children. There are benefits of scale and it also ensures continuity of payment until almost pension age.

It makes more sense than working in one of the lower pad jobs or even the lower moderate range because benefits attract no tax or work expenses.

It’s more a question of what on earth drives people to go out to work when they don’t need to. What motivates the 38%?

Let's face it - state benefits have always been a political football and I have been saying for around fifty years that the government (whichever party runs it) needs to invest in a complete re-think of the entire system. Years ago the technology wasn't there but it is now. We need to start from scratch and get it right. I think the Libdems once had a plan for "negative income tax" that seemed a damn good idea to me, but of course they have only ever had one real shot at government in that time and David Cameron saw to it that they only got to influence the things he fancied - and made a complete miscalculation of the Brexit vote. Nick Clegg's book about his 5-year experience as deputy PM is an eye-opener.

We need safety nets. No-one knows if their circumstances might suddenly change. We certainly don't want to go back to Victorian times when we had Poor Houses and people's description on the Census was Pauper because they were too old or ill to work and had no income or children were begging in the streets. I have witnessed that (not in this country).
We're a more civilised country than that.

Creating jobs by Government spending might be a start.

Safety nets yes.

But going back to the is this fair question. If the assumption is that people earning over a certain level can manage and over that can pay tax then that should be the level of benefit.

Set at the number of children in the family when benefit is claimed but not for any future children to cover that question of misfortune after children are born.

Nobody wants children in poverty but neither should they be created as a source of income. Money in doesn’t always mean money spent on children’s needs.

It doesn’t really matter how many jobs there are if you’re better off not having one though.