2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge

If you are poor, why have 3, 4 or 5 kids? You are putting them into poverty.

Yeah, definitely too many people having children.🤪

The other argument is that the additional local government spending required to meet their legal obligations as a result of the 2-child cap far outstrips the saving achieved to central government from the cap (they claim it's a pretty minimal £190million).

So you think it's a good idea for poor people to have lots of kids, so they bring up more children in poverty.

Unless you can afford it, why on earth do you need more than two kids?

The dilemma of course is that a society shouldn't be punishing children for the circumstances and choices of their parents, but at the same time poor (or any) parents having more children than they can afford and look after properly isn't helping a cohesive society.

As a not-parent, I can't help thinking that there must be a more nuanced method than Child Benefit, whose simplicity, when it was introduced, was admirable (not least in its going direct to the 'housewife'). But to uncap the benefit would seem to give the wrong incentive now.

Maybe Reeves's coyness is because they are thinking about other ways to support children of poor families other than giving all the benefits directly as money-per-child (e.g. free breakfasts and other in-school provision). That'd be my hunch, though probably a bad one.

Maybe not an incentive as such (I dunno, that would need some in-depth discussions with poor parents with large families to ascertain), but the State saying it'll pay a flat rate for an unlimited number of children doesn't seem to be a disincentive to making unwise decisions.

I'm not pretending to have easy answers, but the messaging, both conscious and unconscious, of how benefits and allowances/support are structured surely can surely nudge people into making better decisions.

I think it's a good idea for people to have kids. I don't think any government should be determining who may and who may not have children. That way is a slippery slope to arguing for the poor and infirm to be sterilised 'for their own good' and we are done with that shit.

The amounts saved by introducing the cap are pretty trivial in the scheme of things - a tiny fraction of the amount spent on the Winter Fuel Allowance, but obviously the elderly poor are more deserving than the young. So it's really not a question of whether it can be afforded: just a choice to spend the money on something else.

Human beings do actually need to have more than two children on average in order to maintain a stable population. So yes, at a population level we do need more than 2 children. Pretty sure I covered this in GCSE Geography. For fairly obvious evolutionary reasons, human beings in precarious circumstances are predisposed to have more children. The converse is also true. As people become more comfortable they have fewer children. This is where we and most developed countries are.

At the other end of life, I can certainly tell you from experience that having a sibling or two to share the load of caring for an elderly or dying parent makes all the difference in the world.

I think I prefer the "big government is bad" right wingers to the "let's have state sponsored sterilization on the povos" ones!

It's £16.95 a week for the second child. If reintroduced for a third it would likely be less again. It's barely going to cover the extra food.

Looked at another way, it's had no obvious effect on poorer families having more than 2 children but the birth rate has continued to fall. It seems to be stopping the 'wrong' people from breeding.

Musk and all his Techbro pro-natalists?

They probably think both are true depending on what the question being asked is. As many idiots have proven over the years, it's amazing how many conflicting opinions can be held in little tiny minds.

Life isn't quite as neat and tidy as all children being carefully planned. People's circumstances change as well.

BTW, the annual bill to remove the 2-child cap is about a quarter of what has been spent to not deport anyone to Rwanda.

Surprised Stevo hasn’t been on to gloat and Labour’s majority already being reduced. Anyone thinking Starmer will have his strings pulled by the Left may have to think again.