MSE News: Government shrugs off Lords benefits defeat

sarahg1969

They could save a fortune by scrapping child benefit altogether, and just including it in tax credits for those who are entitled. They'd save the cost of child benefits for those not on tax credits AND they could save all the administration by closing down the entire child benefit department.

Mind you, I'd lose my CB then - perhaps I'm not thinking this through clearly.

The level of benefits generally MUST be sorted. It's not right that people are entitled to claim high benefits just because they are disabled, especially for example, when that disability does not necessarily involve any extra living costs. Sometimes it amounts to no more than compensation for being dealt a poor hand in life.

sarahg1969

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I completely agree, Zziggi. It's completely ideological.
As with the child benefit cut to higher rate tax payers, I bet it will cost more to administer than it will save.

Getting rid of CB altogether, and adding it to tax credits for those with children would cost little to administer, and would mean that the CB department could be closed. Savings all round.

Homeagain

Gosh if I can expect to receive 26,000 per year I'm also giving up work. What an incentive!

ermine

but its going be tough childhood if your parents cant afford to feed you, yes they should have thought of it first but I bit late now!

Such children used to be taken into care if the parent(s) could not support their basic needs. There were many things wrong with that, but the transmission of a lack of values was at least interrupted.
Perhaps CB is okay for up to about 4 kids. Society should not be actively encouraging people to have more, unless they can resource them, in which case the rest of us don't have any say in the matter. Gordon Brown tried to address child poverty by throwing money at the problem. He did improve child poverty, but he also created some very serious long-term problems as it wasn't possible to to throw the money just at the children without some of it leaking to the parents. Having more children than you can afford should seriously screw up your standard of living, and dropping money from helicopters wherever there are poor kids about breaks that feedback mechanism. Society might be able to alleviate some of the impact on the children by giving benefits in kind targeted at the children's needs for > 3 kids.

shedboy94

sarahg1969 wrote: »

Getting rid of CB altogether, and adding it to tax credits for those with children would cost little to administer, and would mean that the CB department could be closed. Savings all round.

And put thousands of child benefit staff out of work and onto benefits.......great idea......well thought out!

sarahg1969

shedboy94 wrote: »

And put thousands of child benefit staff out of work and onto benefits.......great idea......well thought out!

Thank you. I agree.

Vejovis

shedboy94 wrote: »

And put thousands of child benefit staff out of work and onto benefits.......great idea......well thought out!

thousands, really? i thought it was just a few hundred up in newcastle?

Vincent_Buenisedes

wacko911 wrote: »

The cap should be 13K not 26k. Who elects these muppets?

Nobody elected them - the Conservatives have absolutely no mandate to impose their draconian and vicious ideology on the most poor and vulnerable families in the country, but are getting their way with help of the dispicable Lib Dems and the continuous right-wing propaganda about anybody who has the temerity to claim benefits pumped out by the discredited media!

sarahg1969

So, those on benefits should be exempt from any belt-tightening exercises? Despite some of them being on more money than they could ever hope to earn if they had a job?

Perhaps there shouldn't just be means testing? Maybe they should take your qualifications into account when deciding how much to pay in benefits?

flexrider

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

That figure sounds familiar.
There's 26 million households in Britain.

So we're talking about a quarter of one percent of households that this would affect.
Hardly sounds like it's going to save huge amounts of money to me!

Well said conmsiderating the cost to re-house the people it effects! Another alice in wonderland idea yes we have to tackle the benefit state but to do that we need more employment wage rises

can't understand why some unemployed people, seem to think it is there right that they should be exempt.

tits not just unemployed that recieve benefits
virtually every shopfloor staff at your local tesco sainsburys morrisons £5.80 an hour will be claiming shame if they have to give up work because they cant afford to live where you shop innit

The total number of people receiving Housing Benefit was 4.92 million, with 5.88 million claiming Council Tax Benefit. 3.64 million Housing Benefit recipients were aged under 65,
representing almost three quarters of all Housing Benefit recipients. 68 per cent of Housing Benefit recipients were tenants of Social Sector landlords.Around two thirds of both Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit recipients are in receipt of a Passported Benefit. The overall average Housing Benefit award is £87.03 per week, and
for Council Tax Benefit recipients, the overall average award was £15.72
per week. 3.89 million Housing Benefit recipients were single, with almost
two-thirds of these being female. Of the 1.68 million recipients with
at least one child dependent, 1.15 million of these were single.