The government is considering plans to limit child benefit payments to two children, according to recent reports.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Moneybox programme, David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“It’s important that the welfare system works in such a way that everybody is faced with a degree of responsibility as to the children they have and whether they are able to afford that.”
When the interviewer asked him whether this might mean limited child benefit to two people, he said:
“We are looking at it in terms of the welfare bill across the board as to how that might work.”
A spokesman for the Treasury would later confirm only that the government is considering further changes to the benefits system:
“The Government is exploring further options for making the welfare system fairer and more affordable, and details will be announced in due course.”
Last month the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith is reported to have suggested that unemployed parents could lose the right to additional benefit payments if they had more than two children.
From January, families in which one partner earns more than £50,000 will have to pay back part of their child benefit payments through an additional tax.
Is that 2 children by 1 mother? Could a father (indirectly, mother directly) get it for 6 children by 3 different mothers please? How about 3 grown up children and 1 under 18? I think I know the answers to this, but just wanted to point out on the riddulousness of government intervention in the bedroom and into personal lives.