Why would you bother to look for work when you’ve £30k or more in benefits?
August 17th, 2010 | 
Author: Stories like the 30k couple with 11 kids are appearing with increasing regularity in the press these days and, as usual, it’s collected the expected collection of comments expressing various degrees of indignation that these people feel that the state (ie us) should pay them to look after their kids full-time.
But, why would they bother to look for work if they were getting 30k coming in for doing nothing? Actually, it’s somewhat more than that as there’s the 15k to add on for the house and together that’s equivalent to a pre-tax salary of at least £60,000. Even with the best will in the world to find work, they’d need great qualifications to find a job paying anything like that level anywhere in the country. Thus, they can quite validly say to the benefits office that they are unable to find suitable work.
As most of these people say, it’s not their fault that they’re entitled to so much. Despite the comments that such cases always attract, they are quite correct once they’ve reached the situation of having double digit numbers of children. That’s not to say that it’s right that they should be entitled to so much though because it just isn’t. Where the benefits system falls down with people like this is that it’s designed for reasonable people who are expected to have the intention to behave in a reasonable way in regards to their family, looking for work, etc. Reasonable people don’t expect other people to pay for enormous families but there is no limitation in the rules that says “five is enough” or anything similar. Thus, in principle, you could have a family with, say, 20 kids pocketing over £100,000 and perhaps there is such a family out there.
How many would be “enough” children though? Would it be, say, three because that’s just over the average for the country? That seems a reasonable point to start reducing benefits for numbers above that. However, what do you do with someone like Miss Shepherd (the case mentioned above) who has had the children to three different fathers? You might think that would be difficult to deal with but it’s not really if you allocate the “reasonable number” of kids to each parent ie not “three per family” but “1 1/2 per parent” so you could quite easily allocate the allowances.
Whatever way such changes come in, as they surely must do, there are going to be screams from those benefiting from all that money now. It’s never going to be easy to get such people to change their attitudes because they’ve built up over such a long period but the “someone else can pay” attitude needs to get stamped out and soon.
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I’m not sure where you get your figures from – but if we use the Mail’s figures (discounting what “could” be claimed) I think you are being disingenuous to those who may read this blog.
So, what we need to look at is the figures:
20.30 x 1 = 20.30
13.40 x 10 = 134.00
89.80 x 1 = 89.80
=/= 244.14 per week x 52 = 12693.20.
SO they received, which if we deduct that from the total 30k leaves us with a disparity of 17306.80. Now, as that looks like it is the housing benefit which includes council tax the landlord who has provided that house is making a fortune to the tune of 1442.24 per month off the tax payer.
So, who is the real crook? Who is the one/company that is raking it in, as they will, in all probability not just have one house to rent, wouldn’t it be better for you and those who blog in such a way going after those who are really taking the piss out of tax payers?
If councils were to build homes – something we need a lot of – and were able to rent at a reasonable rate then things would be different, they are not.
The figures on the Mail are from two different angles and don’t add up properly.
Merely counting the Child Benefit, it would be £20 x 1 plus £13 x 10. However, there is also the Child Tax Credit which is somewhat more substantial and amount to another £460 per week or £24,000 per year. Each additional child is worth around £58/week or £3,000 per year.
Also, to the £89 for her partner you need to add around £60 for her since they’re unemployed. This adds another £3000 or so.
Thus we have your £13,000 plus £24,000 plus £3,000 ie around £40,000. Which, of course, excludes the housing benefit of £15,000 taking the total up to £55,000 or thereabouts before you even count things like free school meals, free transport to/from school, free school uniforms, free council tax, etc. However, even ignoring all those (which would easily add another £5,000) that lot is largely taxfree so it would equate to something like £80,000 (I underestimated the Child Tax Credit before).