DaveO wrote:
Well this is quite insightful as it points to ignorance on your part. Not of how much is available so much but what the costs are such as housing benefit. Unless she is in an area where the governments experiment of paying housing benefits direct to claimants is going on (and failing) she won't even see the housing benefit as it goes direct to the landlord. So she won't get £32K a year paid to her anyway and that will be a large part of that cost.
Your taxes line the landlords pockets, not hers.
That is ironic coming from you. You moan she isn't incentivised to work yet when the reality of what that would mean is pointed out to you all you can do is "smile" because clearly, you haven't got a clue.
£8580 per annum paid direct to the landlord.
£4524 per annum paid as child benefit, a non means tested benefit that every parent in the country gets, even David Cameron.
£15024 per annum paid as child tax credit, a benefit which at that level is income based and not contributory, the actual figure dependant on the number of under 16s or under 18s in full time education living at the property in the parental care of the claimant, a figure that is carefully calculated according to stringent rules and not just handed out willy-nilly as anyone who has ever claimed it will confirm.
The Mail claim that she gets £303 a month in income support which cannot be correct as this is paid at a maximum of £56 per week, income support is for those exceptional circumstances when a person or family are literally living below the poverty line, you have to be working less than 16 hours per week (or not at all), pregnant or a carer or a single parent with a child under 5, and have no other source of earned income, it can be claimed by the homeless, you do not qualify if you are claiming job seekers allowance - in other words its for the destitute and those who cannot work through circumstances other than disability and its the claiming of income support that then entitles you to the full rate of income based child tax credits.
So she starts off with no income and no support from her estranged husband, the state pays for her rent after she is evicted from her own house and because with young children she is a priority for social housing, and then gives her £56 a week income support which then entitles her to the child tax credit, the child benefit is paid as a matter of course whether she was a millionaire or penniless.
She does herself no favours by claiming that she can't survive on less but even so I can see that it would be a challenge to raise seven children on £1900 a month, its do-able though.
The proposed cap of £26k will remove £5000 straight out of the household cash budget because I don't suppose for one minute that the landlord will agree to shoulder some of that reduction, so £1400 a month to raise seven children and pay all of the utility bills etc etc (bear in mind that the house will be occupied right through the day with a young child and will need heating in the winter), its probably pitched at a level that most would think reasonable but it will be tight.
