Rachel Reeves drops £3bn bomb on UK taxpayers – £20k benefits boost to families | Personal Finance | Finance
The Chancellor has made the decision to scrap the two-child benefit cap in full, and apparently we’re all meant to celebrate. We’re supposed to smile politely and agree that this is some great moral victory. But I can’t. In fact, I won’t. All this decision does is reward irresponsibility while punishing the very people who actually get up and go to work in the first place. Let’s be completely honest, this is not a complicated debate. It’s basic common sense. Yet I’m tired of being told I’m selfish for asking a simple question: Why should people who work hard have to subsidise people who don’t?
Why should those who put in the hours, who juggle bills, who sacrifice daily, be told that they must tighten their belts yet again, so others can loosen theirs? It’s not cruelty. It’s not heartlessness. It’s not selfishness. It’s called basic fairness, a concept that Westminster seems to have completely forgotten about. The political class is so obsessed with signalling compassion that they’ve abandoned the fundamentals of responsibility altogether.
Let’s talk numbers. Scrapping the two-child benefit cap will cost around £3billion. According to The Times, some large families could be up to £20,000 a year better off when the cap is lifted. Twenty thousand pounds! That’s not loose change down the back of the sofa, that’s an entire year’s take-home pay for huge numbers of people desperately trying to get by.
It’s absurd for the Government to plead poverty as justification for hiking income tax and national insurance, while simultaneously giving some families a pay rise that’s bigger than my entire take-home salary.
They wonder why people like me are angry. I have no shame in saying no. No, I don’t want to pay for other people to have four, five, six children. No, I don’t want my wages raided so others can enjoy a standard of living I can’t afford myself.
And, no, I refuse to apologise for expecting adults to take responsibility for the families they choose to create.
People like me are not the problem. We’re not cruel. We’re not heartless. We’re not the villains we’re painted as. We simply believe in the same rules applying to everyone.
And here’s the reality politicians try desperately to avoid admitting – most working families today stop at one child, or two if they’re lucky, because life is expensive.
They budget. They save. They go without. They say no to holidays, meals out, new clothes, because that’s what responsible parents do. So why should the rules change just because someone is on benefits? Why should personal responsibility vanish the moment someone else is paying?
The two-child cap was fair. It was reasonable. It kept the welfare state focused on supporting people through hard times, not funding endless lifestyle choices. Why should I have to go to work to pay for someone else to have multiple children when I can’t afford that myself?
I’m in my early twenties, trying to make my way in the world and build a career when the odds have never felt more stacked against any generation.
Why is it right that young people like me who work have to fund others who don’t, so they can live better than we can?
I’m not a bad person for refusing to fund someone else’s large family. You chose to have the children, you pay for them. Simple as that. Scrapping the cap won’t fix poverty. It won’t fix inequality. It will only deepen the divide between those who take responsibility and those who expect everyone else to carry them. And I refuse to stay quiet about it.
Sophie Corcoran is young people’s director at the Great British PAC
