Old arguments about Child Benefit are revived

It seems at times that no proposal ever dies, no matter how foolish.  Earlier this year, we saw the revival of the  proposal to adopt EBT cards, which don’t work.  Now it’s the turn of the argument to cut Child Benefit for families with more than two children.  I dealt with the arguments about this more than two years ago. Last July the Policy Exchange suggested a restriction to four children, which would have done very little to save money – – it would affect about 3% of families, and then not for all the benefit – but would have introduced a string of complications into the administration of a relatively simple benefit.    Now Iain Duncan Smith (of course) has come back to the idea of limiting it to two children, which would affect about a fifth of all families.  It was a bad idea two years ago.  At a time when families don’t have enough money for food, it’s an even worse idea now.

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