Employed people get child benefit as well. Employed people also get tax credits. I'm not sure what you're proposing to cut. And I'm still not sure why you want to take it from people who are already short of money and give it to people with lower living costs.
To me, the idea of paying everyone, equally, for having children is very silly and flawed. Especially if it's designed in such a way that everyone with kid can get it, including Prime Minister.
To working parents, the £20.30 a week makes very little to no difference, to non working parents that money suddenly becomes passport to better life, as it comes with additional benefits - bigger house, etc. And then we have the further oddity of the child benefits, where any "resident", temporary migrant, student, refugee, asylum seeker, anyone with temporary or permanent resident status is offered that 20 quid as long as they can prove they managed to breed at some point in the last n-teen years. In many cases regardless of whether the kid is actually physically present in the country for more than a day. That's insane. It's incentive in a wrong direction. Take it away. Dont' give it to just anyone. Any financial help for parents should be means tested first.
Why not offer social care or food tokens instead. We'll feed you and your kid, we'll give your kids lunch tokens they can exchange for sandwiches at school, we'll make sure kids have appropriate school and winter clothing, if it's "difficult family situation" we'll provide the kid with after hours extra curriculum - space to read, watch TV, paint, draw, do homework and play with other kids until late afternoon. And assign social worker to monitor if parents start breeding without means to maintain existing family.
I don't agree that jumpsuits would help.
The jumpsuit is to create stigma. Being jobless should be bad, it should be thrown upon. At the moment there is no stigma about being unemployed for prolonged period of time.
If anything, it's vice versa, most of my neighbours can't believe I wake up every morning and go to work, return late and night and I will have to keep doing it for the next 25 years of my mortgage. Why would anyone do it, if you can get the same house practically for free, and chill out all day with mates while watching sky sports with a can of Tescos lager in your hand. Yellow jumpsuits, if they don't like to wear them, there is plenty of equally mind numbing jobs out there to apply that don't involve wearing bright uniform - washing dishes, cleaning offices on night shift, etc.
So basically you wish to institute a form of slavery upon people? I lose my job in an area of deprivation, have to go on the dole whilst I seek work, cannot find it and thus have to spend my days wearing a jumpsuit and doing menial tasks, leaving me no time to find a job.
No, not slavery. Payback. After first 12 months you would simply have to work for your further benefits. So it's not slavery, you get effectively paid for it. Let's say you would need to do 20 hours a week. Which would leave you with at least another 20 to find a job. You'd be encouraged to check all the listings before you get picked up for your motorway ditch clearing duties. It's not to punish you. It's to provide you with incentive to find any other work. Because let's face it, if you couldn't find one for 12 months, the chances that you might be rocket scientist pressed to the ground by economic downturn is very slim and the chance that you just ef around is rather high. And tax payers cannot sponsor idleness forever. Can they? It is not unfair to the jobless, it's unfair to those who pay for it, right?
Of course businesses would be sympathetic and offer me a way out rather than knowing such people would have to take anything over what they currently had....
There is employment law and minimum wage guarding that. You can continue getting minimum government handouts for fishing trolleys our of river bed in yellow jumsuit, or.. or... and I know this is unusual idea... actually do other work - like sling some burgers for your old jumpsuit mates, be a waiter, or bus driver, or shop assistant or whatever else is available to anyone than walks through the door, including those that don't speak English. That's how desperate that part of job market is, you see, they will even give the job to someone who needs instructions in signed language. Sure it's not the same as browsing facebook while at work for some Acme Corp, but it sure beats yellow jumpsuit and painting over grafitis? True Story.
As for no more child benefits, are you insane? So what happens to the families that cannot fund themselves due to work shortages, change in mortgage rates etc?
Not strictly child benefits, but why not - well, one part of me says - "if you can't afford to live in Paris, you shouldn't live in Paris". In what alternate universe should tax payer pay for a lifestyle you cannot afford, especially for prolonged period of time? Tough. Sell it and downsize. The other part of me thinks this should be part of your mortgage insurance package?
Plus the current system creates so many anomalies - parents splitting up just to get second council flat and then rent, or people working in Canary Wharf offices that travel from mop closet studios all over s***holes and deep suburbs in Kent and Essex, while people who don't work or work very little, live in duplex flats on Isle Of Dogs and Poplar with view over Canary Wharf and will keep living there as long as they don't let anyone to promote them above shelf stacker position in Asda. So on, so forth. That's not right. That's just oddity. Oddity involving several million people. And they begin to believe it's how it should be - that it's the regular turn of events!
Not to mention the long term implication of people not bothering to have children. For an example, look at Italy.
How is having several generations of council flat dwellers base their lifestyle on teenage pregnancy and handouts any better though?