Cap child benefit? There are better ways to cut the welfare bill

David Davis is plainly right that the Tories are just testing the water to see how talk about capping child benefit to two children for people on the dole goes down with the punters. And the predictable result is that the water isn’t really all that cold.  The suggestion has gone down nicely with quite a few, especially those – no offence folks! – who sound off on the internet. Any restrictions on welfare are popular; we know that. And it’s all too easy to think of examples of egregious fecundity on the part of people who we would probably prefer not to be parents at all: the child-killer Mick Philpott say, father of 17. As Iain Duncan Smith observes, most working families have to think hard about having children; ‘yet within the welfare system, it’s almost turned on its head, so additional children are actually recognised, with no limit.’