The Government's new family cap on benefits will encourage long-term claimants to ''take responsibility'' for the number of children they have, Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, has said. He said the ''state shouldn't support'' large families who receive more in benefits than the average wage, currently £26,000. But he denied that the new limit was a ''penalty'' on large families.
''The number of children that you have is a choice and what we're saying is that if people are living on benefits, then they make choices but they also have to have responsibility for those choices,'' Mr Hunt told BBC2's Newsnight. ''It's not going to be the role of the state to finance those choices.'' He added: ''You can have children but if you are going to ask for support that is more than the average wage that people earn, then we're saying no, the state shouldn't support that. That's not fair on working people who have to pay the taxes to pay those benefits.''
Mr Hunt also insisted that the Government was right to withdraw child benefit from families where one parent is a higher-rate taxpayer. ''If ever there was a week when the Conservative Party and the coalition demonstrated its commitment to fairness, it's this week when they removed child benefit from top rate taxpayers,'' he said.
On Tuesday George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced plans that no one, apart from the disabled, would receive more in benefits in one year than the average wage. His aides claim it will save hundreds of millions of pounds from the welfare budget and that 50,000 families will be affected.
The £26,000 cap will introduce a limit on the total amount of benefit any one family can receive for the first time. The cap will be applied through the housing benefit system in most cases. Families with a total income from welfare benefits of more than £500 a week face a cut in the amount they are paid to cover rent.
In some cases, families receive as much as £800 a week in benefits such as jobseeker's allowance, income support, employment support allowance, council tax benefit, child benefit and child tax credit.
