Because he could earn more than £1000 a month if he did in order to feed, clothe, house, transport, entertain, one adult and five children ?

If he was on the minimum wage he would get about the same for a 40 hour week - stay at home or work for the same money!! Given he didn't work I assume the incentive wasn't sufficient enough? With 11 kids I assume he was drawing > than double that so >£2k a month - you need to earn >30k to draw that money

No because the majority of the benefits he'll have been receiving would continue regardless of whether he was in work or not. So any work he did would only affect the £71 a week JSA not the other benefits which im assuming are Child Benefit and Housing Benefit.

See reply above, the assumption in cases like this is always that the claimant recieves a big wad of cash every month as the total sum of the quoted amount whereas the total amount will include, for the sake of journalistic affect, things like council tax and rent alowances, and of course a child allowance (that he would get whether workign or not) which for all of those kids will be a large part of the £1000, I doubt though that a person would be able to live a life of luxury when trying to house and feed 11 children and three adults on that sort of money.

Of course its all semantics if you are just talking of the total amount, the total amount could be anything if you don't actually approve of the principle of giving the unemployed or very low waged any public money at all.

Are you saying if he was earning 30k a year he would also get and additional £1,716 a month (2000-71pw) in benefits? Surely he would not get his rent and rates paid if he earned that much - he would get child allowance which would be approx £700 month that's all?

The average household income is £22k so he is already well above that, it begs the question - I know this will be controversial - should irresponsible behaviour be rewarded? Having 11 kids and no means of supporting them other than the state is surely irresponsible?

He would get child tax credit and working tax credit but they do taper off, unless someone knew his exact circumstances it would be hard to work out if they got any housing or council tax benefit, these taper too and drop off quickly after a certain figure.



To borrow one of the tory mantras, if he didn't have the state to fall back on he wouldn't be able to breed so much, I agree that many without the means to support them is irresponsible in the extreme. But cases like this are very much the odd few and make it hard for those who have fallen on bad times through no fault of their own to get any sympathy at all.

How has this gone from benefits stopping people working in your eyes to and irresponsibility with regard to kids?
As said above, it all depends on his circumstances - his dependants, the size of house, local authority rates, who he rents from etc with 10 plus dependants its highly likely he would continue to receive sizeable benefits but as Big Graeme says they taper off.

On the first point - if the only benefits he would receive would the £700 child allowance then he would effectively working full time for £700 a month - why would he?

On the second point that is just about broadening the debate. It is a frustration to some tax payers when they see the abuse of the benefits system, Mr Philpott's is clearly an abuse of what benefits were intended for.

Yes, it is.
It irritates me to know that there are such irresponsible people out there (if such he is, I don't know the whole story) ... but do I want to punish the kids, who after all, come into the world innocent, didn't choose the situation for themselves and would likely suffer worse than the apparently irresponsible parent if the benefits were taken away?
No, I don't.
In situations like that we, as a civilised society, have to take the responsibility.
My irritation is tiny and almost irrelevant compared with the issues around the children.

But, to be realistic, if you look at such things as the massive levels corporate tax avoidance/evasion that goes on, this is small fry.

Tax avoidance is a global issue - unless you can get a global agreement this will always happen. Benefit abuse is a national issue that can addressed internally.