TWO DAYS ago we saw the announcement of one of the first cuts from George Osborne in the form of an exclusion of higher rate taxpayers from claiming child benefit from 2013 onwards.
There has been the usual uproar about it being unfair because there are scenarios where couples earning just under the higher rate of tax band can still get it, whereas if one person is a higher rate payer and the other doesn’t work then they cannot get it.
A middle class family that will really struggle at the loss of £150 a month.
People forget that if couples are both working then they will in many cases be forking out several hundred pounds per week to pay for child care as well as paying tax on their earnings, so they are putting many thousands more into the system than the one thousand they get back in child benefit. There needs to be a realisation by some state dependants that the hand that is feeding them is not the government, it’s people that work in the private sector.
Another thing people forget is that this benefit is for the child, not a little extra holiday spending money. Many people take this benefit and simply stash it in a tax-free trust fund until their child reaches adulthood. This is wrong, and whilst it might equate to a cut which will reportedly save £1bn per year, these people should never have been receiving it in the first place because they don’t need it.
The Daily Express yesterday said that for someone that earns exactly the higher rate of approx £43,850 per year, they would need an almost £3,000 pay rise to offset their child benefit losses. Boo hoo. I know the Daily Express has it’s angle on things but really this isn’t the way this cut should be approached. This benefit is not and should not be classed as supplementary income.
Dave has been talking about a transferable tax allowance for stay-at-home mothers or fathers, but surely this is going to wipe out this forecast £1bn in savings and then some.
Millionaires row
Adam Boulton from Sky was questioning Dave yesterday about whether millionaire pensioners would still get the winter fuel allowance, free bus pass, free TV license, and so on, but he would not be drawn on this; perhaps because of the promises he made not to cut them during the televised leaders’ debates before the election.
Taking this a step further, should the state pension be means tested such that people with fat pensions lose the state pension, regardless of whether they have fulfilled their National Insurance commitments?
Images: Press Association
If people have worked and paid in they should get a pension,people like the Pollits should get nothing.I would happily take away the Polilts pensions and give it to decent hard working middle class people any day!
If the Tory’s go soft on this reform (the Lib Dems will not) there is no hope for the Coalition. This is £1 Billion, I understand savings of £50 Billion are required. I do not think many people earning over £43,000 a year read the Express anyway, tell them to get real.
Apparently 85% of people surveyed supported it anyway. People just need a dose of reality: claiming a benefit that you don’t need because you can is wrong and avenues for this should be axed.
Why not axe child benefit altogether?
All benefits should be means tested, including disability benefits.Since its inception (DLA), the number of people registered as disabled tripled,enough said?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11490294
a promising start, bye bye Pollitt/yusuf scum,BELSEN here you come!
£44K and they NEED child allowance?
Many pensioners survive on £5k and refuse to be subjected to Means Testing, hence they get nothing more than a basic pension.
The Nation has swallowed the line about everyone being house owners. Why? It is almost impossible to be mobile with the albatross of bricks and mortar round your neck. And it is the promise of that cheap mortgage that has trapped a generation into homes they cannot afford.
Scum like Wendy Lewis can get plenty for drugs and alcohol with never having contributed a penny. The state falls over backwards to please them, why? Because a vociferous liberal elite can sleep well at night?
put wendy lewis in Belsen after shes been raped by a rabid donkey…………
That scummy boyfriend of hers is back in court too, these people have no shame. Although ironically he is on a charge of assualting ‘Britains Most disgusting woman’.
they are filth, like the politts.
TB I have sent Phil an awesome article about WBC planning, I was crying with laughter when I wrote it, hows yours?
Sounds good I look forward to reading it.
hows your article mate?
I didn’t know I was writing an article actually? I have been a bit busy lately but I will be writing some soon.
excellent!
Don’t worry it’s coming up today, probably this evening!
Harold, please! What about ANIMAL rights? You can’t infect our cousins like that
lol lol nice one mate!
Twelve years ago I berated Gay Gordon for putting the rights of the dirty thieves creaming the Exchequer with Liebers Lefties openly and clearly putting the interest of the selfish few against the needs of a nation as a whole.
I asked but one question. If I did not have the pleasure of producing all these children, why should I pay for them? With improvements and speed of DNA analysis it is now simple to make father’s pay for their pleasures. If they too are on the brew, take their money off them and give it to their child. I make no apologies for this. Parents pay for their own children, not society as a whole. This way you do not have this idiot situation of Richard Littlejohn exposing one of the 90.000 single parent families claiming for four children or more.
I have nothing against women having children to multiple fathers. A female friend has four children by four men. The eldest has just finished a Uni degree and the second is in their second year. The two youngsters are at schools paid for by their fathers.
Universal benefits were supposed to be a lifeline, not a life style. The “alcoholic” opposite, never worked a day in his life, gets preferential treatment to the disabled former regular soldier – with a forty eight year full employment history- living three homes down. How can that be right.
One of your columns leading targets, a senior council jobsworth, used the offices of a leading charity to do the welfare work for his disabled father when all he needed to do was pick up the bloody phone and speak to the agency concerned. He couldn’t or better still would not, because of his interpretation of a conflict of interest. This jobsworth could not see the difference between a conflict for himself and the RIGHTS of a disabled relative. This situation is easily solved by making a clear declaration of interest. This is not to be confused with the outright theft by Lieber MP’s such as Shabid Malik- who claims to be a Lancashire Lad – then as a minister in the Ministry of Justice, who allegedly claimed preposterous monies whilst former Blackpool publican Andy Miller’s family’s lives were thrown into chaos by the illegal activities of the Court appointed bailiff.
Proportionality became a meaningless byword for corruption.
It is strange how the potential victims of the welfare system, on evidence, have rejected the system and forged a better life for their children without the griping about lack of help every twenty seconds. The responsibility is and always has to be the parents.
I agree mate, thats why I would strip the Pollitts of everything they have, they are sponging vermin,”Arbeit macht frei”.lol
There was an excellent comment made yesterday by Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt and I totally agree with him especially as his comments will have lefties foaming at the mouth. He said families should not have children simply to bump up their benefits and I completely agree. In the paper it showed 3 families, two of whom were ‘benefit families’ where they were living off the state and one couple who both worked hard, they had just got a £180k mortgage and decided they would put off kids until they are more financially stable, this is the position me and my girlfriend will be in. And I think it is a disgrace that people like the aforementioned couple are having to pay for the lazy workshy couples above. But of course in the eyes of Red Ed and his followers that is ‘fairness’. Labour are in no position to lecture about ‘fairness’ they don’t know the meaning of the word. But what really makes me laugh is that the Labour sympathisers on the Gasjet like alitriumph and Old Etonian (aka Dolly the Sheep I suspect) keep blasting ‘Tory cuts’ (Labour cuts more like). If anyone read an anonymous letter in the Gasjet blasting Croysdill the other day that was me in disguise, remember it is Labour that caused this mess. But when I question these hypocrites on alternatives to cuts, they back off and refuse to answer just ranting about the Tories. Labour supporters have very selective memories beyond belief. What they can’t seem to grasp that is if their beloved Red Ed was PM there would be savage tax rises and we would all be suffering. Of course being socialists they think high taxes and more waste are a good thing.
Jeremy is right, if yiu cant afford kids dont have them, why should i pay forr someone to keep having kids! well said TB!
I have to say I do agree with this policy but I am surprise that it is well supported on this right leaning site, mainly because it is a left leaning policy of taking from people who pay their fair share into the system and giving to those who don’t pay as much “Robin Hood” I think some would say if Labour brought it in.
I feel there is something’s that should be highlighted for example this isn’t about fairness or who can afford it and who can’t it is about highlighting the easiest way of reducing payouts. You could argue while it is fair that high earners should not receive the child benefit why are our government going for these people first? After all they are and more then likely had been paying into the system for a long time why isn’t the government targeting, as Harold says, the Eusuf or the Pollitts. I think we all know that answer it is easier to hit the law abiding people first and as long as the debt is reduced who cares.
Also people keep saying its 44K before you loose the benefit but its not its going to be 42K (at least) because our government is lower the high earners tax bracket.
Also Osborne at last year con conference said (amongst other benefits) that the child benefit would not be touched, I mention this because I know how honesty is so important to people on this blog (labour, liebour).
One last thing why was this announced at the con conference because it’s not a con government it’s a coalition government, or are the LDs just there to do as their told.
As I have said I do think this is a good policy I needed the child benefit when I was 18 because the money made it possible for my wife to just work weekends and study for her A levels and Degree during the week, I was working two jobs myself at the time so our choice would have been for my wife to drop out of education and gone full time. This would have a knock on effect of her never becoming a accountant so always earning low pay, me never getting my degree me always earning low wages and the government not receiving the tax the both of us now pay. But in truth I don’t need the money now and if it means people who are now in the position I was when I was 18 getting it and me not I am all for it.
A few points! On the Yusufs and Pollitts, there’s nothing to suggest they are not law abiding, unless being on benefits makes you a criminal. The Government has gone after high earners because they are high earners and they do not need this benefit. It’s not unprecedented: there is after all a higher rate of income tax. Taking benefits from people that have no income and are unable to work due to having about 5 million children makes little sense.
Regards Osborne, the things you quote were before they entered a coalition with your party, the Liberal Democrats. I know you don’t agree that concessions have been made but the Tories were prepared to revise policy to absorb some LD ideas to make a workable “strong and stable government”. Maybe this is one of the outcomes.
I guess it was announced at the Tory conference because George Osborne is the chancellor.
On your last point, it’s not an either/or situation. People in the scenario that you describe that actually need the child benefit will get it anyway. It’s not the case that by hitting the ‘rich’ the ‘poor’ end up better off. It means the government can take a small step to cutting spending in order to pay off its debt.
The golden rule is, I believe, that if you don’t need the benefit the system should not entitle you to it. Benefits should be a safety net. I believe that the level at which this child benefit change comes in should be much lower, perhaps to £30,000.
So you are saying this is a LD policy forced on the Conservatives when they became a coalition. Well I must say that means all manifesto for both parties can now be ripped up and they can ignore them completely after all they had to do it to from the coalition.
Osborne is the chancellor for the UK government not the conservative party surly this is a government policy (because as you pointed out it wasn’t the conservative policy until the coalition came about).
As I said twice I think it is a good policy I think we could quite easily argue where the earning cut off should be, part of that I would think should be where you live 30K is not a lot of money particularly when you think high earners have gone to university and they have to pay back massive student loans.
As for the Pollits perhaps I should say I should have said it’s about reducing the benefit bill the easiest way possible and not necessarily the fairest. I think if we look at the IC benefit review over the next year we will see the same.
I’m not saying it was forced upon the Tories at all, but it’s a more LD policy than a Tory one.
Of course it’s now a government policy but it’s hardly unprecedented for the chancellor to announce stuff at his party’s conference. It wasn’t Conservative policy but neither was it Liberal Democrat policy if you take only the manifesto into account.
But there was a meeting of minds and now you have a centre right government with a centre left contribution. Almost a reverse of what Tony Blair had with New Labour. Rather than playing “pin the policy on the party” I’m just going to say it’s a government policy and with it being more of a socialist one I would attribute it to the LD influence and really common sense.
Politics aside, people who don’t need benefits should not be entitled to them.
One interesting aspect of your posting is that it reveals how difficult it will be to embarrass ministers in the new government when they go back on promises made in their manifesto or during the campaign. As I have said there was no mention of the policy in the Conservative manifesto and Philip Hammond, speaking for the Conservatives on Newsnight in the middle of the election, specifically ruled it out. Normally one would expect a decent interval before such reneging on a commitment, but the Conservatives can claim that this is a policy they ‘conceded’ to the Lib Dems: on the same programme, Vince Cable insisted that it would not be responsible to rule out the policy.
I find it doubtful whether this really is Liberal Democrat policy: back in September nick clegg floated the idea and was immediately squashed by steve webb (now a work and pensions minister) I have a lot of time for steve webb on issues like this I really feel he knows his stuff. Neither Cable nor Clegg was willing to stand up to him at the time. Now things are different: child benefit is administered by HMRC, a Treasury agency that Webb has no powers over as pensions minister at DWP; he will, however, be prevented from criticising the move by collective responsibility. I suggest you read what the fabian society has to say on it.
Now it maybe “hardly unprecedented for the chancellor to announce stuff at his party’s conference” but it’s a coalition government now therefore I think it is inappropriate for policies like these now to be unveiled at individual party conferences.