They did this by incorporating one parent benefit into the main child benefit rates. It was abolished for new claimants and existing claims were frozen. Between April and April , the rate of child benefit for the first child increased by Under the Child Benefit Act , child benefit is now available for young people completing a course which they started before their nineteenth birthday up to age Those in specific unwaged training programmes are also eligible.
These reforms rectified long-standing anomalies. We will preserve child benefit, winter fuel payments and free TV licenses. They are valued by millions. I have received many proposals about this benefit. Some have suggested that we means-test it; others that we tax it. All these proposals involve issues of fairness.
The benefit is usually claimed by the mother. To tax it would mean that working mothers received less than the non-working partner of higher earners. To means-test it, we would have to create a massively complex new system to assess household incomes. I do not propose to do those things. I know that many working people feel that their child benefit is the one thing that they get without asking from the state.
So instead, to control costs, we have decided to freeze child benefit for the next three years. This is a tough decision, but I believe that it strikes the right balance between keeping intact this popular universal benefit, while ensuring that everyone across the income scale makes a contribution to helping our country reduce its debts.
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference on 4 October, Mr Osborne announced that child benefit would also be withdrawn from higher rate taxpayers:. We still pay over a billion pounds a year in child benefit to higher rate taxpayers. Believe me, I understand that most higher rate taxpayers are not the super-rich.
But a system that taxes working people at high rates only to give it back in child benefit is very difficult to justify at a time like this. And it's very difficult to justify taxing people on low incomes to pay for the child benefit of those earning so much more than them.
These days we've really got to focus the resources where they are most needed. We've got to be tough but fair. That's why we will withdraw child benefit from households with a higher rate taxpayer. Child benefit would continue to be paid for all children, but would be clawed back from families containing a higher rate taxpayer from The family allowance was introduced at a rate of five shillings for each child after the first — Beveridge had wanted eight shillings — and was paid direct to the mother after a protest led by Rathbone and a free Commons vote overturned initial plans to pay the father.
Jim Griffiths, the Labour minister who led implementation of Beveridge's reforms, was later to describe the initiative as "one of the best investments the state ever made". For more than 30 years family allowance was paid in harness with child tax allowance. This enabled governments to claw back increases from taxpayers, although the "wallet-to-purse" transfer was thought to have lost votes among male workers and to have cost the then Labour government dear after , when it more than doubled the family allowance but cut the tax break.
During the late s, although family allowance was substantially devalued by inflation, there was little support for increases within government. In , the Conservative government reduced food subsidy, which had been in place since the war. From October , family allowance was increased by three shillings per week in order to advance the potential effect on nutrition. As a means of encouraging families to keep children in education, the Family Allowances Act of extended the family allowance to all school children.
The government was, however, anxious to make economies, and the bread subsidy was abolished. Family allowances remained a target for the Exchequer. In , the Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft , proposed cuts in public expenditure including family allowances.
He argued that in removing the allowance for a second child, more money would be available for larger families where nutritional problems were more severe. Boyd-Carpenter effectively presented counter arguments.
Thorneycroft resigned after the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan , vetoed his proposals. In , Cabinet agreed that the majority of apprentices be excluded from the family allowance provisions, but dismissed proposals that family allowance for the second child be abolished. Family allowance provisions therefore remained intact in the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act of Believing family allowance was not widely supported among its constituency, the Labour government of was unenthusiastic about the issue.
However, in , pressure groups especially the Child Poverty Action Group forced it to address family allowance.
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