Make Child Benefit a Means Tested Benefit.

[Whatabonkersworld]

So, the Winter Fuel Payment has been made means tested. According to the government older people have no need for any help to pay their winter fuel bill.
In a dose of reality here's another massive cost saving exercise. The annual bill for Child Benefit is something over £12bn. I suggest Child Benefit also become means tested and only parents who receive tax credits are eligible. Those unemployed would receive a stipend added to their universal credit, but would not be eligible for Child Benefit. This would become a strictly working persons benefit. This would save the country a huge amount of money and will hopefully pay for the inevitable pay increase recommendations for the rail workers and consultants which will shortly be coming round for negotiations.
How how does everyone like them Bananas!

*earner

It will encourage all the people on UC who are already in work, to work?

I think that would be best. It would likely mean our household would lose the benefit but that’s ok. As long as the boundary is an amount that actually still supports families who do need it. I‘d like to see a higher threshold than £60k household income before the benefit tapers.

This is a much cheaper way to administer essentially the same thing

Why would anybody bother claiming a benefit they're going to have to pay back entirely at the end of the year? Obviously, people decline the benefit and save themselves the paperwork.

Child Benefit is one of my favourite benefits. Precisely because it's a good old fashioned benefit based on circumstances not income.
The very first idea of the welfare state was to have everyone pay national insurance and then receive payments if a certain life circumstances happens (an illness/old age/a child).
Thats never been the whole welfare state as it pretty soon became clear that you had to do something for people in dire need who hadn't paid into the system or didn't have a relevant life circumstance. For example; victims of cyclical or structural unemployment (think about the great depression for example). Means tested benefits were supposed to be an additional top up to deal with that.
But, for me, the very soul of the welfare state is national insurance and the principle that you pay in and you take out. It's dignified and it has an instinctive fairness to it. Child Benefit is in that tradition. (You don't need national insurance contributions to claim but the actual of making the claim passports you to pension contributions so I feel it's part of the same overall system)
In addition: child benefit has a bit of a feminist history. The cabinet discussion had been centred on providing a tax break for married men with children. Barbara Castle (the only woman in the room) pointed out that men could not be counted on to spend the extra money on their kids and suggested a cash payment to the mother, instead.
For a long time CB was referred to as "the wallet to purse transfer". And it's specific function was to make sure women had some money of their own to provide for children.
If anyone doubts the importance of this, I invite you to go over to the relationships board and look at one of the financial abuse threads.
Just because a woman is in a medium of high income household- we can never assume she (or her children) actually has access to that money. Some men will absolutely let their kids go without, in order to hurt the women they supposedly love.
OP: I would do the opposite of what you suggest. I would increase Child Benefit and make it available to higher income households as well.

Not sure your plan would work, since the payment is for the child, who doesn't earn.

Unless you're saying that this benefit for children should be reduced or removed?

Maybe they could increase the pension credit by the amount of the winter fuel payment and then increase the threshold for receiving the pension credit by the appropriate amount. That way those on the boundary do not miss out and it takes away a layer of bureaucracy.

Also most tax credits are being done away with. Most on uc do work

No need to pander to rich old people anymore, like the Tories do.

This is a pretty strange thread for a parenting forum.

Yes let's drive the birthrate down further, especially amongst professionals earning middle incomes. Maybe we could even drive more women out of work (and out of paying tax) during their childbearing years. Because what really matters is all pensioners getting as many benefits as possible, no matter how unnecessary or (increasingly) unaffordable that is.

...

We do. DH has to do self-assessment anyway so it's just another box for him.

The reason was that I was under the threshold for a long time and if we would suddenly separate, him loosing his job, him dying or loss of income through illness, I wouldn't need to think about claiming it. It comes in automatically. (And unfortunately I had all these scenarios over the last 15 years in my family/friend circle.)

At the moment it goes into an account and sits there until DH gets his tax statement.

I am now above the threshold but DD is 17 so it's not worth fiddling around anymore, I just keep it for the next year and then it will go away on its own.

It is related to NI contribution records so parents who aren't working should claim - even if the family income means it will be fully recovered - in order to protect state pension entitlement.

This isn’t really true given many children aren’t eligible to receive it

Wholeheartedly agree

I see many posts arguing that parents should not receive any benefits, help with childcare etc.

It seems to be quite a common view, even among parents!

You're right it's not the same.

The reason why child benefit is not means tested is because all means-tested benefits have some proportion of people who would be entitled but don't claim, for various reasons.

If you make child benefit means-tested some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children will suffer for it. It's a terrible terrible idea.

You could reduce the ceiling for clawing it back through tax to £30k to make sure comfortably off families don't accidentally get some state support but even that would be a mistake. It's a good thing to have the majority of families acknowledging they've had something out of the benefits system. This makes less of an us-and-them attitude with a barrier between those who do and don't receive benefits and fosters more of a community attitude that we all put in according to our ability and take out according to our needs.

I wish basic stuff like this was taught in schools.

What about the squeezed middle or the working poor?

@MidnightPatrol is quite right it's a leveller.

Does it become only possible for very high earners or very low earners to have children?

Does it pay to have more children and not work?

So the logical conclusion is that no children should receive it? I'll pass on that POV.

Tell me you know nothing about how the benefits system works without telling me you know nothing about how the benefit system works….

No, that’s not the logical conclusion.

I’m just challenging the idea it’s a benefit for the child because they don’t earn rather than the adult when many children don’t receive it.

Restrict child benefit to two children.

Rich parents mostly, I suspect.

How about cracking down on parents who won't work too?

My sister is fully able bodied, extremely physically fit and doesn't want to work since her divorce.

She deliberately works very few hours to qualify for UC etc.

Her child is going to secondary school in September and lives 50/50 with dad. So hardly a babe in arms.

How about it? Instead of chortling about pensioners - crack down on the young who can work but refuse to.

You can claim the NI without getting the child benefit.