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!

I agree with this completely. I don’t claim CB as due to my husbands wage we have to pay it all back through tax so it’s largely pointless, we both work hard and my salary doesn’t even cover childcare (with 20% help and funded hours) if funded hours become more means tested than they are I will have to stop working. why shouldn’t we get a little help with our children considering we pay so much tax? (Well, he does, I’m a normal rate taxpayer).

but why shouldn’t people NOT on benefits get some help from the system they pay so much into?

Because most young families have a higher level of expenditure on mortgage, children growing out of clothes, toys for next age range, harder level books etc as their children grow whereas most pensioners who don't get pension credit have fewer outgoings.

Child benefit is already means tested in that if you earn over 60k you don't get it.

It takes a special type of person to hear the news that a well off group of people won't get an unnecessary bonus, and immediately want to retaliate against hungry children.

It's great that you can "claim" it whatever your income to get NI credits but if you earn too much you have to either not take the money or give it all back again. So it is means-tested but in a way that you can still claim NI credits.
I don't know why the OP thinks this has anything to do with WF.

It's already means tested, perhaps you should do your research before posting next time.

OP you are mean spirited. I think today’s parents mostly need all the help they can get.This is a forum aimed at parents. We should all want children to thrive.

For what it is worth I am a pensioner. In my case ( and most of my friends) the heating allowance was a fair cop but I do feel sorry for people just over the limit to get extra help.

It's the same thing though, you have to pay back if a high earner therefore is effectively means tested.

I wouldn’t support this. I’m a sole parent with a reasonable income and no longer qualify, but when DC were younger and I earned just under the threshold it made a difference, school lunches for teens used to cost me the amount of child benefit each month.

At £95 a month I’d have to earn an additional £2000 a year once tax and pension had been deducted to pay for one child’s school lunches.

Public sector workers have received a flat pay rise of less than £2k a year in recent years, so I’d be very against this as it would negatively affect a lot of children.

Do you understand the long term costs to an economy of child poverty? I think the era of throwing benefit money at pensioners alone has ended. Get used to it.

The sums don’t work on this however you square it.

it’s already been cut off for those of us above the threshold - and capped to two for people that can claim it.

Surely giving working people benefits at all is a lazy sticking plaster vs making life affordable or forcing employers to pay a living wage.

as far as I can tell, those of us that are net contributors to the system are effectively propping up businesses that aren’t paying their workers enough.

I absolutely don’t object to people getting help that need it - but I would rather the govt acknowledged what the actual problem is here.

and then had much more indirect tax and steeply graduated vat on luxury goods etc.

I don’t think further means testing child benefit is going to do anything meaningful at all

@anxioussister child benefit is NOT capped at two children. The two children cap is for tax credits/working tax credits

I have 3 children and claim 3 lots of child benefit

What a stupid thread title, with some great responses. Child poverty is at a high. Raising children has never been more expensive. And as pointed out, many times, it already is means tested.

Arguably it would cause less people to work, since the OP also supports the cuts to funded childcare - how are working people going to afford to cover costs with less money.. Oh yeah, not working as much and claiming more benefits.

Cuts to child benefit and any subsequent means tested child related support would just take more women (because they're the main care givers) out of work. They need to invest in childcare funding and child benefit, not take away.

We are skint and drowning in debt as a country. We have all had to make sacrifices. But pensioners have been the most protected group (and we have a disproportionately high number of them). Unfortunately it's their turn to lose a small amount of money that many don't even need. They have kept their triple lock, free prescriptions and free travel. Parents have had to make huge savings. Many have mortgages where the interest rates have gone up, have not had pay rises that keep up with inflation, we've all had to cut our cloth, apart from pensioners, for whom it's been business as usual, due to the triple lock. Child benefit is the equivalent to the state pension, not equivalent to an added bonus on top.

The trouble with means testing based solely on salary is that it takes no account of wealth.

You could have an individual earning £20k who inherited a house so pays no mortgage and qualifies.

Compared with someone earning £40k but who pays their housing costs.

It also doesn't take into account regionally pay and cost of living disparities.

Too much of a blunt tool.

🤣🤣 GREAT gag OP! Do you know how much child benefit is? No one is sitting home jobless so they can rake in that sweet sweet £25 a week.

In a round about way, it already is with the tax charge. I don’t agree that only those who claim tax credits should receive child benefit. A system where those who are paying the ‘most’ into the system via tax and national insurance and receive zero only feeds the benefit bashing narrative. A benefit which is designed to support children should have been left alone.

The trouble is, 'pensioner' often comes with connotations of stoic little grannies, clutching a cup of tea in fingerless mittens while the fire dwindles to nothing. I live on a street full of pensioners. I'm the same age as their children. Most of the women never did full time jobs, but they've all done pretty well for themselves. They have more holidays than we do and are able to have countless home improvements, while we're both working long hours, counting all the pennies and wondering if we'll have any pension at all.

People over 65 make up 28% of the population but thanks to the triple lock, own 49% of the countries wealth.

52% of this countries benefits payments are state pensions. For reference, income support (jobseekers, dole whatever you fancy calling it) is around 13%. Child benefit sits in a category called 'other benefits' along with lots of other things that collectively make up 6%.

We have an incoming population bomb about to go off due to low birth rates and long life expectancies - by 2050, 40% of the UK population will be over 65. This is an impending disaster if we can't get our birth rate up. The most commonly quoted reasons women give for not having more children/ children at all are financial.

If you are of child rearing age now (between 18 and 45), you will end your life 23% worse off financially relative to inflation than your parents were. If you are over 30 and your parents are boomers, that figure rises to 38%. Millennials will be the first generation in history to end their life worse off than their parents were.

60% of brand new cars are bought by the over 50's.

The greatest differentiating factor in terms of wealth attainment in the UK, for the first time in history, is now age rather than education level.

Generational wealth inequity is an absolute scandal so I agree we need to make it 'fair' - bin off the triple lock, make pensioners pay national insurance and use that money to address the wealth gap.

The Spectator this morning remarks on just how preferred pensioners have been in the last decade; it calls the winter fuel allowance “a bung”.

My retired next door neighbours living mortgage free in a 4 bedroom house worth £700k, who just spent £4k on redecorating their downstairs loo, don’t need the winter fuel allowance.

My family, with a household income of ~£200k a year, with two children and two more on the way, also don’t need child benefit (and we don’t get it - we “apply” but forgo the payments to protect national insurance credits).

Benefits should be for those who need it most. Simple.

It is really. If you earn above a certain amount then you have to pay all of it back. It’s the same as not being eligible. What is the point of claiming it to pay it back in January? How is that not the same as being means tested?

I wholeheartedly agree.

My child-rearing days are well behind me, I'm a higher rate tax payer. I'm more than happy to see child benefit be reintroduced as a universal benefit.

A benefit which I think needs to be reviewed is free prescriptions for over 60s and also for people prescribed certain medicines.

There is an inequality in the application of free prescriptions. When I only needed warfarin to keep me alive I had to pay for my prescriptions. Now I have diabetes and a non-working thyroid as well I get free prescriptions.

The age limit should be raised to state pension age.

For people of working age a prepayment certificate means you can get all prescriptions filled for around £10/month.

Children and post-partum mothers should continue to receive free prescriptions.

I agree it is those with children that need most help, so many couples are putting off having children or only having one because of the extortionate cost of childcare and massive housing costs meaning both parents have to work. Perhaps as an alternative to claiming free nursery hours the equivalent amount could be paid to a SAHP or one working minimal hours to make being with your child for the first few years economically viable.

I should mention i earn £68k so dont qualify and my husband was a SAHP for 2 years. He now does a minimum wage job behind a bar. We live in a cheap area of the country and don't require child benefit, but we do massively rely on the 30 hours free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds. It was this that allowed my husband to go back to work. Without it, he would still be at home, so if you're interested in encouraging people back to work, then removing free childcare is massively counterproductive.

ALSO I personally loved the idea of people doing mandatory national service but think it was aimed at the wrong age group - given the over 65's benefit from both a lower retirement age AND much improved good health between the age of 65 and 75, my feeling was that all healthy pensioners should use their free time to do national service for a year after their retirement. It would keep people active and healthy for longer, get people out into the local community and help older people to build some empathy with younger people. No one under the age of 83 was forced to do national service in their youth btw before someone chimes up with 'these people already did their national service and FOUGHT A WAR'. No, no they did not.