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Too posh for dosh

No benefits if you earn over £50k






Immigrant benefits to be chopped

Action vital to counter voters’ fears about the number of migrants.

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• Britain's still not working
• Bene-fix cost £100 a SECOND
• I’ll give you a real benefits sob story!
• Old folk owed £50 per week

23/08/2009
TORY leader David Cameron will SCRAP handouts to well-off families if he takes power at the next election.


Middle class voters face losing child tax credits and a raft of other payments now made regardless of income.

Families on up to £58,000 can currently claim child tax credit, but Cameron wants to restrict it to those on under £50,000.

And he plans to limit universal benefits, including the £250 winter fuel allowance, £250 child trust fund payout, £190 pregnancy grant and free TV licences for over-75s - to the hard-up.



He is even contemplating means testing the £20-a-week child benefit.

Senior Tories say they will have to make tough choices to cut Britain's benefit bill of more than £80 billion a year. They insist handouts should only go to those who really need them.

Balance


Mr Cameron said in a recent speech: "When there are still millions of people in this country living in poverty and when the age of austerity means we must focus on the real priorities, can we honestly say it's right for people earning over £50,000 a year to get state benefits in the form of tax credits?

"With a Conservative government, tax credits will be there to help make society fairer, not the state bigger."

However, Mr Cameron has a difficult balancing act to perform. He will have to cut the benefits bill to help turn round Britain's ravaged economy, but will not want to hurt middle class voters who he needs to put him into No 10.

Tory strategists say tough decisions will have to be made in the honeymoon period of a new government - when they can still blame Labour.

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Phillip Hammond has warned his efforts to rein in public spending are likely to make him "a great figure to pin up on the dartboard". He has ordered the shadow cabinet to spend the summer looking at their budgets for savings. Almost six million are on state handouts such as incapacity benefit and jobseeker's allowance. Another 6.1 million families get tax credits, while 7.5 million families get child benefit.

Basic benefits cost the taxpayer more than £75 billion a year. Child benefits and the child trust fund cost another £12 billion and the winter fuel payment comes to £2.7 billion. Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke has agreed to look at axing other middle class welfare payments, although he has not said which ones.

Former Tory Home Secretary David Davis recently said welfare for all was a "gimmick" and axing it would save up to £10 billion a year.

And he said the current system left poor people footing the bill for handouts to the rich. The Tories pledged to slash inheritance tax - their flagship policy - and stamp duty. But they have now mothballed that for as long as six years.

And other plans to give tax breaks for married couples have also been put on the backburner, possibly for a decade.

We revealed earlier this month how they plan to hike VAT to 20 per cent.

We all need more

Says Kate Green, Child Poverty Action Group
THESE proposals are profoundly mistaken.

The advantage of benefits like the child trust fund and the health in pregnancy payment is that they are not means tested. So there is no stigma attached.

And they're a statement of the fact that children are our future.

Child benefit is the most effective we have. It reaches more children in poverty than any other benefit. Take-up is very high at over 98 per cent.

And we want winter fuel payments extended to more families with children rather than taken away.It is mums who really understand what these benefits mean to the household budget.

A party that took them away would find itself doing something that was very unpopular.

Give it to the poor

Says Neil O'Brien, Poilcy Exchange think-tank
THE next five years are going to be sheer hell for whoever wins the next election.

With Gordon Brown racking up debts which will soon top £100,000 for every family, big cutbacks will be needed.

We should start by cutting back pointless, middle class welfare. Gordon Brown has extended benefits to people who just don't need them. They're supposed to be aimed at the poor but nine out of ten families now claim.

With the money we save from cutting back on benefits for the rich we can reform our whole messed-up benefits system and give more help to those who want to get off benefits and into work. Just focusing child benefit on the poor would save £7 billion.

mbga9pgf

Sounds fair enough to me. As long as there are enough corresponding redundancies in the DWP to balance the reduction in work in that department.

I would also like to see layabout families with more than 2 kids to have their benefits pared to the bone, but then again, you cant have everything can you?

PasturesNew

It's true, you have thousands of people without kids earning £12-20k/year and struggling, while people who have it coming out of their ears get child benefit that they don't need and don't even notice. How can you notice £10-20/week when you're already taking home more than £688/week as a single earner of £50k, or £737/week if you're a couple with a combined income of £50k.

PasturesNew

PasturesOld wrote: »

Hi we have a combined income over £50k and get £37 a month child credit, i get my cigarettes with it.

Wasteful b4stard. If I had £37/month I'd put 50p in the meter to heat up my baked beans.

Blackpool_Saver

It is rather bizarre that people get child benefit whatever their income, I have always thought so. If that stopped just think how better that money could be spent.

PasturesNew

I always understood that the original purpose of child benefit was that the mother had cash in her hand to feed a child with, back in the days when some men didn't hand over any money. It was so the kid could be fed even if the man of the house p155ed his wages up the wall.

Blackpool_Saver

PasturesNew wrote: »

I always understood that the original purpose of child benefit was that the mother had cash in her hand to feed a child with, back in the days when some men didn't hand over any money. It was so the kid could be fed even if the man of the house p155ed his wages up the wall.

Yes, I think you are correct, isn't tax credits the same? or was it the previous name for it?

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Blackpool_Saver wrote: »

It is rather bizarre that people get child benefit whatever their income, I have always thought so. If that stopped just think how better that money could be spent.

ID Cards, more Speed Camaras with NPR?

PasturesNew

Blackpool_Saver wrote: »

Yes, I think you are correct, isn't tax credits the same? or was it the previous name for it?

Tax credits are extra - so everybody with kids can have an XBox, wide screen telly and an annual holiday.


Edit: Oh - and the latest designer wear.

chopperharris

I find it unbeleivable that anyone with a combined income of over 35k are getting any benefits or tax breaks at all.All the while pensioners , whom have raised one family and now helping raise another , are getting little more than a days wage a week which is taxed.

These people that make the decision on taxes and benefits are on 64k a year , conning the voter for more cash in the way of flipping homes , emplying family and claims for dux houses , and then complaining the wage is rations!

Perhaps if we limitted us all having children during your life , like the chinese , to being able to afford them and to one partner during your lifetime then some problems woiuld be solved.Maybe even raising taxes during school life for working parents rather than giving them more money , and removing benefits for anything but one child in a lifetime to stop the benefit baby factories.

mbga9pgf

Oaps have nothing to winge about. They should have a lifetimes worth of sAvings behind them.