Child Benefit (Hansard, 27 November 1989)

§ 9. Mr Bernie Grant
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security whether he has any plans to review the uprating of child benefit

§ Mr. Newton
It remains the Government's policy to review the rate of child benefit each year in the light of all the relevant circumstances.

§ Mr. Grant
What does the Minister have to say to the poor people in my constituency who, for more than two years, have had to live on a pittance of £7.25 a week from a miserable and miserly Government? Will he tell us what is the Government's estimate of the cost of bringing up a child in any part of today's Britain that he cares to consider?

§ Mr. Newton
I make two points in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, so far as I am aware, under no Government has it been suggested that either child benefit or its predecessors would meet the full costs of bringing up children. The benefits make a contribution. Secondly, if the hon. Gentleman really means the poor people in his constituency, the increases above the normal uprating, which I made in income support and in family credit, and which were of more benefit than a child benefit increase, would have benefited nearly a quarter of the nation's children.

§ Mr. Dykes
Nonetheless, with the increase in the rate of inflation, which is at least 60 per cent. more than we expected by now, and the fact that high interest rates also add to the rate of inflation, could the Government look at this matter again?

§ Mr. Newton
My hon. Friend will have heard what I said. I am well aware of his views on the matter. I ask him to take into account the fact that, at more or less the same time as the uprating statement, virtually every family in the land benefited by about £3 a week—if both partners were working, they benefited by about £6 a week—from reductions in national insurance contributions and consequent increases in take-home pay.

§ Mr. Meacher
Why has the Secretary of State cynically abandoned the Government's clear election pledge in 1987 to continue to uprate child benefit as then? If his argument is targeting, why does he not regard child benefit with a 100 per cent. take-up as much better targeted than family credit, which has less than 60 per cent. take-up? If his argument is incentives, why does he not accept that child benefit, which is not means tested, offers a much bigger incentive to return to work than family credit does? Why should mothers with child benefit not get an increase just as much as mothers with family credit?

§ Mr. Newton
First, the hon. Gentleman has misrepresented what was in the Conservative manifesto. [Interruption.] He has quite straightforwardly misrepresented it. Secondly, as I said in response to an earlier question, there is no possibility, under any Government, of levels of child benefit that would do as much for the less well-off working families as is done by family credit. In the present circumstances, it is right to steer additional help in that direction.