Not a Good Choice of Cut

Universal benefits have the great advantage of doing away with means testing.  Also they include all of us in receiving plain advantage from collective administration of the tax-take.  (Inclusion of this kind when combined with means testing, with all its intrusiveness into the lives of others is, however,  typically Labour and unacceptable.)

What a pity that the subjection of universal child benefit to means testing is to be the first result of Labour's ravaging of our economy.  It's understandable, but regrettable, that the redistribution of actual cash to mothers and children is the easiest to take away and, on the surface, the easiest to justify.  Many of us know, though, through friends and acquaintances, that mothers who are at home looking after the family, from choice or lack of employment outside, are often very short of actual cash in hand for petty, everyday needs; quite well-to-do mothers as well as those with lower-earning husbands. It was a relief to many women when Barbara Castle put the tax relief for having children in a family into their hands directly.

At the very least the tax relief should be reinstated for any families with children.  After all, higher-rate tax-payers are not exactly rolling in money, are they?   Particularly those with children to care for.