Higher rate taxpayers in the UK to lose child benefits

Child benefit payments in the UK will be stopped for all higher-rate taxpayers from 2013 to pay for wider reform of the benefits system, George Osborne confirmed today.

The Chancellor said the measure was “difficult but fair” and would raise around £1bn (€1.14bn).

“When we are asking so much of so many people across society, I think it is a fair measure,” he told BBC Breakfast ahead of his speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.