Hague: Child benefit cut 'tough but fair'

Senior British Cabinet minister William Hague insisted today that the abolition of child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers was “tough but fair”, as the row over the measure threatened to overshadow David Cameron’s first speech to the Conservative Party conference as Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron last night apologised for not being upfront with voters about the need for cuts to the universal benefit in his manifesto for the May General Election.

Today, he will seek to win over the small businessmen and skilled workers who may be hit by the change, by declaring he wants to support “the doers and grafters, the inventors and entrepreneurs” and warning jobless households that they will no longer be allowed to live off other people’s taxes if they are capable of working.

Suspicions that the child benefit move was rushed out without full consultation in the Cabinet were fuelled when Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith suggested that Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement in an early-morning TV interview on Monday was prompted by pressure from the media.

In a mark of the unease among Tories at Birmingham about a possible backlash from middle-class voters, who stand to lose £2,500 (€2,872) a year in a three-child household if either parent earns £44,000 (€50,000) or more, Mr Osborne yesterday wrote to every Conservative MP explaining the rationale behind his decision.

And Mr Cameron hinted that the Government may use a planned tax break for married couples to try to soften the blow of the loss of child benefit – which hits couples where one parent stays at home harder than those where both work.

Aides said ministers had not “closed the door” on the idea of allowing a proposed transferable tax allowance for married people to apply to the higher-rate taxpayers who will lose their child benefit, as well as the basic-rate earners for whom it was originally intended.

In better news for Mr Cameron as he prepared to deliver his speech, a YouGov poll in The Sun found overwhelming support for the principle that child benefit should be withdrawn from the rich, with 83% saying it should be scrapped for those on “higher incomes”, against just 15% who disagreed.