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Housing chief calls for child benefit probe after welfare cap rejection
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A housing boss has called for more clarity on how child benefit is spent - after peers in the House of Lords rejected plans to include it in the £26,000 benefit cap.
Bob Taylor, Chief Executive of Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) - which owns and manages some 13,000 homes - has called for "greater monitoring" of how child benefit is spent if it is to be excluded from the cap - which was due to come in from 2013.
The Government’s proposal in the Welfare Reform Bill to cap household benefits at £500 a week was rejected by the House of Lords this week amid concerns for child poverty.
They want to see child benefit payments excluded from the cap. The Government says it will reverse the decision when the Bill goes back to the House of Commons.
Bob Taylor (pictured) said: “The risk of including child benefit within the cap is that it will increase child poverty. However excluding it, while giving families more money, does not guarantee it will be spent for the benefit of the child or children.
“Reducing the risk of increased child poverty is fundamental but, if child benefit is to be protected from benefit cuts, I struggle to see how the Government can ensure it’s spent on items that benefit the child’s development rather than other household expenses.”
Research published this week by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) put the number of claimants who would see benefit cuts at 67,000 - 44% of which are in the social sector. More than half those affected are in London.
A YouGov poll shows public support for the £26,000 a year cap (after tax), including among Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters.
According to the poll, 76% are in favour of placing a cap on the amount of benefits that people can claim with 56% thinking the cap should be £26,000 or below.
The cap was expected to deliver £290million savings in 2013/14 and £330million in 2014/15.
A number of social landlords have raised concerns about the benefit cap and its impact on building larger homes.
They argue that aligned with flexibilities to charge higher rents - to replace lost grant - building larger homes is "unviable" because tenants can't afford them.
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Commented 3 weeks ago
This is a ridiculous idea. If the child benefit is spent on other household necessities, then there is more of the other meagre income available to be spent on children's food or bus fares to school. Child benefit is not exactly a fortune - it has dropped in value hugely since the days when it would have just about provided basic food for a child. Having children increases energy bills (extra washing, heating, vacuum cleaning, lighting, etc), the amount of washing-up liquid and detergent used, numbers of cleaning cloths and sponges needed per month, and more. There is toothpaste and soap, and so-on. Not to mention the extra crockery and cutlery, essential furniture and bedding. If you are subsisting on a low income, such as state benefits, child benefit has to go towards basic essentials; there will be nothing left over to pay for child 'development'. There is no way of monitoring what it is spent on, except perhaps to some extent in the tiny minority of families where children are clearly being neglected and income is going on pubs, drugs or other things for the adults. And if an attempt is to be made to monitor families on benefits to ensure that child benefit is only spent on, for example, apples and cheese for the children, then the same monitoring regime must be applied to all families who receive child benefit. Being unemployed or disabled is emphatically not a reason for being singled out to be put under intensive state surveillance. And could I remind everyone that the main reason child benefit was introduced was to ensure that the main carer of the children (back then considered to be the mother) would always have their own funds for paying for essentials for the children. This was because there were husbands and partners who were not that keen on being the main provider of funds for their wives and children. Even some men who were wealthy would only give their wives or partners a risible amount of money for housekeeping, not enough to provide a basic healthy diet for the children. Many married or cohabiting women who were unemployed or working part-time while looking after children were left with insufficient money to provide for their children. Let us not forget that there are still men, and perhaps women, who behave like this, whether the family income is unearned wealth, salary, wages or benefits. Unfortunately the value of CB has fallen so much over the years that it cannot ensure that children in such families are properly fed, but it at least helps in that respect.