Child benefit cuts will hit the wrong people in the wrong way

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/child-benefit-cuts-hit-wrong-people

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Making the argument that the cuts to child benefit, which come into force today, are unfair will be hard for some to swallow. At the moment, anyone bringing up a child in the UK can claim £20.30 per week for the first child and £13.40 for all subsequent children regardless of income or worth. This technically means, as Newsnight recently pointed out, that someone like Adele is fully entitled to claim child benefit and that can't be right, can it? The truth of these cuts though, is that they are being unfairly administered and will hit the wrong people in the wrong way.

I'm one of the people that will be affected by the child benefit cuts, because I earn more than £50,000 a year. I know this might sound like a large salary on its own but that is without context, and that is what this argument is missing – context. I'm a single mother and I work full-time, meaning that I am reliant on childcare. My son has Asperger's syndrome and getting him the care he needs is costly; little support is available via the NHS. In order to achieve that salary I have to live in one of the most expensive areas of the country and therefore pay a significantly high rent (buying a house is an unachievable dream). That £50,000 is also all I get: there are no rich parents, handouts, bonuses and certainly no child support from my son's father who has successfully evaded the Child Support Agency for years.

I appreciate the messages of austerity, I hear the claims that we all need to do something, but the child benefit cut is not an example of "we are all in this together". Friends of mine who both earn just under the threshold of £50,000 will keep their full benefit despite the fact that their household income is considerably more than mine. I will lose it, or some of it: it's not clear how much until I take part in the added bureaucracy of having to complete self-assessment for tax every year from now on.

It is easy to criticise the idea of universal benefits, and it's an argument I think we should be having. That's not what I think is wrong here. But when you move from a position of a universal benefit to one that is restricted, that move has to be done fairly. It has to be properly means-tested, it has to take into account the reality of the income of a household and not be based on random lines in the sand drawn across a salary scale. With the child benefit changes, we have managed to do the opposite. The threshold is arbitrary, the implementation unfair and the application via tax self-assessment at best sloppy and at worst, a process that will end up costing the government more than will be gained in the clawback.

The £87 a month that I received paid for things like school trips and swimming lessons. Maybe these are luxuries that we should live without, but that's not something I really want to have to tell my son. I'm proud of my career, I'm proud of what I have achieved while supporting a child. This change will impact us more than you might think; the real context is so much more than the headline.