Barnardos: Focus on better-off ‘a good start’
Martin Narey, chief executive of children’s charity Barnardos, comments on the Today programme about the planned cuts in child benefit:
“Child benefit is wonderful and we wish it was safe, we bitterly regret that it is going to be reduced, but it costs £11 billion. The government can’t ignore that expenditure.
“We’re alarmed by the possibility that savings will be made by removing child benefit from older children.
“If child benefit has to be cut, and we regret that it has to be, it should be done on the basis of income. People who earn more money should lose child benefit.
“There are already many families living in poverty where dad and mum are in full-time work, they have teenage children, very many of them still a long way from a reasonable living standard.
“To take away child benefit from them just because their kids are 14 to 15, would be very, very foolish and very damaging. It would certainly plunge many more families into poverty.”
