Cameron's statement about the "merry-go-round" of the Treasury giving cash to working people with one hand and taking it away with the other seems pure logic ... except that would not save the government one penny. If you took people out of tax but at the same reduced their benefits by the same amount you would have a zero sum solution. So where is he going to cut?
This article is interesting, particularly the paragraph which flags up child tax credit as a possible target.
Newsnight's Allegra Stratton got the first whiff of this a couple of weeks ago. She reported that ministers were studying the work of the Institute for Fiscal Studies which noted that £5bn a year could be saved by returning child tax credit to the level it was just over a decade ago. The IFS estimates that this would hit 3.7 million low income families by £845 per child - producing an average loss of £1,400 per year - although some of these would be future rather than current recipients.
As grandparents, do we have a view on this? How many of our children will find it an incentive to go out to work or work more - the seeming intention? It is too easy to talk about the affect on "others" and decry the so called workshy that the Conservatives and their press like to attack but what about those we actually know about - our own children and grandchildren?
