Make Child Benefit Count

Child benefit and its predecessor, family allowances, have been providing direct support to all families for 60 years. However, the value of child benefit relative to earnings is significantly lower than in 1979 and lower amounts are now paid for younger children than for the eldest eligible child.

The links below include more information about the history and future of child benefit, as well as more information about the Make Child Benefit Count campaign. You can support the campaign by visiting www.makechildbenefitcount.org.

• Why should Child Benefit be increased? Views from around Britain
• Policy briefing: Child benefit: fit for the future
• Press releases & media briefing
• Links and policy material
• Media coverage of our campaign
• 1946 public information film on family allowances
• Interview with one of the first recipients of family allowances
• Who is supporting the Make Child Benefit Count campaign?
• Other organisations calling for child benefit to be increased
  

• Read some quotes from the Make Child Benefit Count supporters' comments, divided by theme (166 KB Word doc)

Child benefit: fit for the future celebrates the history of universal benefits for children and their resilience over time. Looking ahead, the report calls for an increase in the amount of child benefit paid to second and subsequent children to direct more help to those children living in larger families who face a greater risk of poverty – a fitting decision for the Government to make in this 60th anniversary year.

• Download the executive summary of Child benefit: fit for the future (30 KB PDF file)
• Read the Child benefit: fit for the future briefing online

• March 2008: £1 billion for poor children shows commitment and keeps 2010 target within reach
• May 2007: Deputy Leadership candidates challenged on child poverty and to make child benefit count
• March 2007: CPAG responds to budget 2007 with its investments in child benefit
• December 2006: CPAG call to Make Child Benefit Count in evidence for the Government’s three year Comprehensive Spending Review
• Lib Dem leader gives support to raising chid benefit (press release 19.12.06)
• Parents ask Chancellor to Make Child Benefit Count (press release 17.11.06)
• 40 organisations back call for child benefit increase (press release 30.08.06)
• ‘Make child benefit count’ say campaigners celebrating 60 years of support for children (press release 06.08.06) Media briefing, 3 pages A4 (1,168 KB PDF file)

Make Child Benefit Count campaign photocall at Parliament Square.

Links and policy material

• March 2008: HM Treasury publish Ending Child Poverty: everybody’s business which emphasizes the importance of child benefit in policy on child poverty
• February 2008: Child Poverty and party politics: what hopes of a consensus? Lisa Harker considers the different political parties positions on child poverty.
• February 2008: Letter to the Chancellor before the 2008 budget laying out the case for more to be invested through child benefit
• February 2008: Briefing written on child poverty for Parliamentarians which describes the importance of child benefit and the following debate, in which child benefit was discussed by a number of Parliamentarians

Media coverage of the campaign's launch

Both the national and local media have reported on our child benefit campaign. See below for a selection of stories and articles:

• 'Invest in children, invest in the future’ article published in Tribune, August 2006
• 'Call for child benefit increase', BBC News Online, 6 August 2006
• BBC TV News report, 6 August 2006
• Sky News website, 6 August 2006
• '60 after its conception, we ask: what next for child benefit?', Daily Mirror, 7 August 2006
• 'Child benefit level may be raised as part of anti-poverty measures', The Guardian, 7 August 2006
• 'In praise of… child benefit', The Guardian leader column, 7 August 2006
• Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 9 August 2006

Follow this link to the ITN Source website then click on ‘view story’ to watch this public information film from 1946 encouraging people to take up the new family allowances.

Interview with one of the first recipients of family allowances

To help launch the Make Child Benefit Count campaign, CPAG’s John Dickie talked to one of the first mothers to receive family allowances back in 1946. Read an edited transcript (below) of John Dickie’s interview with 86 year old Edith Wyper from Balerno, Edinburgh or listen to the interview.

Download the interview with Edith Wyper, approximately 4 minutes (2,305 KB MP3 file)

John Dickie: Can you tell me a bit about your memories of family allowances?

Edith Wyper: Well my son was born in 1945… and I had a daughter which made me eligible for family allowance. It was interesting at the time – everybody thought there was going to be something extra, you know in our money. It wasn’t a great sum… but maybe at that time it was better. It was useful as an addition to your income and it helped poorer families where even a shilling was quite a sum. On the whole, it was a good idea to start it all and help people.

JD: I understand you were a sub-postmistress in Glasgow after the War. Can you remember paying out family allowances?

EW: Yes, that was quite exciting. Later when I was a postmistress at the office in Glasgow, I remember it was a busy time… Before the office opened in the morning there would be a queue outside the shop: loads of people, mothers with their babies, toddlers running about and there were one or two dads too. And of course there was plenty of talk going on. It was a pleasant time because the community there was quite small and you got to know everybody and it was friendly. I enjoyed serving the public, it was good fun. They were a good crowd all the population. I did enjoy it.

JD: In terms of getting family allowances yourself, what difference did it make to your family?

EW: It did help to a certain extent. I was maybe in a fortunate position. My husband was working and of course I had my salary from the post office. But family allowances came in useful in as much as I saved it, maybe for 6, 7 or 8 weeks, until I had a lump sum and then I’d spend that on clothes and shoes and things that my children needed.

JD: Why do you think it’s so important to get extra money or benefits for all families with children?

EW: Extra cash is always welcome. There are many demands on parents nowadays. There’s education and training as they get older and money’s needed for that. It all costs. I think it was a good idea to help people in that way. After all, children are the future and they’ve got to be looked after.

Launching the Make Child Benefit Count campaign are (from left to right): Edith Wyper (86), with her granddaughter Valerie Patience (32), great-grandson Lewis Patience (4) and son Raymond Wyper (61).

Who is supporting the Make Child Benefit Count campaign?

The campaign is being supported by a growing number of organisations including: Child Poverty Action Group, End Child Poverty, TUC, Save the Children, Citizens Advice, Family Welfare Association, One Parent Families, National Family & Parenting Institute, T&G, One Parent Families Scotland, National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations, Children in Wales, National Union of Students, Barnardo’s, Communication Workers Union, YWCA England & Wales, 4Children, Daycare Trust, UK Coalition Against Poverty, ATD Fourth World, Ethnic Minority Foundation, Poverty Alliance, Labour Students, The National Youth Agency, National Children’s Bureau, NCH, Contact a Family, National Deaf Children’s Society, National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers, Citizens Advice Scotland, Disability Alliance, Compass, Fawcett Society, Children’s Links, Pre-school Learning Alliance, Church Action on Poverty, Gingerbread, Housing Justice, Twins & Multiple Births Association, Christian Socialist Movement, NASUWT, GMB Union, Parentline Plus, Women's Budget Group, The Frank Buttle Trust, National Union of Teachers (NUT), Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Families Need Fathers.

If your organisation would like to support the campaign please contact Tim Nichols at the Child Poverty Action Group on 020 7812 5216 or email press@cpag.org.uk

Others calling for child benefit to be increased

• November 2007: Diane Abbott MP posted Early Day Motion 269 in Parliament, on Child Poverty in London and Black and Ethnic Minority Communities. This EDM specifically calls for child benefit to be increased to the rate paid to the oldest child.
• The Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty’s final report, Narrowing the Gap, included a suggestion to “increase the rate of Child Benefit for second and subsequent children over the medium term so that it is closer to the rate for the first child.”
  
• End Child Poverty’s Ten for a Million Charter, published in 2005, called for child benefit to be raised and paid “at an equal rate to all children, whether first born or not”
  
• CPAG’s 10 steps to a society free of child poverty, also published in 2005, called for the combined value of child tax credit and child benefit to be increased at least in line with the fastest growing of either prices or earnings and for the child benefit element of this to be maximised.