Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Lady is very knowledgeable about housing matters and I welcome her to her new role. She may not be aware that we will spend more money in the next two years on support for mortgage interest for people who are out of work than the previous Government planned to do. They planned to cut support to 2%, which would have led to many more homelessness cases.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

15. If he will remove eligibility for child benefit in respect of children not resident in the UK from non-UK EU nationals working in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

This is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the main purpose of child benefit is to support families resident in the UK. However, child benefit is classed as a “family benefit” under EC social security co-ordinating regulations. When an EEA national works and pays compulsory national insurance contributions in the UK, that person is entitled to UK family benefits, even if their family remains in another EEC country.

[Stephen Barclay]

I note the Minister’s reply, although at the 2003 European meeting agreeing the eligibility for child benefits, the British Government were represented by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which suggests that the Department has an interest in this matter.

Would the Minister, together with colleagues, agree to set out in the Library within the next month her proposals for reforming a system under which the British taxpayer not only pays child benefit to non-UK European families who do not work and whose children live abroad, but pays up to four times as much in benefit as the children get from their own Government?

[Maria Miller]

I can understand my hon. Friend’s frustration about this matter, but I reiterate that it is a policy area for the Treasury and it is also an issue that we have inherited. Many other nations are as concerned as he is about this issue and I am sure that my colleagues in the Treasury will be looking at it in detail.