A recently published report by The Children’s Society*, a national charity, presented information about the effects that will result from the Government’s changes to welfare and tax credit benefits. For some families the effects will be positive, but for others they will be horrific. 2.6 million working families with 4.9 million children will be significantly financially worse off and reduced to poverty.

The changes include: reduced standard allowances for parents under 25 years old, a cut in the allowance for disabled children, child tax credit and universal credit allowances for the first two children only, together with a four- year freeze in entitlements to most benefits and tax credits including housing benefit.

Currently in Herefordshire there are 11,700 families with 19,000 children who are eligible for tax credits, 80% of them in work.

The government has repeatedly stated that the changes are to ensure that ‘work pays’, but these 2.6 families have at least one, and in many cases both parents in work. The cuts will greatly outweigh any potential gains from the ‘living wages’. So what is the real objective? Children growing up in poverty are unlikely to be as healthy or benefit as much from educational opportunities as their better off peers. How will families cope with the knowledge that their third and further children are being subjected to government discrimination? What will happen to the last- born of triplets?

When major changes in government policy are proposed the likely effects should be properly assessed; not to do so is evidence of negligence. If the effects that I have exemplified were known, I assume that the government intends that nearly 5 million children should live in poverty.

Would one or both of Herefordshire’s MPs identify which strategy was chosen?

*Sam Royston: The Future of Family Incomes. How key tax and welfare changes will affect families to 2020. Feb 2016

Ros Bradbury

Bradnor Green

Kington