Asked by: Lord True (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each financial year from 2015–16 to 2020–21, what are the estimated annual costs of (1) child benefit, (2) child tax credits, (3) free school meals for Year 1 and Year 2 children, (4) Universal Credit First Child Premium, (5) Working Tax Credit Childcare element, (6) working tax credit lone parent element, (7) housing benefit family premium, (8) child care grant, and (9) healthy start.
Answered by Lord O'Neill of Gatley
(1, 2, 5, 6)
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has published expenditure forecasts for tax credits and Child Benefit as part of their recently published Economic and Fiscal Outlook document. The relevant information relating to personal tax credits and child benefit is reproduced below. Expenditure forecasts are not produced for individual elements of tax credits.
£ billion | |||||||
Estimate | Forecast | ||||||
Welfare cap period | |||||||
2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | |
Personal tax credits | 29.7 | 29.5 | 25.3 | 26.3 | 27.3 | 27.5 | 28.2 |
Child benefit | 11.6 | 11.5 | 11.4 | 11.4 | 11.3 | 11.3 | 11.4 |
(3)
The Government is providing over £1 billion of funding in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to meet the costs of universal free school meals for children in reception, year 1 and year 2. Funding for later years will be considered as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.
Schools also provide free school meals for children up to the age of 18, based on their parents’ eligibility for certain benefits. This will include children in years 1 and 2. This is funded separately from within the Dedicated Schools Grant allocated to schools. It is up to schools to decide how to use their budgets and the Government does not measure spend on free school meals for this cohort.
(4)
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has published expenditure forecasts for Universal Credit as part of their recently published Economic and Fiscal Outlook document. The relevant information is reproduced below.
Expenditure forecasts are not produced by individual Universal Credit elements and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
£ billion | |||||||
Welfare cap period | |||||||
2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | |
Universal credit* | 0.1 | 0.5 | -0.2 | -0.9 | -1.7 | -2.7 | -3.1 |
*Universal credit actual spending for 2014-15 and 2015-16. Spending from 2016-17 onwards represents universal credit additional costs not already included against other benefits (i.e. UC payments that do not exist under current benefit structure). | |||||||
(7)
The information relating to housing benefit is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
(8)
Forecasts are not available for child care grants, for which the rate is set annually. £74 million of awards were made in the 2013/14 academic year. Information relating to student support grant for childcare for 2016/17 was published in a written statement by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 21 July 2015. It confirmed that the maximum childcare grant payable in 2016-17, which covers 85 per cent of actual childcare costs, will be £155.24 per week for one child only and £266.15 per week for two or more children. Student support grants for childcare form just one component of the overall student grant budget.
(9)
The estimated annual costs for the Healthy start scheme for 2015/16 are £81.6 million, net of devolved administration receipts.
Asked by: Lord True (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each financial year from 2015–16 to 2020–21, what are the estimated annual costs of providing tax relief for (1) tax-free child credit, and (2) child trust funds.
Answered by Lord O'Neill of Gatley
Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) will be launched in early 2017, and will give up to 1.8m families 20 per cent support towards their childcare costs, up to a maximum government contribution of £2,000 per child, per year (£4,000 per child, per year, for disabled children).
The estimated total costs of TFC in each year are:
2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | |
Cost of TFC (£m) | 0 | 75 | 570 | 650 | 700 | 770 |
These costs are expected to rise to around £1 billion per year in steady state.
Child Trust Funds (CTF) are long-term tax-free savings accounts for children. Since 2011, children without a CTF can open a Junior ISA instead. Existing CTF accounts can still receive contributions. The contribution limit per CTF for the 2015-16 tax year is £4,080.
The cost to the government of exempting CTF account savings from income tax is set out in HM Revenue and Customs’ “Estimated cost of minor tax allowances and reliefs” and is negligible in 2013-14 and 2014-15. The cost is also expected to be negligible in 2015‑16 to 2020–21.