Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was their total spending, in constant prices, on (1) child benefit, and (2) income-related benefits, for children for each year since 2000.
Total Child Benefit payments, in real terms at 2019/20 prices, since 2000 can be found in the Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2019 published by the Department for Work and Pensions. This information has been presented below (Table 1) for the years for which outturn data is available.
Table 1 - Child Benefit expenditure, real terms (2019/20 prices),
| £billions |
2000-01 | 12.6 |
2001-02 | 12.6 |
2002-03 | 12.5 |
2003-04 | 12.9 |
2004-05 | 12.8 |
2005-06 | 12.7 |
2006-07 | 12.8 |
2007-08 | 13.1 |
2008-09 | 13.5 |
2009-10 | 14 |
2010-11 | 14.1 |
2011-12 | 14 |
2012-13 | 13.7 |
2013-14 | 12.6 |
2014-15 | 12.6 |
2015-16 | 12.6 |
2016-17 | 12.3 |
2017-18 | 12 |
Notes:
- Real terms, 2019/20 prices
- Figures presented are based on outturn data
Source:
- Benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-2019
2. Income-related benefits
The information requested relating to Universal Credit is not held and can only be made available at a disproportionate cost.
Expenditure in real terms is available in respect of Income Support and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance on child elements in DWP Benefit expenditure and caseload tables. Again, to be helpful, this information has been presented below (Table 2) for the years for which outturn data is available.
Table 2 - Income Support and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance on child elements, real terms (2019-20 prices),
| Income Support (£millions) | Jobseeker's Allowance (£millions) |
2000-01 | 4,270 | 442 |
2001-02 | 4,774 | 408 |
2002-03 | 5,121 | 406 |
2003-04* | 5,151 | 351 |
2004-05 | 4,381 | 191 |
2005-06 | 3,290 | 31 |
2006-07 | 2,593 | 15 |
2007-08 | 2,144 | - |
2008-09 | 1,749 | - |
2009-10 | 1,039 | - |
2010-11 | 737 | - |
2011-12 | 518 | - |
2012-13 | 329 | - |
2013-14 | 190 | - |
2014-15 | 130 | - |
2015-16 | 87 | - |
2016-17 | 63 | - |
2017-18 | 44 | - |
Notes:
- Real terms, 2019/20 prices
- Figures presented are based on outturn data
- *since Apr 2004, financial support for children is normally provided through Child Tax Credit
Source:
- Benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-2019
Annual expenditure on tax credits cannot be broken down between Child Tax Credits and Working Tax Credits. However, this breakdown is available for the closely related measure of annual tax credits entitlement, and provided in Table 3 below. The main difference between tax credits entitlement and tax credits payments is that entitlement figures are based on the amounts households are entitled to once awards have been finalised, whereas payments are based on provisional awards which may differ from final awards, and can include payments and repayments in respect of earlier years.
Table 3 - Annual entitlement to Child Tax Credit (introduced 2003-04), real terms (2019-20 prices),
| £millions |
2003-04 | n/a |
2004-05 | 18,128 |
2005-06 | 18,255 |
2006-07 | 18,874 |
2007-08 | 19,351 |
2008-09 | 21,653 |
2009-10 | 23,336 |
2010-11 | 23,815 |
2011-12 | 24,648 |
2012-13 | 24,405 |
2013-14 | 23,902 |
2014-15 | 23,519 |
2015-16 | 23,112 |
2016-17 | 21,935 |
2017-18 | 20,494 |
Notes:
- Figures for 2003-04 are not readily available and can only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Source:
- Nominal figures taken from Table 1.1 of HMRC’s Child and Working Tax Credits Statistics
- Real terms 2019-20 prices. To convert the nominal figures into real terms, the GDP deflators published in March 2019 were used.
- The estimates for 2016-17 and 2017-18 are affected by the introduction of Universal Credit.
- This table does not include entitlement to Working Tax Credit or Working Families Tax Credit as they are not considered income related benefits for children, although they do contain some child related elements.