PRESS RELEASE: Child Benefit for all – mothers earn it, children need it!

On 20 November, the Church of England and 18 bishops added their voice to the growing number of people who are opposing the Welfare Reform Bill – mothers and other carers, disabled people, claimants, anti-poverty groups, low-waged people, people of colour, and voluntary organisations. The Occupy movement around the world and at St Paul’s has demanded that the church side with the 99%, starting with those of us who have least, rather than with the filthy rich.

The government wants to cap benefit income per week at £500 total per household, including rent. If we have a large family, we’ll suffer most. Child Benefit – which children need and mothers earn with their vital caring work – is included in the benefit cap. Carers Allowance, recognising another vital role, is also threatened. Already, as housing benefit doesn’t cover all housing costs, many of us go without food or heating to make sure the rent is paid so we don’t end up on the street. Extortionate rents by greedy landlords greatly inflate the Housing Benefit bill. Cap the landlords, not us!

Amendments to the ‘benefits cap’ include enabling families to keep Child Benefit on top.

Mothers and grandmothers whose letters have been read out in the Lords, sparked a debate about the impact of the Bill on children and mothers. Some peers were indignant at the prospect of single mothers, or both parents in a couple, being forced to prepare for ‘work’ (as if caring wasn’t work!) as soon as the baby is one, and to be jobseeking from when the youngest turns five (clause 57 of the Welfare Reform Bill).

Child Benefit must remain universal – just like the NHS and free education. It should not be paid according to income, but in recognition of mothers’ contribution to society, and society’s responsibility for children and their carers. The government plans to cut it to the poorest families via this Bill, and to “high-earner” families in 2013. When universal entitlement is gone, mothers and children are demeaned, our contribution devalued, our needs ignored. “Well-off” mothers earn it too – we all deserve the security of money we can call our own to support our children, including when the father is violent or uncaring. How can women leave violent partners if we have no money and the Social Fund, which helps us with basics for a new home, is abolished?

The government is using the housing benefit cap and overall cap to “cleanse” low-income people, including communities of colour, out of wealthy areas. We refuse to uproot ourselves and our children from areas we’ve lived in for years – leaving behind neighbours, friends and family, and facing the upheaval of settling in a new area and a new school. And who will care for elderly parents when we have to move away?

More info on what’s in the Bill here.

For interviews, contact: 020 7482 2496

Single Mothers’ Self-Defence smsd@allwomencount.net

Global Women’s Strike gws@globalwomenstrike.net