Child Support

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 18 October 2010.

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Photo of Steve Barclay Steve Barclay Conservative, North East Cambridgeshire 2:30, 18 October 2010

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?

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