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Mr. Allen McKay
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what has been the increase in child benefit since 1987.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard
[pursuant to her reply of 2 April, Official Report, c. 486]: My reply was found to be incomplete; the full reply is as follows.
Child benefit has remained payable at £7·25 per week for each child since April 1987.
We have however since then devoted considerable extra resources totalling some £350 million in real terms to the least well-off families—those on income support and family credit—who do not gain from an increase in child benefit of itself and who are now therefore better off than they would have been if child benefit had been uprated.