To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the cost to the Exchequer of child benefit payments in (a) 2008-09, (b) 2009-10 and (c) 2010-11. (275140)

The estimated cost to the Exchequer of child benefit payments is given in the following table:

The projections are based on indexation of the current first and subsequent child rates of child benefit and projections of the number of children in the UK from the Office for National Statistics.