Party Lines: October 29th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today the shadow cabinet have changed tack – moving the focus away from unfairness, and towards incompetence as the major criticism of the government.

Speaking to BBC News this morning, Alan Johnson attacked the “incompetence and inconsistency” over the means testing of child benefit:

“What the Conservatives have done is not thought this through, we’re now seeing incompetence and we’re seeing inconsistency.”

“What happens if a mother, perhaps widowed, if she goes to live with her parents and her father is a higher rate taxpayer? What happens if she forms a relationship with someone? Has she got to record every person that she has met to determine whether they’re a higher rate taxpayer.”

Later today, Douglas Alexander upped the ante further by referring to a “Thick of It” style panic over child benefit implementation ever since Iain Martin of the Wall Street Journal reported a senior official describing the proposed change as “unenforceable”:

“As I understand it, since Iain Martin broke this story, there’s apparently been something like Thick of Itpanic within the Treasury, because they rushed at it so quickly they didn’t realise the basic difficulties they have with a benefit system that is based around household income and a taxation that is based around individual income.”

“If a grandparent who happens to be a top-rate taxpayer moves into the home, does that affect the entitlement to child benefit? They are both incompetent and unfair as far as we can see this morning.”

“There’s a rather worrying sense that the Treasury is making this up as they go along. They’ve still got basic questions to answer. What will be the additional administrative costs of communicating directly with all those higher rate taxpayers? What if the family circumstances change?”