A majority of voters believe child benefit payments to better-off families should be scrapped, a poll has found ahead of next week’s Budget.
Chancellor George Osborne is expected to target tax credits and other middle-class benefits on Tuesday in what will be one of the harshest economic packages for decades.
The Government’s poverty adviser, Labour MP Frank Field, has said he is opposed to means-testing child benefit – which costs taxpayers around £11 billion a year.
But a survey by ComRes for the Independent on Sunday found the public backed stripping them from wealthier families by 53% to 42% – including 47% of Labour voters.
The poll – which showed the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition partners making gains on Labour overall – found less support for removing winter fuel payments from better-off pensioners.
It also pointed to potential flashpoints between the supporters of the two power-sharing parties over the need for deep public service cuts to deal with the UK’s record £155 billion deficit.
More than a third (34%) of Lib Dem backers said they believed the Government was “deliberately exaggerating the financial problems to justify cuts to the public sector”.
Overall, voters rejected that idea by 49% to 38% however.
Nearly half (48%) said they would be prepared to pay more income tax to prevent public service cuts – although a majority of Tories (51%) said they would not foot the bill that way.
The poll of voting intention put the Conservatives up one on two weeks ago at 36% and the Lib Dems up two at 23% at the expense of Labour which fell three to 30%.
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