THE Chancellor’s announcement this week that child benefit is to be removed from households where one or more adults earn above the 40 per cent tax threshold (currently £43,875) is unfair, but not just for the reason widely reported.

Many of us are now aware of the example of a family where both main earners earn £43,000-a-year, making an annual family income of £86,000 and yet this family will still be able to claim child benefit.

But the family where one main earner is on, say £55,000-a-year, while the woman (usually) stays at home to care for the children, will be unable to claim at all – despite their income being £31,000 less.

However, let us also not forget that the £86,000 family will not pay any income tax above the lowest level of 20 per cent, but the £55,000 family will pay 40 per cent tax on £11,000 a year of their income, which is nearly £200 a month more in tax than what the £86,000 family will pay on this £11,000.

So it’s a double whammy. If this is a taste of the coalition Government’s “family-friendly”

policies, can we please just have the unfriendly ones?

It certainly does not motivate me to come off benefits.

Dean Mels, Framwellgate Moor, Durham.

WHY the brouhaha over current child benefit payments? It’s a fact that affluent working couples usually have fewer children than the less well-off who most likely these days are unemployed. Surely, with a burgeoning population and mass immigration to these shores threatening every man Jack, child benefit should be limited to no more than two or three children per family regardless of income.

In years gone by, it was left to parents to support their children.

Now, the situation is in reverse with children numbers raking in the money, hence a hefty rise in the birth rate, more and more house fathers and cases of growing families demanding larger council homes.

Norman Wall, Wallsend, Tyneside.