FAMILY MAN: Wife and daughter join Tory leader

Jonathan Reed Political Editor

DAVID Cameron will today try to calm a rising tide of anger over plans to scrap child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers as he uses his party conference speech to insist the change is “fair”.

His first conference speech as Prime Minister comes after he was forced to raise the prospect of the Tory proposals for a tax break for married couples being extended to higher-rate taxpayers to help to offset the impact of the child benefit cut.

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Last night he was forced to admit he was “sorry” voters had not been warned of the measure in the Tory manifesto as senior backbencher David Davis joined in the attack on the policy.

Mr Davis, the Haltemprice and Howden MP whom Mr Cameron beat to become leader, said: “It seems to me not a good idea that one family living next door to another, one with a collective income of 80,000 getting benefit and one with an income of 40,000 next door getting no child benefit.”

Employment experts claimed the plan had been poorly thought out amid concern stay-at-home mothers with a partner earning 43,000 face being stripped of thousands of pounds a year while two working parents each paid just below the higher-rate threshold could earn 84,000 and still get benefit.

Today Mr Cameron – who was joined in Birmingham yesterday by wife Samantha and their baby daughter Florence – will defend the move. “As we work to balance the budget, fairness includes asking those on high incomes to shoulder more of the burden than those on lower incomes,” he will say.

Tax breaks hint to ease pain of benefit cuts: Page 4.