Child Benefit is intended by parliament to help people who are responsible for bringing up children. Child Benefit rules are sexist. Child Benefit regulations give priority to women solely on the grounds of gender, and do so even in cases where a mother is not the primary carer of the child.

1992 Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act:

Sched 10(3) states that “the wife shall be entitled” when husband and wife live together;
Sched10(2) states that “the mother shall be entitled” (in the event of cohabiting parents), and
Sched10(1) states that when two parents apply in their own right that
“ the one who has already been awarded Child Benefit …(prior award) shall be entitled”.

Child Befit was instituted by early feminist Barbara Castle to meet the perceived needs of the culture of the time which was centered on the family wage, which the Labour Party was formed to defend.

Once upon a time the family was a cooperative institution with pooled finances. Barbara Castle's concerns were for the small minority who did not receive the husband's pay packet from him on Friday, at a time when it was illegal to pay men other than in pound notes (the Truck Act).

The problem of alcoholic fathers was ameliorated by giving to the mother a child allowance in the form of a book of tokens that were encashed at the Government Post Office.

Today's society is a pick and mix society where historic procedures relevant to that past created to benefit women are retained, because a small number of feminsists in key position refuse to allow any review of established proceedures which cause discrimination in modern society. Changes which empower or advantage women however get through on the nod. The Government will spend unlimited amounts of tax payers money to delay reform. The C3/2003/0893-Hockenjos case took nearly seven years, after the Solicitor General Harman deceided that there "was no problem {get quote}, and the Equal Opportunity Commission (approx 85% of staff female) spurned all requests for help with the Hockenjos C3/2003/0893 case.

The Government admitted that Child Benefit payment rules are sex discriminatory. Even after losing in the Court in 2001, the Government continued to fight to deny a father who whad been ordered to care for children the subsistence benefits that Governments regards as necessary to keep children above the poverty line and allow children to have food on the table when in the care of their father. We now have reached the point where even the most senior judges in the Hockenjos case were considering the risks they would run if they confronted the Government.

Sex Discrimination presently affects fathers/men at a far greater level then mothers/women. The EOC has other priorities, claiming that average pay differential between the genders when in work is some 20%. The EOC is silent on the fact that, as carers for children, women get 100% of child benefits, child tax credit etc but fathers get nil.

Child Benefit was intended by parliament to help people who are responsible for bringing up children.

"I readily appreciate the argument that in today’s climate shared parenting is an ideal, and that both parents participating in the child's upbringing is the best for the child"
LORD JUSTICE WARD in the Court of Appeal, 29 Feb 2000