Why non-means-tested benefits make me queasy

Despite the posturing, we must stop paying a well-off minority, says recipient Melanie Reid

- Melanie Reid

I've felt mildly queasy about non-means-tested benefits ever since I went in to withdraw 20 weeks of £15.75s, my little nest egg, and the lady in the building society quipped: "Child benefit comes in handy, doesn't it?

Guilt sent me scuttling away. In the early 2000s child benefit still was, as it always had been, a lifeline for millions of families for food and school shoes. Ours was destined for a skiing holiday.

And here was a textbook example of how one century's solution to national need had become the next century's middle-class perk. Beveridge’s five shillings a week for every child in 1946 survived as a universal benefit until 2013, when George Osborne withdrew it from higher-rate taxpayers. Yummy mummies joked about their lost wine allowance; today’s well-off pensioners gripe about the loss of their spring holiday downpayment, the winter fuel allowance.