When the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said last week that he wanted to defend the "squeezed middle" in Britain, he couldn't have imagined that the Tories would offer him such a glaring example so quickly.
When I heard on the radio this morning that George Osborne was removing child benefit from high earners, I winced, thinking that the £1,000 per year to be taken away would be a bit of a blow to those on salaries over £44,000. As his mantra goes, "we're all in this together", so it may be a price worth paying in order to reduce Britain's budget deficit.
But when I later discovered that benefits would be cut for all children, not just the first, I realised that this would be both hugely painful – and go against all that the Tories claim to support.
Child benefit is currently paid at £20.30 per week for the first child (equivalent to £1,055 per year, tax free). For each subsequent child, the mother receives £13.40 per week (£697 a year). So, for a family with three children, the mother receives £2,450 per year; for four children, £3,145; and for five children £3,840. In other words, if you're a high-rate taxpayer with three children, Osborne would take away the equivalent of over £4,000 in gross salary. And for each subsequent child it would be another £1,000 equivalent.
For the super-rich, or even those earning over £100,000, this may be an affordable pay cut. But for those earning just above the £44,000 mark, it will have massive implications.
Some may believe that, to a high earner, child benefit is a luxury.
But I have five children, and I know just how difficult it is to make ends meet with a larger family. Children are hugely expensive – and child benefit is the state's way of acknowledging the financial hit to parents, and making a small contribution to offset it. For larger families, costs such as clothes and food multiply. It costs £240 per term for my three older children to travel to senior school, for example. And even little things like swimming classes, football practice and music lessons all mount up when multiplied: not to mention the "luxuries" like eating out (one family meal at McDonald's: £20), or the annual holiday (flights out of the question).
And to those living in the south of England, or in northern conurbations like Manchester, the inflated cost of housing cannot be ignored.
In addition, large families are more likely to have one parent at home. Be it help with homework, attending school open evenings and plays, or visits to the doctor/dentist, larger families are hugely time-consuming too, and given that raising children requires lots of love, effort and energy, most parents want to be able to give their youngsters the support they need.
So the fact that parents don't lose out if they both work and earn under £44,000 will not help most large families.
The bizarre maths of Osborne's proposal is that if someone with five children earns £44,000, and they're given a £1,000 pay rise, they'll receive an extra £600 net income, and have £3,800 in benefits taken away.
Osborne said in his speech that the logic underpinning his universal benefit plans was to create "a welfare state where it always pays to work". His child benefit proposals do exactly the opposite. What message is he sending out to the hardworking families he claims to want to support? What kind of incentive is this for those with aspirations?
And he also dealt a blow to poorer families when he announced a cap on benefits – which will hit those with more children the hardest.
Ironically, the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was speaking today at a Conservative party conference fringe debate entitled: "We're going to make this the most family friendly country in Europe."
Duncan Smith has four children, so he should know the impact of the changes. But after giving his speech, in which he made no mention of them, he rushed off without taking questions. I caught up with him as he was getting into his taxi and asked his thoughts: he simply shrugged his shoulders and said that we're living in difficult times and have a huge national debt to sort out. When I pressed him he said dismissively that £44,000 is twice the national average salary, and then sped off. That statistic may be correct, but it doesn't mean that those on this income are swimming about in disposable income – in fact, it's likely that those with large families are barely keeping their heads above the water.
I'm not trying to say that high earners should be untouched: in fact, if the benefit cut applied to the first child only I think it would be painful, but fair. However, not since China's one-child rule has there been such a penalty for having kids.
In one fell swoop Osborne and Duncan Smith have meted out a tax on aspiration, and a tax on the family. They must reverse it.