The new Conservative/Liberal-Democratic coalition government of Great Britain has announced that it will rescind the one step in the direction of a universal basic income made by the previous Labour government. In 2002, the Labour government created “the Child Trust Fund” which gave each child born in Britain that year a 250GBP plus another 250GBP when reaching ate 7. The bonds reach maturity when the child turns 18, at which time the bonds would be potentially worth thousands of pounds. The idea was that every child born in Britain should have some small share of inheritance. The ruling government announced that the program will be entirely phased by 2011, so that only children born between 2002 and 2010 will receive any part of the fund.
Stuart White, a professor of Political Theory at Oxford, commented, “So the party of ‘property-owning democracy’ (Tories) and ‘ownership for all’ (Liberals) combine to end the first policy ever to guarantee an asset for all young people.”
Martin O’Neill, a political philosopher at the University of York (UK), pointed out that the announcement of the repeal of the Child Trust Fund was made by Gideon George Osborne, who sits in the British “House of Commons” despite being the heir apparent of Osborne Baronetcy. He stands to become the 18th Baronet of Ballintaylor, and according to O’Neill, Osborne has already inherited a personal trust fund of more than 4 million pounds.
A blog about the demise of the trust fund is online at:
https://www.nextleft.org/2010/05/child-trust-fund-great-liberal-policy.html