PROPOSALS to tax wealthy couples' child benefit to help pay for education schemes to help poorer teenagers have been backed by East Lancashire MPs.

Pendle MP Gordon Prentice has supported the idea and his Burnley Labour backbench colleague Peter Pike said the scheme should include couples living together and not just those who are married.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is considering the move for inclusion in his March 9 Budget to raise £450 million to pay for incentives to keep poorer teenagers in schools and colleges. It would mean any single parent or married couple where one spouse earned more than £31,295 would pay tax on their child benefit at the higher rate of 40 per cent.

Mr Brown paved the way for the move by uprating the payments to £14.40 a week for the first child and £9.60 for subsequent offspring from April 1.

If the new tax - the first time it has ever applied to child benefit - were introduced it would cost couples above the threshold with two children £9.60 of their weekly £24 payment.

But the proposal has upset some Labour backbenchers and the Tories are concerned it could be impossible to impose on couples living together but unmarried.

Mr Prentice, who rebelled against the government in December 1997 over cuts in lone parent benefits, said: "Child benefit should be a universal benefit and taxing top rate earners doesn't affect that."

He welcomed the fact that the cash raised would help children from poorer families to improve their education.

Mr Pike said: "I would want to look at the question of whether it hit married couples but not those merely living together.

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