He gave a sneaky nod towards the concept of a cradle-to-grave welfare state

There was not much in the way of political vision in Gordon Brown's Budget this year. There didn't have to be, because in 2002 he'd cast the die for years to come. This year was more of a holding operation, in which the great man set about telling us how last year's predictions hadn't been as wrong as his critics claimed they'd been.

But towards the end of that workmanlike speech, there was a sneaky sideways nod to the idea of the cradle-to-grave welfare state – with giveaways for newborn babies and pensioners over 80 announced almost in the same breath.

The giveaways for babies were the much-touted baby bonds. The Government doesn't call them baby bonds, in part because the Tunbridge Wells Friendly Society copyrighted the term. No government wishes to disgust anyone in that fair town.

Luckily, though, there have been many years in which to get a different title together for the payment. David Blunkett floated it first, after all, when he was not much more than a baby himself. It was finally enshrined in 2001 as an election pledge, so it has been in the planning stages for plenty of time.

But still, after its elephantine gestation, the child trust fund managed to arrive stark naked, without a receiving blanket, let alone a cute little romper suit to greet it. We know that the child trust fund will be £250 for most children, and £500 for the children of those whose parents are on low incomes. We don't know exactly what those low incomes will be, though. And we don't know much else, either.

We know that the sums can be invested in various schemes, although we're not yet privy to their exact provenance. We know, too, that the Government is considering matching some of the extra funds paid in by relatives, but we don't have any details on how much they will match, or by what process. We are told that the Government will be consulting about further payments, perhaps when the child in question reaches five, 11 and 18, but we don't know what the further payments will be, or how many of them we can expect.

So as yet we still don't know a great deal about what these payments might grow into once a child is 18, or indeed whether there will be any restrictions on what this taxpayers' investment can be spent on once it has been cashed. Will 18-year-olds from poor backgrounds be able to march straight off, buy themselves a car and wrap it round a tree, just as the children of rock stars quite often seem to do? Or will they only get their hands on their money for uses deemed seemly and suitable by the state?

Either way, this aspect of the bond is fraught with problems. The idea may be that a child will learn about prudence and the benefits of investment from its little nest egg. But the fact is that the Government cannot and should not legislate for good sense. It certainly benefits a young person to have a little bit of cash behind them when they reach their majority, and it is a benevolent state indeed that grants this. But if the teenager's heart's desire is for two weeks in Tenerife rather than a pile of college textbooks, then they'll just have to learn about prudence when their tan has faded, in the time-honoured way that involves trial, error and regret.

For the very poorest children – and in this country there are still millions of those – prudence will be taught in a strange sort of way. While their parents run up expensive debt to pay for essential items, they will spend their childhoods sitting on a sum of money that could get their families straight if only there was a way to access it. It's rather a strange thing for a government to do – deferring the riddance of child poverty until 2020, while at the same time announcing handouts to the rich as well as the poor (even if the poor get more), backdated to September.

This, I suppose, is calculated to soothe the brows of the Middle England curmudgeons who dislike the idea so much of redistributive policies that offering child trust funds only to the poor would convince them further that being privileged is actually a cruel disadvantage. Not content with salting away all their child benefit for the rainy days that will never come for their children, they'll also get most of the benefit from investing the monies that the Government promises to match.

For some children, the child trust fund will be a boon well invested. But for many others it will be an unnecessary gift they simply don't need, or an unearned bonus they don't really value. There are thousands of ways in which money can be used to secure better futures for our children. Just giving them cash is one way, but it's not exactly highly targeted.

For the elderly, though, help is hugely targeted, which is ironic, really, since our senior citizens are the very people who could be trusted best to spend cash handouts wisely. Mr Brown paid out an enormous insult to senior citizens a couple of budgets ago, when he announced a handout of pennies as if it were tantamount to a lottery win for all. His attempts to undo the damage he did then are, frankly, the very least he can get away with.

Mr Brown has abolished the terrible iniquity whereby pensioners are expected, indeed compelled, to pay for hospital stays out of their pensions. This gives them the same status when admitted to hospital as everyone else in the nation. About time, too.

He has also increased winter fuel payments from £200 to £300, although only for people over 80. Again, most households will welcome this small bonus, but those younger pensioners who might like to spend £100 on some other little "luxury" will just have to hope that in years to come their grandchildren will be generous when their trust funds are ready to be cashed.