Finance Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

No, I am not going to allow anybody to interfere with the words of the Prime Minister.

On 5 October 2010, the Prime Minister said:

“I have always supported the idea of supporting marriage through the tax system, specifically supporting the idea of a transferable tax allowance. The idea of a transferable tax allowance is in the coalition agreement.”

That is where my hon. Friend’s new clause comes in, because it calls for just that. One is entitled to ask why, having had two Budgets since the general election, we still do not have proposals to implement that very important pledge.

Labour Members are misrepresenting this proposal as an attempt to build new privileges for those who are in a marital relationship, but, as has been brought out time and again during the debate, the question is what we are going to do to prevent those who are married from suffering disadvantage under the tax system. That is what we are trying to put right with the new clause.

[Helen Goodman]

Labour Members would be far more sympathetic to the case that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are making in saying that they do not have negative attitudes towards single-parent families if they had not voted for the Welfare Reform Bill, which requires lone parents to pay to get the services of the Child Support Agency.

[Mr Chope]

Speaking for myself, I do not have negative attitudes towards single-parent families, but I do feel that single-parent families should not be advantaged in the tax system as compared with married families. That is the problem that we have at the moment, and that is what we are trying to put right in the new clause.

I am lucky in that my constituency is in an area described thus in a headline in last week’s local paper: “East Dorset is a place for love and marriage”. The article says:

“Married couples in East Dorset stick together. Latest…figures show that 65 per cent of marriages in the area last, well above the national average”,

with the seventh highest rate of marriage survival in the country. Even so, fewer than two out of three marriages survive, but that is a lot better than in many other parts of the country.

I am not suggesting that the tax system is causing marital breakdown, but I am saying that we should follow the very strong lead of our Prime Minister and put pressure on the coalition Government to implement their commitment to recognise marriage in the tax system.