Tax Credits

Alan Brown Excerpts
Tuesday 20th October 2015

(9 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Neil Gray Portrait Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
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I and my SNP colleagues oppose the UK Government’s continued attack on low-income and vulnerable working families. It will have a devastating impact on the majority of the 11,300 children from more than 6,000 families in Airdrie and Shotts who are in receipt of tax credits.

The very first lines of the July report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies state:

“A package of changes to the tax, tax credit and benefit system has been announced for implementation in the current parliament…These will reduce household incomes significantly, particularly for those towards the bottom of the income distribution.”

Alan Brown Portrait Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
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Is my hon. Friend aware that the Tory manifesto mentioned tax credits only twice and that it did not mention the scale of the proposed cuts? Conservative Members are lining up to say that they have a mandate to cut tax credits, but they have no such mandate, especially considering that fewer than one in four of the electorate voted for this Government.