Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Jones Excerpts
Tuesday 24th January 2012

(12 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Danny Alexander Portrait Danny Alexander
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No, I will certainly not say that, not least because youth unemployment rose by 40% when the Labour party was in government. I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome the youth contract that we announced, which is a great deal more ambitious than the package put forward by her Front Benchers; the Work programme, which is delivering real results for people up and down the country; and the investment in child care that will help women to go out to work, as well as men. Those are all things that help people to find work in these very difficult times.

Andrew Jones Portrait Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
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T3. I warmly welcome the work being done by the Office of Tax Simplification, but does the Exchequer Secretary agree that we can do more to boost tax transparency, for example by providing all taxpayers with an annual statement on how their hard-earned tax pounds are spent?

David Gauke Portrait The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
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My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. In November, the Government and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs published a consultation paper on exactly those lines, and I very much look forward to the ten-minute rule Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) will introduce tomorrow, which makes that proposal. We should all agree that we should do everything that we can to make tax and spending as transparent to the public as possible.