Rail Services (Bedfordshire)

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I am grateful to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Luton South (Mr Shuker), for letting me speak and I look forward to hearing what the Minister—whom I warmly congratulate on her new post—has to say.

I have three quick points to make—mindful of your admonition about time, Mr Paisley. West Midlands Trains serves Leighton Buzzard in my constituency. I learned recently that it is about to invest another £70 million in train maintenance and will provide an extra 10,000 seats to London each day, which will be available during the daily peak times. That will happen over the next few years but, more importantly, there will be two extra class 319 carriages to help commuters from Leighton Buzzard in the next few weeks. That is vital, with the extra housing growth that we have in Bedfordshire.

Secondly, I completely back the points that the hon. Member for Luton South made about the withdrawal of commuter services on East Midlands Trains from Bedford and Luton. That will cause major disruption to my constituents and there are worries that it is a bit of a stitch-up by some long-distance commuters who have been plotting it for a while; there are even worries about the locations of the consultants’ offices. I note that they are in Nottingham, Derby and London; perhaps they would be advantaged by the changes. I call on the Minister to ensure fair play.

Last, I also completely back the point about the need for four fast direct trains an hour from London St Pancras to Luton Airport Parkway. Luton is the country’s fifth-biggest airport and if we get things right it will be the one that is quickest to get to from central London. Let us get the cars off the roads and give people a good experience.

Paradise Papers

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we are committed to country-by-country reporting, which we will push forward with multilaterally. As for our future trade treaties, they are for the future and for the Department for International Trade.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Low rates of tax and growing tax revenues depend critically on every penny of tax due being paid. What is the position if someone receives a fee, then sends it to a trust fund in Mauritius only to receive the money back as a loan?

[Mel Stride]

I cannot comment on a specific tax structure put to me in these questions, other than to say that if it falls foul of our very rigorous disguised remuneration arrangements—some of them are being put in place by the latest Finance Bill—the people involved should clearly expect to receive a hand on the shoulder from HMRC.

Balancing the Public Finances

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Economies that lose control of their finances lose control of their destiny and that is why it is absolutely right to focus on living within our means. Conservative Members believe that the best way to do that is to power up an enterprise economy. We all hate austerity; we believe in prosperity. We believe in creating businesses and helping them to grow and expand to create the wealth to fund public services so that we can see them grow and develop.

We must be conscious that as a country we need not only to live within our means but to help our lower paid workers to have the means to live. I am proud of what the Government have done with the national living wage because we want well-paid jobs and decent public services. Productivity is the absolute key to higher wages, often for lower paid workers—a good movement, “Be the Business”, has been launched by Charlie Mayfield today. Technical education is at the heart of that, so the Government are putting it to the front. Dealing with extortionate housing costs in London and the wider south-east is also key to the productivity issue, because high housing costs are a drag on the economy. Our national productivity infrastructure fund, focusing on transport, digital, research, investment and housing, is absolutely the right way forward. We should have common purpose across the House; we must all focus on driving up the country’s productivity.

I am proud that, as a result of the hard things that the Government have had to do, the richest 1% are paying more in tax than happened under Labour and that income inequality is at its lowest since 1986—according to the Office for National Statistics, not the Conservative research department. Finally, the Government have taken 75 measures to raise an extra £140 billion in tax.

[Joan Ryan (in the Chair)]

I will now call the Front-Bench spokesmen. If they take eight or nine minutes each, Mr Harper will have one minute at the end.

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[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship today, Ms Ryan. I welcome the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to his position. I have no doubt we will have many of these debates in future. I thank the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) for tabling this debate on this important issue and on the need for Governments to balance the books. I also thank hon. Members for inviting me to the 1922 Committee. It is a pleasure. That was a joke—give it a bit of thought and try to keep up.

It is worth looking at the Conservative Government, in which the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean was a Minister for six years when all those decisions were made. Since coming to office, the Conservative Government have consistently failed to balance the books and to abolish the deficit, despite continually pledging to do so.

[Andrew Selous]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Dowd]

May I get further into my speech? I will then be happy to give way.

First, it was promised that the deficit would be abolished by 2015. Then it was pushed back to 2020. We have now been told by the Chancellor that it is likely that it will not be abolished until 2025. The phrase used in the Conservative manifesto—hon. Members will appreciate that I read it avidly—was

“by the middle of the next decade”.

A full 10 years after the former Chancellor originally pledged to do it, and a full 15 years since the Conservatives started making the promise, the books still will not be balanced.

[Andrew Selous]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that our task of reducing the deficit would have been easier or more difficult if we had acceded to the Labour party’s continual requests for more spending and its opposition to every single reduction in spending that we put through?

Economy and Jobs

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow such a brilliant maiden speech. The hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) represents one of the most beautiful constituencies in the country and was a great credit to it this afternoon. She betrayed her grasp that all politics is local; she quite clearly has her eyes set on making a significant contribution to the national debate, with all the benefit of her life experience.

I want to speak in support of the amendment tabled by Opposition Front Benchers, but given that we all find ourselves in a new hung Parliament, I first want to set out four or five areas in which it should be possible for us to work across the House on some shared challenges in the years ahead. I want to pick up where my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) left off by discussing the surging levels of inequality and injustice in this country, which are contributing to such instability in politics not only in our country, but across the western world.

The Opposition have talked for some time about the challenges faced by what we used to call the squeezed middle, and the Prime Minister has talked about the challenges confronted by just managing families. It pleases no one in this House that working families are about £1,400 a year worse off than they were before the crisis. The Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor were absolutely right when they pointed their fingers at the core of the problem: the challenge of productivity bedevilling our economy. The fact that the rest of the G7 can finish making on a Thursday night what it takes us until the end of Friday to get done will hold us back from having rising living standards, unless we get things sorted. The level of productivity growth in our economy is worse than it was in the late 1970s, when we used to call the problem the “British disease”.

While there are four or five areas in which we can make significant progress, there was very little reference to them in the Queen’s Speech. If we are to become a richer country, we patently need to become a smarter country. Unless we spend more on science and on research and development, it will be impossible for our economy to become more productive. We spend just 1.3% of GDP on research and development, which is well behind the 2.3% spent across the rest of the OECD and the 3% spent by economies such as Germany, South Korea and Israel, which all have significant manufacturing sectors that are bigger than ours. The Government set out a long-term target for 2.3%, but they should be more ambitious and we should be debating now how we lever in more private sector investment through good public sector investment, safe in the knowledge that public investment crowds in private investment.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I just want to let the right hon. Gentleman know that our manifesto commits to raising research investment to 3%, which I am sure he would welcome.

[Liam Byrne]

But without a timeframe, unfortunately. The manifesto sets a timeframe for achieving 2.3%, but not that longer-term ambition.

Secondly, moving from the supply side to the demand side, we need a faster rate of growth. The previous Chancellor, George Osborne, sought to try to close the deficit, but with 90% of that achieved through spending cuts, our economy was put in a place where wage growth began to slow. If we want fiscal policy to do more and if we are now going to celebrate across the House austerity being over, we will need a grown-up debate about tax. I think we have overdone things on corporation tax, and for this simple reason: the investment that has gone into our economy since the crash has been dwarfed fivefold by the amount that companies have put in the bank to sit there and do nothing. As the shadow Chancellor said, companies are now sitting on nearly £600 billion in cash. As we cut taxes and hand money back to big multinationals, they are putting much more of it in the bank, where it is doing nothing, than they are spending on creating new jobs. That is why we must have a much more grown-up debate about who needs tax incentives and who does not.

Thirdly, we have to look at not just public investment but private sector investment. Our capital markets are not patient enough and do not invest in long-term growth, but sadly the debate about patient capital stalled at about the time the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) left office. We need a new debate about how we encourage more long-termism in the City and elsewhere, including in our banking sector, because at the moment we do not have it. Back in the 1950s, shareholders held on to their shares for an average of six years, whereas now the figure is six months. We need to encourage longer-term horizons in the boardroom.

Fourthly—there was something in the Queen’s Speech about this—labour markets have to become more skilled. There is good ambition for T-levels and I welcome the apprenticeship levy, but the truth is that in Birmingham, one of our great cities, there are still only 120 young people on apprenticeship paths that take them up to a degree level of skill. That is inadequate, and it holds back places such as my city. We should be devolving the apprenticeship levy as far as is possible. Crucially, we should also be reversing the swingeing cuts we have seen over the past few years to our further education sector, because our colleges are the bridge between lower and higher-level skills, and they need more support.

Fifthly, we need a new debate about enterprise in this House. I heard the speech made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), but the reality is that, according to the House of Commons Library, all the tax cuts over the past few years have not stopped 1 million people leaving entrepreneurial activity. Why are we not expanding the start-up loan scheme? Why are we not making sure that every person who leaves school knows how to start a business? Such practical things could make a difference.

The final area in which we need change is about not just corporate governance rules, but the powers that we give to local authorities. I do not criticise the deal that the DUP struck. All I would note is that we are talking about an average of £244 per person in Northern Ireland, which is 15 times more than under the devolution deals that have been granted to other local authorities. If we in the west midlands had a Northern Ireland-sized deal, we would have £657 million coming into our area each and every year. I therefore urge the Secretary of State to be an awful lot more ambitious.

The great George Orwell once wrote:

“The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody”.

Some people have done well since 2010—the stock market is up 40% and the property market is up 25%—so let us use this new wealth to make sure that there is wealth for all in the years ahead.

Equitable Life Policyholders: Compensation

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), with whom I have worked for the past few years as—I should declare this—the co-chair of the all-party group on justice for Equitable Life policyholders.

I am very sad that after so many years of debating this issue in this House, we are back once again talking about the continuing losses suffered by hundreds of thousands of Equitable Life policyholders. As we have heard, they invested in the world’s oldest life assurance company in the belief that they would be able to have a comfortable old age, but instead, after a lifetime of saving, they find themselves sometimes destitute, and often much poorer through no fault of their own.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the issue is not just one of restitution for our constituents who have lost out, but one of confidence in the whole savings culture for future generations, which is very important, and that the two issues are linked?

[Fabian Hamilton]

Indeed, I do agree, and I will go on to say something about that, but there is also a third dimension, which is that we have a moral duty to ensure that the Equitable Life policyholders are compensated.

How have we arrived at this situation at this point in time, 17 years after Equitable closed its doors to new investors, and seven years after the previous Government promised to ensure that the losses incurred by Equitable policyholders would be compensated? My first involvement in the Equitable saga was to speak in an Adjournment debate that I secured in Westminster Hall on 24 June 2009. In that debate, I spoke about the serious issues facing all our constituents since the crash of Equitable Life, following its inability to meet its obligations and the promises it had made to investors over the decades. Equitable Life started selling pensions as early as 1913, but it was not until 1957 that the society started selling its now infamous guaranteed annuity rate pensions, which promised a clear and unambiguous return on the capital invested. That carried on until 1988, when the society realised that its rates were so good and so far ahead of the rest of the market that they were, in reality, totally unsustainable. In December 2000, Equitable Life was forced to close to new business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We are likely to build more affordable homes in this Parliament than have been built since the 1970s.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

There are currently 87,000 ultra-low emission vehicles on our roads, but the Committee on Climate Change says that we need 1.7 million by 2020. What more can the Treasury do to help us to reach that challenging target?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern. This matter was on my agenda when I was Transport Secretary in 2010. The roll-out of ultra-low emission vehicles has been disappointing—it has not been as fast as I would have hoped—and that will be one of the issues we consider as we try to respond to concerns about air quality, which have been reinforced by recent court decisions requiring the Government to review their approach on that.

Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One consequence for a number of children is that they have lost their entitlement to free school meals, so they have suffered doubly as a result of what has happened to them.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is being extremely generous in giving way, and we are all grateful to her. I had a case in which a single mother was accused of living with a former tenant who had moved out in 2014. Does the right hon. Lady not agree that although issues must be investigated, to do so on the basis of allegation, without evidence, and to stop payment, is not really a satisfactory way for Concentrix or anyone else to operate?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will try to make some progress, so that he can see what I want to say about that kind of issue. Decisions were certainly made on the basis of inadequate evidence, in a way that I believe was actually illegal under the Tax Credits Act 2002, and should not have been permitted.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is criticising the long-term approach of our economic plan, but it is important that we think about the long term. Infrastructure spending, both private and public, will on average be higher in this Parliament than it was in the previous Parliament.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Is the Exchequer Secretary aware that a partnership between the Government, Central Bedfordshire council and developers is leading to the construction of 5,200 houses north of Houghton Regis and the provision of a bypass, for which we have waited 60 years, as a result of a £45 million contribution from the developers? Is not that the way to get construction going?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is as a result of this Government’s long-term approach to the economy that we will see significant increases in infrastructure over the years ahead.

The Economy and Living Standards

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I will give way in a moment, when I have established my argument. [Interruption.] Hon. Members should not be complacent; they should listen to this.

People have good reason to be sceptical. This stagnation in real wage growth is not just a problem of the past few years. It started in Britain over a decade ago as rapid technological change and global trade pressures put the squeeze on middle and low income households. The UK is not alone. That pattern is reflected across the developed world. Low wage and unskilled employment has grown, but research shows that traditionally middle-income, middle-class jobs in manufacturing and services have fallen as a share of total employment in all OECD countries. As the recent publicity around Google’s driverless car shows, labour-substituting technology is likely, if anything, to accelerate.

So the challenge for this Queen’s Speech and for this political generation is to show that, in the face of globalisation and technological change, we can secure rising prosperity that working people believe they can share in. Of course we have to respond to their concerns about immigration and reform in Europe, but the challenge is to get more better paid jobs for people who feel they have been left behind, and to bring in new investment, new industries and new jobs which could replace those in traditional areas where jobs have gone.

Those of us on the Opposition Benches will, with an open but critical mind, study the proposals in the Queen’s Speech on fracking, annuities, and pensions savings vehicles, but the real test against which this Queen’s Speech and the manifestos of all political parties will be judged over the next year is whether on jobs, skills, innovation and reform this generation can rise to the challenge and build an economy that works for all and not just a few.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

In his quest to re-engage the electorate who have become disenchanted, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will believe that transparency and plain speaking are important. In that spirit, will he let us know clearly what Labour’s views are on increases in national insurance for employers?

[Ed Balls]

I am happy to do so. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whom I respect a great deal, has a proposal, but that is not my proposal and it is not Labour’s proposal at all. We know that there are pressures in the national health service and that £3 billion has been wasted on an NHS reorganisation, but we also know that there is a cost of living crisis. People are paying hundreds of pounds more a year because of the Government’s VAT rise, and what we want to do is cut taxes for working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

There seems to be a degree of amnesia among Opposition Members about the scale of the great recession presided over by the last Government and which this Government are having to deal with. That recession cost the British economy £112 billion, and it cost 750,000 people their job. On Labour’s watch, youth unemployment increased by nearly half, long-term unemployment almost doubled in just two years, 5 million people were left on out-of-work benefits, and in one in five households no one was working. We have made improvements, although of course we want to go further, but it is worth remembering the scale of the difficulties this Government have had to deal with in the past four years.

Government Members believe in high-skill, high-value jobs. That is why we are so passionate about our apprenticeship programme and about the university technical colleges we are introducing. It is why we are so passionate about our young people gaining the best skills and about improving school standards. That is the way to get pay increases, to defeat poverty and to deal with the cost of living issues facing our constituents.

In my constituency, I see employers rising to the challenge. I see B/E Aerospace in Leighton Buzzard now employing some 540 people, Honeytop Speciality Foods developing a new factory, and Care Group, a company from India, setting up a new factory on the Woodside estate in Dunstable. In India, that business has taken on a significant number of disabled people, and its delightful chief executive plans to do the same in this country—let no one say that capitalism cannot have a human face and a heart.

The jobs figures in my constituency show that there has been a 40% fall in the overall claimant count for jobseeker’s allowance in the past year and a fall in unemployment of 54% for 18 to 24-year-olds, 35% for those over 50, and 39% for those who have been out of work for more than 12 months. Of course, we have further to go—we want everyone to have a job—but that is not bad progress, given the scale of the challenges with which we were left.

We have a Prime Minister who has said at the Dispatch Box that he would like to see a minimum wage of £7 an hour. More companies are paying the living wage. I remind Opposition Members that it took a Conservative Mayor of London to introduce a living wage in London, and a Conservative Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make sure the cleaners in the Department got the living wage. That did not happen under the previous Government.

What would a socialist Government look like? We do not have to imagine it, because we can just look across the channel, where we will see higher rates of unemployment, much lower rates of business start-up and a whole host of French entrepreneurs, such as Mr Guillaume Santacruz, crossing the channel to set up business here. He has said:

“Where will I have the bigger opportunity in Europe?”

Of the UK, he has said:

“It’s more dynamic and international, business funding is easier to get, and it’s a better base if you want to expand.”

He has left socialist France to come to a majority-Conservative-led Britain to expand his business.

[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend agree that cutting corporation tax makes it much more attractive for business and industry to come here, and that that is a key thing we should be looking to do, to make sure we have lower taxes?

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We sometimes miss the point that what we should concentrate on is not the tax rate, but the amount of tax the Exchequer gains. Economic history has shown over a long period that lower rates of tax tend to generate more tax revenue, as they inspire entrepreneurs to create more businesses and expand them.

I am proud that we have a Government who are rising to the infrastructure challenge facing this country. We have heard a lot about infrastructure. My area has waited for a crucial bypass for 60, 70 or even 80 years. I have watched the town in which my constituency office is located, Dunstable, and the neighbouring town of Houghton Regis being throttled by excessive traffic congestion for many years. It has had a dreadful impact on businesses there. Even though permission was given for the road in 2003, not a shovel hit the ground during the whole 13 years under the previous Labour Government. I can tell hon. Members that diggers are now on the ground in my constituency and the road is going to get built. There will be relief for the people of Dunstable and Houghton Regis, who waited a long 13 years under the previous Government for nothing at all to happen.

We have the courage to make sure that people can get on trains in the morning and do not arrive at platforms that are already full. We have not built a new railway line since the Victorian era, but it is this Government who have the courage to rise to the infrastructure challenge.

We have also shown courage on pensions. Have not Opposition Members received letters from their constituents telling them how appalling the annuity market has been and how the projections of their future pensions were on the floor, cut by more than half? Were they not concerned by that? We on the Government Benches were, and, as the Chancellor said earlier, many of us came in Friday after Friday to try to get private Members’ Bills through to do something about it. Of course, Labour Members did not trust our constituents to spend their own money wisely. Oh no, they did not want to do that—they wanted to control it. I am proud to be serving in a Government who trust people with their own money. As the Chancellor has said, they have earned it, they have saved it and they have the right to have control over it. That is exactly what we should be doing.

Those are all very good things. Of course, there is further to go. The way to deal with the cost of living and help people pay their bills is more jobs, more better paid and highly skilled jobs and a high value-added economy. We are going in the right direction. We are creating more jobs, and Government Members want them to be well paid and highly skilled, and that is what we will continue to try to achieve.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

During her research for the debate, did the hon. Lady become aware of the fact that 93% of young teenagers still living with both parents are with married parents? That is quite a powerful statistic.

[Catherine McKinnell]

That is an interesting statistic. I know that the hon. Gentleman is committed to the principle of this measure, but I and other Opposition Members are trying to make the point that the policy is not only dud as regards its practical application but further compounds the unfairness in how the Government have made their decisions in Budget after Budget. Let us remember when hon. Gentlemen question what my point has to do with this measure that we know that the majority of gainers from the policy are men.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

We must consider this clause in the context of the current situation. We know that families up and down the country—in fact, all households—are facing a cost of living crisis. We have had three years of a flatlining, stagnating economy and households up and down the country have been paying the price for that. We have a Government who are introducing measures that will benefit a small proportion of married couples—only one in six households with children—and under which 84% of the gainers will be men, when we know that those who have paid the bulk of the price so far for the deficit reduction strategy that the Government have been pursuing have been women. It is a question of priorities, and this Government seem to have them completely wrong.

[Andrew Selous]

I want to check that I heard the hon. Lady correctly. She talked about a flatlining, stagnating economy, so I wonder whether she heard the International Monetary Fund say yesterday that we have the fastest rate of growth in the IMF and in the whole of the G7 at 2.9%.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I think that Government Members would love to try to whitewash and erase from the memory of the public the past four years, three of which have had zero—that is, flatlining—growth in the economy. People will be £1,600 worse off on average in 2015 than they were in 2010 and whatever growth is happening in the economy now is happening despite, not as a result of, the Government’s economic policies. I urge hon. Members to exercise caution in saying that everything in the garden is rosy when people out there are struggling to make ends meet.

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[Tim Loughton]

That is the view of one constituent who has not yet listened to the whole debate. Introducing a married couple’s transferable tax allowance in no way disadvantages that constituent. [Interruption.] In what way is she financially disadvantaged? It is a typical Labour response to say that if someone is in favour of something, they must be anti something else. I am in favour of doing a lot more for constituents who find themselves in that position through no fault of their own and who need help, support and recognition. However, there are also many married couples who need support in bringing up their children, often in difficult circumstances. Just because we want to help them, it does not mean that we are disadvantaging somebody else.

[Andrew Selous]

Of course, everyone in every part of this House is against abuse in any type of relationship. If we want to reduce abuse, does my hon. Friend agree that we should recognise that women and children are significantly more vulnerable to violence and neglect in cohabiting families than in married families? What we are doing today is part of addressing that issue.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend has done a great amount of work on this issue and there is a much bigger picture.

This policy is popular among the public. It is popular with a majority of Labour voters. It is even popular with an awful lot of Liberal Democrat voters, despite that party’s policy being against it. Last May, the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills attacked the “prejudice” directed at stay-at-home mothers. I am sure that he would have included stay-at-home fathers to be inclusive. It is deeply insulting to the many millions of married couples who have decided to make a lifelong commitment to each other that is recognised in law in front of their family and friends to suggest that we are discriminating in some way against other people.

Some 90% of young people aspire to get married. Some 75% of cohabiting couples under the age of 35 also aspire to get married. There are many forms of family in the 21st century and many people do a fantastic job of keeping their families together and bringing up children, often in difficult circumstances. However, as many of my hon. Friends have said, almost uniquely among the large OECD economies, the UK does not recognise the commitment and stability of marriage in the tax system until one partner dies. Worse still, one-earner married couples on an average wage with two children face a tax burden that is 45% greater than the OECD average, and that gap continues to widen.

To introduce such a recognition of marriage, particularly in the modest form suggested in the Bill, is not to disparage parents who find themselves single through no fault of their own, nor to undermine couples with two hard-working parents, all of whom rightly get help and support from the state in other forms and for whom we might need to do more. Uniquely, married couples, civil partners and same-sex marriage partners are discriminated against in our tax system.

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[Helen Goodman]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and I certainly will not yield one inch to her in the value I place on the importance of marriage. Like her, I am a member of the Mothers’ Union, the Church of England organisation that promotes and supports stable family life in this country. However, she is making a mistake. The undoubted benefits of stable relationships could be far better encouraged by the Government in several ways: if, for example, resources for tackling domestic violence were not being reduced; if, for example, we had compulsory sex and relationship education in schools that prepared people for healthy adult relationships; and if, for example, we had a decent child support system that did not incentivise the non-resident parent to ignore their responsibilities to their children, because that is what is happening. Instead of tackling those real problems, or looking at the factors that put families under stress—debt, long hours and zero-hours contracts—the hon. Lady ignores them. She does not understand that those factors are the cause of rows, tension and stress in families. If Government Members turned their attention to policies that would make a real difference, instead of faffing around with this fatuous married couple’s allowance, families would be a lot better off.

[Andrew Selous]

If this policy is so fatuous, why is it that more than 80% of the population covered by the OECD live in countries that recognise marriage in the tax system? Are they all completely wrong? Are they are all wedded to fatuous systems?

[Helen Goodman]

That is exactly the point that I was about to come on to. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said that we should place the well-being of children at the centre of this policy. That is a perfectly reasonable starting point for this debate, but which country is near the bottom of the UNICEF child well-being table and which is at the top? The country near the bottom is the UK: the country at the top is Denmark, which has the highest rate of single parenthood in Europe. It is at the top because it has a proper welfare state, decent child care and properly functioning systems so that people can look after their children properly. If we want to do something for children, we should have policies that promote the well-being of all children, not just a small minority of children who happen to live in a particular family structure.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham asked, “Why do Opposition Members suggest that just because you are in favour of marriage, you are against other patterns of family life?” That is not my view. I am in favour of traditional families, as I have said, but I also think that we need to support all families. The reason we are concerned about this policy is—as the hon. Gentleman should understand—that we can only spend the money once. We cannot spend it twice or thrice over—[Interruption.] Government Members talk a good talk, but they do not seem to understand the practical implications.

People in this country are facing a severe cost of living crisis. We are seeing an increase in the number of children living in absolute poverty. More than 600,000 families are going to food banks. If hon. Members had any real concern for child well-being, they would address those issues, not come here proposing £700 million of expenditure on a tiny group.

[Andrew Selous]

Those of us on the Government Benches care deeply about child poverty, and we believe that family breakdown is a cause of child poverty. By trying to deal with breakdown, we are dealing with a severe cause of child poverty.

[Helen Goodman]

If the hon. Gentleman would pause for a second, he must surely understand that giving people an extra £200 a year is not likely to enable them to continue their marriages when they are under stress. It does not make sense. For £4 a week, the couple could not even have a pint of beer together. The whole thing is absurd—

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman says that, but the policy is not well targeted. The transferable marriage tax allowance will help just one third of married couples. If we scrapped this allowance and had a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2 million, we could have a tax cut of £100 for 24 million people.

This allowance will go to a third of married couples, and 85% of the benefit will go to men, not to women. Only one in six families with children will get it, and families will only get it if they have only one earner in the family. My test for whether or not this is a good policy is a conversation I had with a constituent of mine recently. She is a shop worker in a supermarket and works 16 hours a week. She has two school-age children. Her husband is not working, because he had an industrial injury. He is on employment and support allowance which, under this Government, will come to an end after 365 days. I simply do not know how a family of four can be expected to live on 16 hours at minimum wage and two lots of child benefit. She cannot. She will lose her tax credits, because she cannot get a shift to increase her hours to 24 a week. Instead of dealing with people like that, who are doing the most responsible things and struggling against all the odds, we have this totally mis-targeted transferable allowance proposal. The Chancellor does not agree with it and the Prime Minister does not agree with it, so why are they doing it? They have made it absolutely clear, in all discussions, that this is about seeing off the Tory right.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is not in the Chamber. He had three articles on this subject in the newspapers this morning. The one in The Times is headlined, “Davis the kingmaker plots the next leadership challenge”. He wrote an article for the Daily Mail online promoting large-scale new breaks for married couples and making many of the points we have heard repeated by less elevated hon. Members this afternoon. Let us look at the response the article received from the public; they are not Guardianistas, but people reading the Daily Mail:

“No…I do not want my taxes going to ‘stay at home’ (eg gym/lunch/shopping) women. I want them to go to help vulnerable, disadvantaged people, not the ‘I’ll park my 4x4 on the pavement even if it inconveniences other people’ bunch. Bad idea.”

Another comment reads:

“This is ridiculous. Surely tax should be calculated on household income rather than basing this on a wife staying at home…some people are carers for the elderly, some are in full time education - just focusing on stay-at-home mums is very unfair.”

Then there is this:

“Thanks to this government telling us what we must believe and what we must not believe…This whole article is politically and socially incorrect and out of date.”

I do not think that this proposal will deliver the political benefits that Government Members are hoping for. It certainly will not deliver the social and economic benefit.

When I was first elected to this House, I sat on the Finance Bill Public Bill Committee with the Exchequer Secretary, the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke). Throughout the Committee’s proceedings he told us, on many issues, what Mrs Gauke thought. I hope we will hear what Mrs Gauke thinks this afternoon.

[Andrew Selous]

I speak as the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships. Family stability lies at the heart of this debate, and I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) say that she is a supporter of marriage.

This proposal is one of a range Government policies. The Government have put £30 million into strengthening relationship support. For the first time ever, the Department for Work and Pensions is conducting a family stability review. The good news is that family stability is increasing and strengthening, by a bit in the most recent figures. The scariest statistic in this whole area is that by the time children born today are 15, roughly half will see their parents separate. That saddens me hugely. My own parents divorced and I am very much less than a perfect husband myself—none of us is perfect. We all bring our baggage and personal experiences to these issues, so I understand the emotion on both sides of the House. We need to speak with care and moderation. When I look at the pain experienced by the children of friends of mine who are going through divorce, there is something that makes me want to try to do everything possible to increase family stability and reduce family breakdown.

I will not regale hon. Members with many figures, but I will mention the UK’s biggest household study, “Understanding Society, the UK household longitudinal study” by the university of Essex. Most academics and researchers in this area respect it as one of the most authoritative studies. It shows us that 93% of 13 to 15-year-olds whose parents are still together are living with parents who are married. I am not making that up or making a judgment on anyone; I am merely presenting the House with the facts. There may be many reasons for that, and I accept that there are cause and effect arguments both ways. I accept absolutely that poverty is a cause of breakdown, but I also accept that strong families are a bulwark against poverty.

We should use every tool in the box to try to strengthen family life for everyone, whatever relationship they are in at the moment. We need to care deeply about the 38% of constituents of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck). I want to strengthen family life for everyone. Some of the relationship support money that the Government have put forward will be for her constituents. The work we are doing on the family stability review will be for her constituents. I wish these debates did not become quite so heated, because I can assure her that Government Members who support this measure are for everyone—we are for all her constituents as well. We will defend the measures for everyone in the tax and benefit system—child benefit and child tax credits—because we recognise the important part that marriage plays in family stability. I do not want Opposition Members to think that this is a divisive policy. We are bringing this forward as part of a suite of measures to try to do deal with an epidemic of family breakdown in this country and because we want to do something to promote family stability.

As we look at other countries, we see that this is not an outlandish or an unusual thing to do. In fact, the UK is the odd country out in the OECD. Across OECD countries, Mexico is the only other large economy not to have any recognition of marriage in the tax and benefit system. We have tax benefits for all sorts of policies. We have tax benefits for Christmas parties. Just because we favour a firm providing for Christmas parties does not mean that we are against Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus who might not choose to celebrate. It is just something we recognise. We have tax policies that support people parking their bicycles at work. Just because we favour people bicycling to work does not mean that we are against people who come to work in cars or scooters, or who walk, or take the train or the bus. We need to get out of the mentality that, because we are introducing a tax break for an institution we know is good for family stability, we are being in any way divisive.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about family breakdown. Has he made an estimate of how many families will break down because of the bedroom tax, which is an awful policy? Could this money be used to scrap it?

[Andrew Selous]

There is relatively good news on the under-occupancy penalty. More families have been able to move, with nearly 200,000 one and two-bedroom properties available for families to move into. I have seen families who are better off because they are paying lower rent and lower heating bills, or are nearer a bus stop or a sick or disabled relative. We must remember the 1.7 million people on social housing waiting lists and the 300,000 people who are very overcrowded.

The general point the hon. Gentleman makes is of course important. There are many stresses on families today. The Government are cognisant of that fact and are introducing a whole suite of policies—freezing council tax and fuel duty, increasing the personal allowance and increasing the minimum wage—to try to make life easier for people. The good news on jobs and growth will also make things easier. We should not seek to divide people. As has already been said today, we know that over half of lone parents believe strongly that there should be both a mother and a father involved in bringing up children. That is something we need to remember as well.

I strongly support what the Government are doing. The sum can always be increased when the public finances allow it—at present, the Chancellor is playing with a limited amount of money—and we are returning to a policy that was well supported until 2000 and is common among OECD countries. I ask Members to focus on the widespread extent of family breakdown in our country, and to see this as one important policy for increasing the family stability which we know is so important to children.