Budget: Household Impact

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, contrary to that question, as a result of some discussions involving the Chancellor, the specific distributional analysis that was requested was posted on the government website on 21 July. There followed a number of conversations outlining the Treasury’s belief that the new analysis was intellectually superior to those in the preceding Parliaments. I should add, however, that the requested distributional analysis has indeed been published, despite the apparent lack of awareness of it displayed in the previous question.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, it is certainly a disgrace that the distributional analysis was not published with the Budget, a practice followed by the coalition every year so that questions could be asked during Budget-related debates. Can the Minister confirm the analysis of the IFS around the distribution that the only gainers from the tax and benefit changes are the richest eighth and ninth deciles, and that the big losses are all concentrated in the poorest first to seventh deciles, with the very poorest among the biggest losers?

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, the distributional analysis subsequently published on the government website, as I just outlined, actually shows that if one needed to specifically pick where the impact was felt most severely across the different quintiles of income distribution, it was in the highest 20%.