Chris Leslie
Main Page: Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)Department Debates - View all Chris Leslie's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Fiona Bruce
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) kindly moved it in my stead.
Is it fair—
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not wish in any way to dispute the hon. Lady’s version of events, but I am quite sure that I distinctly heard her—maybe the official record will show this—say “not moved” when she was asked about new clause 5. Am I wrong in my recollection of that?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That is not a matter for the Chair, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to read Hansard and work it out for himself tomorrow. As a matter of record, as he knows, it is open to any Member to move a new clause, despite the fact that the Member who tabled it has decided not to move it.
Fiona Bruce
Is it fair that when incomes are equivalised, one-earner married couples with children, on the average male wage, find themselves thrust into the poorer half of the population in income?
Chris Leslie
I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady’s flow, but this is really quite important. Did she or did she not say “not moved” at the beginning of the debate on new clause 5?
Fiona Bruce
I have already indicated that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough kindly moved the new clause in my stead. I am very pleased that he did so.
Mr Chope
I will give way in a minute.
In comparison, a household with two people earning between £35,000 and £40,000 each, which has a much higher income, will keep its child benefit. That is not fair. In response to correspondence, the Minister has said that there has to be a bit of rough justice and that to introduce a system of transferability of allowances and entitlements would be very complicated. However, that is exactly what was proposed by the Prime Minister with the transferability of tax allowances, and that is what is proposed in the new clause. That is of significance, because there is a read-across from this other thorny policy issue that faces the Government.
I hope that we will have a positive response from the Minister, and that he will spell out in detail when and how the Prime Minister’s pledges to the country will be implemented.
Chris Leslie
What on earth is going on with the Tories this evening? It is a perplexing situation, because Conservative Members usually accuse Labour Members of filibustering in an open-ended Finance Bill debate, but not at all this evening. Instead we seem to have a private family dispute breaking out.
Chris Leslie
There could be, who knows? We had the unedifying spectacle, at the beginning of the debate, of the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), in whose name the new clause was tabled, not moving it, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) swiftly getting to his feet and deciding to move it. Three hours later, here we are. I am not quite sure whether the hon. Member for Congleton had reached some sort of deal with the Whips—it did not look like a particularly friendly deal at the time, but maybe she had a concession from Ministers and they are going to announce, finally, some movement on their election pledges. It is all very strange behaviour.
As my hon. Friends have said, it is very peculiar, at a time when millions of families, pensioners and others are being hit hard by deep spending cuts and tax rises, that the first priority of so many Conservative Members is to advocate an unfair tax cut with no apparent benefit to society. It would be a multi-billion-pound marriage tax break that would penalise those who are separated, widowed or divorced, many of whom are already being hit hard by cuts to tax credits and child care.
Mr Jackson
On the subject of unfairness, would the hon. Gentleman like to apologise for the fact that in the financial year 2007-08, under his party’s Government, the tax burden on one-earner married couples with two children, on the average wage, rose to 44% greater than the OECD average? That is a matter of fairness. Does he think any responsible party should ignore it?
Chris Leslie
I am not quite sure what the hon. Gentleman’s point is. Maybe in the cool light of day that intervention will have more light shed on it. In his contribution earlier, he asserted that there was a causal link between marriage and the socio-economic well-being of society, child well-being and so forth. He may well have a set of statistics in which he sees a correlation, but I am sure he understands the difference between causal and correlative effect. It may well be that car ownership has a similar correlation with child well-being, but that does not mean that setting up the tax system to the advantage of a particular institution will necessarily have the outcome that he seeks.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for North Durham (Mr Jones) and others have overwhelmingly proved that we need a tax and benefits system focused on need and on poverty alleviation, particularly poverty among children. That must be the driving force behind a sane and rational tax system. We do not want a system with the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies that Conservative Members advocate.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that one causal link might be with poverty? The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) says that couples in Dorset stay together longer, but might that not have a lot to do with the affluent nature of that part of the world compared with, say, inner-city Glasgow?
Chris Leslie
Absolutely. Of course that is the case. It is so obvious that it is surprising that Conservative Members cannot see it. What is worse is that the new clause that they have moved—or rather, that one of them has moved—would cost more than £4 billion. It would cost £4.1 billion to create a personal allowance transferable between all couples, married and unmarried. That would be the price tag of new clause 5. That is the equivalent of a penny on income tax, a penny on employee national insurance rates, a 1% increase in VAT or putting VAT on fuel and power, as we know the Government sometimes like to do. If Conservative Members advocate spending that amount of money, surely it would be better to target it on the basis of need and where it would have the best and most direct benefit to society.
There is a long history of the transferability of personal allowances, and I will not go through it.
Chris Leslie
I know that many of my hon. Friends would like to me to elucidate some of that history, but we have already been through various centuries in this evening’s debate. Suffice it to say that it was a Conservative Government who eventually phased out the married couple’s allowance, and indeed the current Lord Chancellor who said:
“Now that husbands and wives are taxed independently—one of the best taxation reforms in recent years—the married couple’s allowance is a bit of an anomaly.”—[Official Report, 30 November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 935.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston was absolutely right when she highlighted Labour’s policy shift towards helping the children and families in greatest need, particularly through the tax credit system. That was one of the greatest changes made by the previous Labour Government, and one that we should be proudest of.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Gentleman could have speeded that up by not intervening.
I shall finish by saying that, clearly, there are major problems with the transferable allowance. It is costly and not targeted, and it is unfair to those without a marriage certificate, whether they are divorced, widowed, single or in a couple. There are a host of anomalies and unintended consequences, as several of my hon. Friends have said. For instance, if a husband is killed in a tragic road accident, his widow and children will be left without support, and so on. The proposal undermines the principle of independent taxation, but most of all, we should focus our tax and benefits system on need and on the alleviation of poverty. I sincerely hope that the House will reject new clause 5.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
As we have heard, new clause 5 would introduce transferable personal allowances for married couples, allowing one spouse in all married couples to transfer unused personal allowance to the other. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for tabling the new clause. It highlights an important point: that marriage is a positive institution, and one that the Government are committed to support.
We are keen to send a clear message that family and marriage matters, and that strong and healthy families help to create a strong and healthy society. In little more than a year, this Government have proved our determination to tackle the wider issues that can affect family stability.