Tax Credits

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

What I am saying is relevant to the motion, because we need some context.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. If the hon. Lady was not speaking to the motion, I would stop her.

[Dr Huq]

We need to look at tax credits in a wider context. There is the four-year benefit freeze, and the reduction in the household benefit cap. New claimants are no longer entitled to the “family element” of tax credits and, controversially, there is the proposal that, after April 2017, families will not be able to claim for their third child. I cannot imagine that happening in any other policy area. Can Members imagine the Government saying that a third child could not go to school? If such a policy had been in place, my sister Connie would never have been educated.

A number of millionaire Tory lords voted on Monday to cut help for Britain’s poorest workers. Lord Lloyd Webber was even flown in from New York for the vote. It did seem as though the Government were throwing the kitchen sink at this whole issue. There is growing awareness of the consequences of such a measure. Etched into the consciousness of those on the Government Front Bench should be the words of that caller who phoned in to that programme before the election, or the words of the woman who cried on “Question Time” the other night. Through old and new media, we have all received hundreds of messages on this point so we await the next instalment, the autumn statement. I hope that kids have been saved the unseasonable tidings of the notices that would have been plopping onto doormats at Christmas.

At the very least, the Government should publish a full impact assessment of their cumulative cuts to tax credits and benefits in the so-called emergency Budget. The Prime Minister said at his own conference that it is not pounds and pence but people that fire him up. Those 6,500 children in Ealing Central and Acton are real people with real lives, not columns on a spreadsheet. Some 70% of the money that the Treasury will save will come from working mums, so I urge the Government to reconsider their proposals and protect those on the lowest incomes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am going to make a very unusual statement. Members have been so disciplined, have taken so few interventions and have been so careful in their remarks this afternoon that we have more time than I had anticipated. I am therefore going to increase the limit on Back-Bench speeches to eight minutes, so we will hear even more from Mr Alan Brown.