Helen Goodman
Main Page: Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)Department Debates - View all Helen Goodman's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The Chancellor is presiding over a situation in which an extra 200,000 children will be living in poverty while at the same time cutting taxes for millionaires. Does he think the parents of those children will think that is fair?
Mr Osborne
Child poverty went up by 300,000 during the recession of the previous Government, and the hon. Lady was a Government MP at the time. We have taken a number of actions today, such as that on the pupil premium, to help the poorest kids, and there is also the troubled families initiative. That means 400 families helped by our plans. The distributional analysis, as I showed, shows that the richest quintile in our society are paying the most as a result of the collection of these measures. We are demonstrating that it is possible to have progressive policies while living with sane public finances.