Autumn Statement Distributional Analysis, Universal Credit and ESA

Debate between John McDonnell and Damian Hinds

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is of course right. There is always a dynamic effect of changes in taxation. I will come on to the question of the distributional analysis, because when we look at it we see that it is rather different from what the shadow Chancellor suggested.

[John McDonnell]

May I remind the Minister of what the Institute for Fiscal Studies said about the Government’s changes? It stated that the long-run effect of tax and benefit changes in last year’s autumn statement, which were translated into the Budget, would be percentage losses around 25 times larger for those in the bottom decile than for those in the top decile.