Autumn Statement

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We are increasing yield by £40 billion over the current Parliament. It is not just a question of the specific measures that we take to deal with tax avoidance; it is also a question of the resources that we provide for the fraud and tax avoidance units of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Let me take this opportunity to praise HMRC for the incredible job that it has done.

We must ensure that we collect the revenues that are due. Of course we want to live in a society in which people pay lower taxes, which is why we raised the personal allowance in order to cut income tax, and why I have announced measures to cut business rates for shops and the like. However, people must pay the taxes that are due because they cheat the rest of the country when they do not, and that is why we have taken action to deal with tax avoidance.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

One in four families with children is headed by a lone parent, and those are the children who are likely to face the greatest risk of poverty. They do not choose their own family circumstances, and, of course, they will not benefit at all from the Chancellor’s married couples tax break. Will he consider again whether there might be better and fairer ways of spending that £700 million on families?

[Mr Osborne]

We are helping lone parents in particular by offering them more help to obtain work, or to obtain the skills and training that they need in order to find work. All the evidence—and I know that the hon. Lady has spent a great deal of her life examining it—suggests that if children of lone parents can be in working households, that will really assist their life chances. Lone parents often have the least skills and have received the least help, and we are doing a huge amount to change that.