Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

Not at the moment. I know the hon. Lady is very keen, and I am sure she will try to get in later.

Given the scale of the public benefits associated with marriage, it is not at all surprising that most people in the developed world live in countries that recognise marriage, as I said earlier in an intervention. There are numerous examples of this benefit that I could highlight, but given the constraints on time I will mention just a few. Regardless of socio-economic status and education, cohabiting couples are between two and two and a half times more likely to break up than equivalent married couples. Women and children are significantly more vulnerable to violence and neglect in cohabiting, rather than married, families. Three quarters of family breakdown in families with children under five comes from the separation of non-married parents. Children are 60% more likely to have contact with separated fathers if the parents were married. Separated fathers are more likely to contribute to their child’s maintenance if the parents were married. Growing up with married parents is associated with better physical health in adulthood and increased longevity. Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders, accounting for 70% of all young offenders.

[Kate Green]

I respect the fact that the hon. Gentleman is being very careful with his use of words in saying that there is an association between marriage and some of the outcomes he describes. What he cannot demonstrate, however, is whether there is cause and effect, because we do not know whether there are other personal characteristics that make those couples more likely to be married and whether they also result in those beneficial outcomes.

[Mr Jackson]

I will not take issue with the hon. Lady’s intervention, because it is quite sensible. Nevertheless, the evidence-based data in support of marriage in the tax system have been accumulated over a very long period and are very clear. It is incumbent on the Government not to disregard that evidence, but to take account of it in formulating their fiscal policies.

The list goes on and the findings are put in context by the fact that the Relationships Foundation calculates that the costs of family breakdown amount to £44 billion per annum and that family breakdown outside marriage is the real driver. As the Centre for Social Justice has demonstrated, of every £7 spent as a result of the breakdown of young families, £1 is spent on divorce, £4 on unmarried dual-registered parents who separate, and £2 on sole-registered parents. That is why the Prime Minister was absolutely right to say in response to a question about how the policy could reduce the deficit:

“If we are going to get control of public spending in the long term in this country, we should target the causes of higher spending, one of which is family breakdown. We should do far more to recognise the importance of families, commitment and marriage”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 429.]

I am aware of the arguments that the relationship between marriage and better policy outcomes is merely a coincidence and that the real driver for those better outcomes has nothing to do with marriage and is based on other considerations, especially income. Those arguments simply do not make sense. Apart from anything else, the fact that the millennium cohort study demonstrates that the poorest 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples makes it plain that marriage is a significant, independent determinant of stability.

Finance Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

This is an important debate and one that I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in. The first thing to say is that it is important that we take great care with what the evidence tells us. That is in two respects.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Lady was not here earlier.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman is interrupting before I have even begun to expand on the evidence, but I shall be delighted to hear what evidence he has.

[Mr Jackson]

I merely had the temerity to point out that the hon. Lady did not grace us with her presence until about 20 minutes ago, so she was not in a position to hear the extremely articulate and well-made arguments made by my hon. Friend.

[Kate Green]

I am very sorry to have missed the contribution of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), but I should point out my own credentials—something that I do not often do. I bring to the House, if not exactly an interest, probably a bias. For four years I was proud to be the director of the National Council for One Parent Families. I worked with hon. Members, including Conservative Members, on what happens when relationships break down and children are involved. I know that I speak for hon. Members across the House when I say that our fundamental concern in this debate must be the well-being of children. I know that we come at that from different positions, but it is the debate that I think it is important we have this evening. The debate is not—however much hon. Members may, with the best of motives, care about it—about the social role of marriage and the societal messages that we send. I am interested in the well-being of children. It is incredibly important that we examine what we know about what marriage means for the well-being of children, what drives the factors that improve the well-being of children and the role of the financial position of families, and particularly of mothers, in the well-being of children.

I have had the pleasure of talking to hon. Members about this over many years, including Conservative Members. It is important for us as a House that we put it on record that this is what we really care about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

With the greatest of respect to the hon. Gentleman—I understand what he says—we do not know and we have no evidence to tell us that it is the fact of marriage that gives those children that advantage. That is where the evidence falls down, with the greatest of respect to the strongly held views of Conservative Members and of DUP Members, too. The evidence does not tell us that the fact and existence of a marital relationship, if we strip out all other social and economic factors, makes the difference for children. Commitment might be one important factor but there is another important factor: conflict. We know that conflict, in married relationships or outside them, is extremely damaging for children, so it is dangerous for us pick out one aspect of relationships or familial structures and to say that it makes or breaks children’s well-being. The evidence simply does not stack up to tell us that.

I said at the beginning of my speech that my concern was about the well-being of children in the context of the proposal to spend public money on supporting a particular kind of familial structure. I am concerned that we are diverting resources to families who are economically better off rather than to those who face the greatest risk of poverty.

The families who face the greatest risk of poverty today—hon. Members on both sides of the House agree on this point—are lone parent families. There are two possible policy responses to that, one of which is to try to stop those lone parent families becoming lone parent families. Saying that we should have fewer single parent families could be a policy response if we could see the mechanisms to achieve it and if we thought that it would genuinely work for children’s well-being. In the absence of evidence that this tax break or other mechanisms can compel families to stay together, we must also consider the second policy response mechanism, which is how to improve the economic prospects of children growing up in single parent families, particularly in light of the fact that one in four children in this country will spend some time in such a family. I suggest that if we are considering where the pressure of public resources need to be focused, protecting the best interests of those children, irrespective of the marital situation of their parents, ought to be our priority.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Lady is very generous in giving way, but surely she is avoiding one central fact. We alone in Europe have a tax system that is biased against families with caring responsibilities in which one member chooses to stay at home to look after the children. That is the central fact that she is avoiding.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman raises a number of important points. First, I have been struck this evening by the interventions by Government Members about the opportunity for couples to make a choice—particularly that which many of them would like to see, which is for one parent in the couple, often the mother, to take some time out of the workplace to stay at home and care for children. They seem willing to spend money on offering that choice to mothers in couple relationships and to spend more on offering it to mothers in married couple relationships, but not to offer it to single mothers. The economic pressure on single mothers to go out to work to support their children is being ratcheted up by this Government. If it is right for children to have a parent at home for a time, not necessarily just when the children are very young, it must be right irrespective of the marital status of the parents. Government Members must think about the child-focused approach to deploying resources. If we think it right that parents should have the choice to be at home with their children, all parents must have that choice, not just those in married relationships.

In response to the interesting and important point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) about what goes on in other European countries, let me say that one of the distinguishing factors is that the experience of poverty among lone parent families in this country and the much lower experience of such poverty in other European countries shows that one can design a fiscal system so that lone parenthood need not be a determinant of poverty. It need not lead families and children into poverty. This is about the redistributive choices that we make in our fiscal system. When we have such pressure on the public finances, making a choice to spend money on favouring a group of families, many of whom are already economically advantaged, rather than focusing spending on those who are most economically disadvantaged is a strange priority, particularly given that we have no evidence of the efficacy of spending money on keeping people married as a route to keeping them out of economic disadvantage.

[Kate Green]

It is very clear that putting the weight of expectation for supporting marriage on the fiscal system is a very unrealistic and unlikely way of providing adequate support for strong couple relationships. Of course everybody wants strong couple relationships to be sustained and of course it is right to use every instrument of public policy that we can—cost-effectively and in terms of outcome—to do so, but the evidence about what sustains strong couple relationships is not that we should give tax breaks to the already better-off, and particularly not to the already better-off who do not have children, if we are concerned about child well-being. The evidence about what sustains strong couple relationships is about a much broader landscape of social and emotional support. It is about early relationship and social education in schools and ensuring we have strong services to support families in the community, including the universally welcome Sure Start services and the very good-quality child care and play facilities that can be available to support parents in raising their children.

To isolate money and spend it in the fiscal system rather than direct our attention to what genuinely supports strong family relationships and children in whatever family structure they are growing up is in my view a misapplication of public funds, particularly at a time when those public funds are constrained. As hon. Members have pointed out, it is particularly strange to spend money on couples who have no children if we are concerned about child well-being, rather than to spend money in a way that specifically focuses on the well-being of kids. I am very concerned that the new clause would take money from those with higher levels of need and give it to many couples in lesser need. I accept that, as hon. Members on the Democratic Unionist Benches have said, some married couples are in low-income groups and in straitened circumstances, but in general we would be diverting resources to better-off families from lower-income families, and particularly from lower-income families with children.

Finally, let me address the issue of the couple penalty, about which we have heard a great deal and about which I am deeply sceptical. Let us start by remembering that there are economies of scale of living with another adult in one’s household. It does not cost twice as much for two adults to live in a household as it costs one. The couple penalty that has been much talked about by Conservative Members fails to identify that the material circumstances of children in lone-parent families are measurably worse than those of children in couple families. Whatever the intellectual and fiscal modelling might suggest about a financial couple penalty, the reality—the outcome—is that there is no such couple penalty. Indeed, the penalty works in quite the opposite way. To seek to extend the material advantage that couples enjoy at the expense of single parents seems to me a strange choice for a Government who are particularly concerned about social mobility and improving the prospects of the most disadvantaged children.

I hope that hon. Members will consider the new clause very carefully and the fact that it simply fails to achieve the laudable goals of Members on the Government Benches to improve the prospects of some of our most disadvantaged children. I hope that they will look instead at how best we can direct resources to support parents who are bringing up children on their own, usually through no choice or fault of their own. I hope that they will relieve what is often a burden from the parents who are often proud to take on that burden and who deserve to be rewarded for taking it on, as they are the parents who stay and make the commitment. Surely they are the parents to whom we should be giving extra financial support if there is extra financial support to be made available. I really do plead with Members on the Conservative Benches, and with DUP Members who I think are giving them some support this evening, to think again about the likely effect of such a new clause and about the children who would lose out. I am sure that their intentions are honourable, but I am afraid that the results will be anything but.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady, who always makes an intelligent, cogent and reasonable case, but she is completely wrong. I had not intended to trouble the scorers this evening, but it is important that we have a proper debate on new clause 5, that it is not rushed through, and that this is not treated as a procedural issue that the House can dismiss lightly. It goes to the kernel of what my hon. Friends and I believe in. We did not come into politics at any level—in my case, more than 20 years ago—to make people poorer, to embed disadvantage, or to have a tax system that favours some over others.

My party has a strong tradition of small “l” liberal and progressive social reform, from Disraeli onwards. One of the more depressing aspects of the debate is the straw men—or straw people, I should say—who have been set up, and the caricatures of the Conservative party that have been paraded before us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jackson]

My capacity to listen is in inverse proportion to the length of the hon. Gentleman’s peroration. Given that he spoke for an hour, at the end, like many others, I lost the will to live. I expect better of the hon. Gentleman because he has given some very informative speeches over the years. Sadly, that was not the case tonight. I am sure he is distressed at my observations.

The hon. Gentleman failed to take on board any of the comments that were made or the facts that were presented. A study by the Bristol Community Family Trust in December 2010 demonstrated that cohabiting couples accounted for 80% of family break-ups, whereas divorce accounted for only 20% of break-ups. He did not specifically seek to break the causal link that I was making. One in 11 married couples break up before their child is five, compared with one in three unmarried couples. None of us wants to see the dire social consequences of family breakdown. There is a consensus across this country about it, from the Prime Minister down.

[Kate Green]

Accepting at face value what the hon. Gentleman says—that cohabiting couples are more likely to separate than married couples—what evidence can he give us that a financial inducement would work to keep those cohabiting couples together?

[Mr Jackson]

I expected better of the hon. Lady, who is learned, intelligent and usually erudite, than rejigging the caricature, “Put a ring on your finger and get an extra 20 quid a week.” That has never been our argument. We seek to influence private behaviour with public policy, and I used the example of speeding fines and points on a licence as policies that are likely to influence future behaviour. As I said to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who is no longer in his place, the Liberal Democrats made a manifesto commitment, which we have accepted, to take more poorer working people out of tax. That commitment was made on the same basis. The point I keep coming back to, and which I repeat for the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, is that the international comparators support my case and not hers.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Kate Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

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

It is a little unnerving to find myself disagreeing with so many right hon. and hon. Members and with a substantial proportion of public opinion, but I firmly believe that we must rescind the ban on a prisoner’s right to vote. I have listened to the arguments on the law and the role of the European Court. It has been suggested that the Court is extending its brief and seeking to prevail over the will of this Parliament and stretch the ambit of the convention beyond the fundamental human rights that it was originally set up to address. I see this in a rather different context—namely, as an opportunity to maintain and extend our understanding of human rights over time. There has never been a time when much of the popular will has been directed towards driving up protections and rights for prisoners. That is why it is important that the Court and our belonging to the convention should exert outside pressure to challenge us to go further in the name of social progress.

It has been argued that our standards are already among the highest, and in some respects they are, although not in respect of a prisoner’s right to vote. In many other countries, that right is extended either wholesale or on a more generous basis than it is here in the UK. It is absolutely right that we should aspire to the very highest standards in the rights that we afford people. The philosophical importance of convention rights is that they extend protection to minorities, even the undesirable ones that we do not like very much. We unpick and undermine those protections at great risk.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the House should be able to make a value judgment between a civic right and a human right? Human rights include the right to food, shelter and family life, whereas civic rights include the right to vote. There is a distinction between the two, and surely we can make a value judgment on behalf of our constituents and exercise our right to say that one is not the same as the other.

Prisoners (Voting Rights)

Debate between Kate Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue, which I want to explore in my remarks. The hon. Member for Kettering was right to say that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I am not suggesting that a blanket rule that applies before or after a four-year custodial sentence is the most appropriate way to go, but it is a step in the right direction and one on which I would like to see us build.

I would like to say a little more about how we might see restoration of the right to vote as a positive by enabling prisoners to fulfil their responsibilities as citizens, and how that might in a small way—I see scepticism on faces opposite me—contribute to reducing reoffending, which is surely the prime purpose of the criminal justice system. If we fail to give prisoners any stake in our society, it is difficult to see why they should wish to reintegrate into that society—why they should feel any sense of obligation to mutual rights, dignity and respect when we do not afford that to them. I see an opportunity alongside this new legislation to improve education and rehabilitation in our prisons.

When I raised the matter with the Secretary of State at Justice Question Time before Christmas, he expressed scepticism as to whether prisoners would take advantage of the right to vote. However, before last year’s general election the Prison Reform Trust participated in a debate with prisoners in a local prison. It reported that prisoners were intensely engaged in debating the political matters of the day: not just criminal justice but a wide range of issues that would affect them, their families, communities and society as a whole—a society, of which, like it or not, they remain a part.

Prisoners are rightly recognised as being among the most disadvantaged in terms of social inclusion prior to receiving custodial sentence. We should be looking to take steps to improve their social inclusion. What happens to them while they are in prison undoubtedly has a role to play.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

No; I am just coming to my conclusion.

I conclude with two questions which I hope the Minister will address. First, what plans does he have for a programme of prisoner education and engagement that takes advantage of the reintroduction of the right to vote, within the context of prison education—educating prisoners in their civic responsibilities—and how that will support their planned reintegration into the community? Secondly, I would like to follow the points raised by the hon. Member for Kettering in questioning the rationale for introducing a cut-off point at four years. That seems to suggest degrees of citizenship: one is more or less of a citizen, depending on the nature of one’s sentence. I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s view on whether discretion for judges might be applied more realistically if a blanket right to vote were put in place that gave judges the opportunity in certain cases to say that such a right was not appropriate and should be removed.

I am pleased that, after many years, we are seeing some modest steps to reintroduce a right to vote for prisoners. I support the direction of travel the Government are taking. As other Members have said, I very much hope we will move to an informed and rational debate about the effect of the measures now being brought forward.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Debate between Kate Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not give way; I do not have time.

More than 6,000 of my constituents languish on disability living allowance and, most shockingly, more than 1,000 of them languished on that particular benefit for more than 12 years under the previous Labour Government.

We simply cannot go on as we are. I welcome the measures in the Budget. I believe that they seek to protect the vulnerable while rebalancing our efforts to generate a private sector-led recovery that will benefit everyone in the medium term. In that spirit, I particularly welcome the 50,000 extra apprenticeships, an increase in the child element of the child tax credit, the re-linking of pensions and the allowance increase of £1,000 for low and middle-income earners. I restate our commitment to Sure Start, to refocusing on the neediest families and to helping ensure that the 6 million carers in our country receive appropriate respite care. I welcome too the cuts in corporation tax, the £200 million increase in the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, the green investment bank and the green new deal.

I hope that the new fiscal rules that the Chancellor has outlined will mean that by 2016, if we have extra money as a result of the cyclically adjusted current balance being in surplus, we will be able to cut tax again for the lowest-paid working people in this country. It took courage in this Budget to tackle the entitlement culture and some of the shibboleths and sacred cows, but putting this country back on track will require further tough decisions, which are the right thing to do. We should also disregard the opportunism of Her Majesty’s Opposition. There is nothing inevitable about a double-dip recession, and I believe that it will not happen. The Budget is borne of desperate necessity, but is there any evidence that seeking to encourage private sector growth and reducing the size of the state to 39% of GDP in four years is a bad thing and will not create jobs, wealth and new markets for our goods and services?

The Chancellor was candid and straightforward last week, in contrast to the Labour years of subterfuge, stealth taxes and fictitious growth projections. Tough but fair, a progressive and forward-looking Budget; a Conservative Budget for the nation and not for narrow, sectional, vested interests and the core vote—it is for this reason that I commend the Budget to the House and my constituents. I will be voting for it tonight.