Child Development

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester in his very fine opening of this important debate. I congratulate him on having secured it. In the time available I am going to talk on only one point, which the right reverend Prelate has already referred to: namely, the situation in the tax system. Of course, I am married and have been for some considerable time, and have long passed any obligation of a legal character to support children of my own.

Back in February 2007, the fact that Britain came at the bottom of the UNICEF league for child well-being was, very rightly, a matter of considerable concern. This was picked up in an important speech on 16 February 2007 by the then leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, called “Nothing Matters More than Children”. The right reverend Prelate has already quoted from that but I think the quotation is probably worth repeating, particularly as I would like to see it acted on. He said:

“I want to see more couples stay together, and we know that the best way to ensure this is to support marriage. Not because it matters how adult men and women conduct their relationships. But because it matters how children are brought up. Nothing matters more than children”.

This fed into the Conservative manifesto and, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, the key coalition agreement commitment to recognise marriage in the tax system and the wider Conservative Party commitment to make Britain the most “family friendly in Europe”.

We always used to recognise marriage in the tax system but in 1999-2000 that changed. To take statistics a little into account, only 20.9% of people in the OECD live in countries that do not recognise marriage in the tax system. Of that number, nearly all are in either Mexico or the United Kingdom. It would be extraordinary if our tax system penalised marriage. It is not so much a question of giving an incentive to people to become married as of removing difficulty that the tax system has created for people who live together as married and there is only one major income coming into the house.

The latest available figures demonstrated that the tax burden on a one-earner married couple on an average wage with two children, as a percentage of that placed on a single person on the same wage, was 73% whereas the OECD average was just 54%. There is plenty of evidence that the institution of marriage is the best possible environment for bringing up children. Many statements have been made by Ministers and others to that effect and I shall not take up time by repeating them here, except to say that they are of great importance.

That does not mean that single parents find the task of bringing up children any less challenging. Many of them, particularly those who have lost a spouse by death early in their marriage, have done tremendously well and they should incite the admiration of us all.

As the right reverend Prelate has said, if this situation is going to be corrected, it will require time, first in drawing up the relevant legislation and secondly in making the accompanying IT arrangements which have to be put in place. Time is running out, and it is highly important that before the next general election the Government fulfil the commitment which is in the coalition agreement.