Transferable Tax Allowances

Debate between Mark Field and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jackson]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It will be noted that family policy is low on the agenda for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

The Prime Minister has said during Prime Minister’s questions:

“I believe that we should bring forward proposals to recognise marriage in the tax system. Those in our happy coalition will have the right to abstain on them, I am happy to say, but I support marriage. We support so many other things in the tax system, including Christmas parties and parking bicycles at work, so why do we not recognise marriage?”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 428.]

That was a seasonal reference. I could go on, but I hope that I have made the point that delivering transferable allowances, about which we have talked so much, is now of central importance if we are to be deemed to be reliable and trustworthy.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for leading this debate. Does he recognise the concern that many of us have—we will no doubt be feeling it in the months to come—that the changes to child benefit are another example of where the rhetoric about marriage will be undermined? A stay- at-home parent in a household earning only £60,000 will be deprived of all their child benefit if those proposals go through, yet two working parents earning £45,000 each, so with 50% more income, will not lose a single penny of their child benefit. That is one of the unforeseen circumstances of this ill-thought policy.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes an astute point and I hope that the Chancellor is listening. We will hear his autumn statement a week today. In fairness to the Government, they have sought to ameliorate the cliff-edge effect of the changes that were announced in October 2010, but uprating benefits by 5.2% while seeming to punish people who are aspirational and have done well for themselves sends a confused message, and the Chancellor should seriously think again about that policy. With respect to the Minister, I am not convinced that the infrastructure is even in place to enact that policy change to the maximum degree, but I must not meander on to child benefit.

Back in February 2007, the fact that Britain came bottom of the UNICEF league table for child well-being hit the headlines and rightly caused a stir. On 16 February 2007, that was picked up in an important speech by the then Leader of the Opposition entitled “Nothing matters more than children”. He gave a strong affirmation of the importance of marriage for child development and 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.”

Who in this Chamber could disagree with that?

Why is marriage so central to child well-being? As “Breakthrough Britain” demonstrated, fewer than one in 10 married parents have split by the time a child is five, compared with more than one in three couples who were not married. That is hugely important because although most single parents do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances, the evidence is clear that, on average, children brought up in married families do better than those brought up in single-parent families on every significant measure: educational attainment, health, likelihood of getting into trouble with the law, and alcohol and drug abuse.

As the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in February 2011:

“The Centre for Social Justice has found that those not growing up in a two-parent family are: 75% more likely to fail at school; 70% more likely to become addicted to drugs; and 50% more likely to have an alcohol problem…And the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that children from separated families have a higher probability of: living in poor housing; developing behavioural problems; and suffering from a host of other damaging outcomes, whose effects spill over to the rest of society.”

Some might be tempted to respond to that by suggesting that the principal cause for those different outcomes is not marriage, but wealth, and it just so happens that wealthier people are more likely to get married. However, that analysis does not add up. No one is trying to argue that marriage is the only important consideration or that wealth is not relevant. However, as the Under-Secretary of State for Education, Lord Hill of Oareford, has noted, research from the millennium cohort study suggests that the poorest 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples.

In that context, the least we should do is to ensure that getting married in this country is no more difficult than in other developed countries. Given that Britain is unique among large, developed OECD economies in failing to provide any kind of spousal allowance or credit, the fact that it is relatively insensitive to couple and family responsibility must come as no surprise. In making that point, I am aware that when the recognition of marriage in the tax system is mentioned, it provokes in some quarters embarrassed smiles and sarcastic comments such as, “I got married for love.” I hope that we all did—those of us who are married—but such comments demonstrate a complete failure to understand the situation in which we find ourselves.

Let me be clear that people do not fall in love for fiscal reasons. However, when they fall in love and decide that they want to be together, they face a choice. Do they marry or cohabit? Do they make a public lifelong commitment to each other in front of families and friends that is recognised in law, or do they just move in together relatively casually and see how things go? The suggestion that that judgment is in no way impacted by financial considerations can be made only by people whose wealth is such that they are entirely insulated from the real-world considerations that impinge on the lives of most, and they are in danger of seeming very out of touch—I hope, again, that the Deputy Prime Minister is listening.

What of the pertinent financial considerations? The latest international comparison figures demonstrate that one-earner married couples on an average wage with two children face a tax burden that is 42% greater than the OECD average. Why should we make it so much more difficult for people to marry in the UK than in other OECD countries? That is a pressing question, especially when considered in the context of polling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We are fortunate that the ministerial teams in the Treasury and the Department for Education are thinking carefully about how important child care is. Balance is important. We must not send a message through the tax system that child rearing, caring for children and bringing up a family are less important than going out to work, but at the same time we must, as Conservatives, take a liberal approach, so we should not put disincentives in the tax system for those who want to work. One of the abiding negative legacies of the previous Government is the appalling, mismanaged tax credit system, which tied so many people up in knots and was a disincentive for them even to consider any form of work.

I will not detain hon. Members too much longer, because other colleagues wish to speak. In addition to the marriage and fairness argument, there is also the important “making work pay” argument. In his Conservative party conference speech this year, the Prime Minister placed great emphasis on the goal of building an aspiration nation. Realising that goal necessitates addressing the principal obstacle, namely that our marginal effective tax rate is currently a staggering 73% for many people in receipt of tax credits. This is hugely out of line with international best practice. The comparable OECD average is just 33%. I am afraid that the elusive right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) must bear that huge burden. Clearly, he has better things to do today than attend this debate and listen to descriptions of the mess he made of the tax credit system.

We have got ourselves into such a situation because we moved from placing the burden of recognising family responsibilities on both the tax and benefits systems, as in most large, developed economies, to placing it entirely on the benefits system. That necessarily inflates benefits and, in so doing, creates an inflated marginal effective tax rate and a huge disincentive to work one’s way out of poverty, wherein the person concerned only gains 27p in every additional pound earned. Across the OECD, comparable employees take home on average 67p for every additional pound earned. The introduction of a transferable tax allowance will restore to the tax system some responsibility for recognising family responsibility and thereby float some poorer families off benefits, releasing them from high marginal effective tax rates.

The transferable allowance policy is timely for those wanting the UK economy to grow, such that those trapped under the burden of crippling marginal effective tax rates are released—liberated into productive, constructive employment, wherein they can deliver the aspiration nation goal.

To date, Ministers pressed on the transferable allowance point have always reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to the policy and said that they will introduce it at the appropriate time. However, the truth is that if they do not act at the next Budget in March 2013 the appropriate time will have passed, because it will take at least 12 months from the passage of the legislation till the law can be implemented, because of information technology and other preparatory changes that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will have to implement. We have now reached the crunch point, which is why I call on the Chancellor to announce in the autumn statement, a week today, that the 2013 Budget will introduce transferable allowances.

I am told that the cost of a transferable allowance restricted to married couples with a child under three would be less than £1 billion. If it were restricted to married couples with a child under six, the cost would be £1.4 billion. The cost would be £2.4 billion if it were restricted to married couples with dependent children or in receipt of carers’ allowance. These are not insignificant amounts, but they must be seen in context. At 2010 prices, £13 billion is being found to raise the threshold for everyone to £10,000, and some £3.3 billion is being found to increase the basic personal allowance by £1,100 next year.

[Mark Field]

For context, my hon. Friend will know that £2.4 billion is roughly eight days’ borrowing for this Government.

[Mr Jackson]

I am sure that the wise point made by my hon. Friend will be heard by the Minister, the Front-Bench spokesman for the Treasury.

In presenting these options, I hope that the Government do not opt to introduce the limited partially transferable allowance mooted in The Sunday Telegraph just published, which would be worth only £150, or £3 a week. If the limited funds available are such that we have to start with a limited transferable allowance proposal, it would be much better to focus a transferable allowance on those with young children, providing such families with a meaningful transferable allowance, rather than something minimal spread over all one-earner families.