Finance (No. 4) Bill

Steve Brine Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point, which was also covered in the recent Adjournment debate on this subject, which received what I can describe only as a rather woolly response from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke). He said that, basically, something was going to happen in this Parliament but the Government were not quite sure what or when. That was not good enough. We need an opportunity to look at the whole issue of transferrable tax allowances, and allowances in the tax and benefit system that recognise the family and marriage.

Returning to the issue of fairness, two people on £50,000 a year with children will not have to pay the high income child benefit charge, whereas a family with children with one person earning over £60,000 will have to pay it.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

On the issue of fairness, would my hon. Friend have any truck with the idea of limiting child benefit to, say, the first two or three children, regardless of the parents’ income, which would retain the universal element?

[Mr Chope]

There is a whole host of ideas going round. There was a time when no child benefit or allowance was payable for the first child, on the basis that parents should take responsibility for that child and bear the costs themselves, but, if they had any more, they could expect the state to help them. My hon. Friend’s point illustrates further the fact that this measure should have been the subject of proper consultation and draft clauses, so that we could have had a debate on it in the wider context of universal benefits. Instead, it was announced at the party conference and implemented in this way.