Standing Committee E
Thursday 14 May 1998
(Morning)
[Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody in the Chair]
(Except Clauses 1, 7, 10, 11, 25, 27, 30, 75, 119 and 147)
10.30 pm
Mr. Ian Stewart (Eccles): On a point of order, Mrs. Dunwoody. Is it permissible for members of the Committee to remove their jackets?
The Chairman: Members of the Committee may remove their jackets, if they so wish.
Clause 26
Relief for a woman with a child and an incapacitated husband
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells): I beg to move amendment No. 14 in page 14, line 30, at end insert
"(5) Relief for widow's bereavement allowance shall be similarly extended to widowers.".
I hope that the amendment will not detain the Committee long. It has been tabled in a genuine spirit of inquiry to discover why the relief for widow's bereavement allowance cannot be extended to widowers. Widowers feel the loss as keenly as widows, so on the face of it there is no reason for not extending the allowance in the way that the amendment suggests. Might any failure to do so get us into trouble with sex equality laws, passed either by this Government or as part of conventions that we have signed overseas? We are constantly under pressure from various quarters to make all our legislation apply equally to both sexes, and a number of cases have recently been lost by various Governments, which then necessitates changes to legislation.
We are anticipating possible problems by using this opportunity to extend the allowance to men as well as women. Usually we are under pressure to do it the other way round, but, for various historic reasons, it was felt that widows needed the allowance, possibly because they had lower earnings or, in some cases, no earnings, so the loss of the main breadwinner was keenly felt. Now it can equally happen the other way round.
Therefore, I ask the Financial Secretary to explain why the point has apparently not been dealt with in the clause and whether, either in Committee or on Report, she will correct this apparent oversight.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): The right hon. Gentleman has moved the amendment in a genuine spirit of inquiry. I welcome that. As he knows, the widow's bereavement allowance was introduced in 1980 to address an anomaly whereby a bereaved husband [Interruption.]
The Chairman: Order. We can have only one person standing in the Committee at a time. Will the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Hall) please resume his seat.
Dawn Primarolo: The widow's bereavement allowance was introduced in 1980 to deal with an anomaly whereby a bereaved husband continued to receive the higher personal married allowance in the year of his wife's death, whereas a bereaved wife was entitled only to the standard allowance. As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the married couples allowance is available to the widower now.
I Understand the right hon. Gentleman's intention, but the amendment does not fulfil his objective. The word "similarly" is insufficiently precise to clarify the intended changes to the requisite section of the legislation. He made it clear in his opening remarks that the amendment is a probing amendment, and I have interpreted it as such. I am sure that he will agree that it is technically defective.
The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that the current laws governing entitlement to widow's bereavement allowance were introduced by his party when it was in power. During 18 years of Conservative government, it did not tackle the question of widower's entitlement. I was therefore surprised when Conservative Members turned their minds to the matter so soon after losing office.
In asking that the amendment be rejected, I can assure the Committee that the Government are looking carefully at all aspects of the personal tax system, especially those that may be seen as discriminatory. Clause 26, which will extend the additional personal allowance, shows that, unlike the previous Administration, the Government have moved quickly to tackle the matter where possible.
However, the widow's bereavement allowance raises wider and more complex issues than those relating solely to the tax system. For example, it raises the question of social security benefits paid to widows. Because of that read-across, the Government are taking a more considered approach than was possible with the additional personal allowance. We shall of course report our proposals to the House in due course, once we have ensured that the interplay between social security and the tax system delivers our objective.
I ask the Committee to reject the amendment, as clause 26 clearly indicates the Government's intention to tackle discrimination within the tax system.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: It seems that we have discovered a discrimination. By implication, the hon. Lady has admitted an inequality that men are treated differently from women that has not been dealt with during the first year of a Labour Government.
The hon. Lady rightly said that the matter was complicated, and that there was interaction between the tax system and the social security system. However, we were told of a great review of social security. Indeed, many measures were introduced further to restrict single parent benefits in particular. The Government were quick off the mark in cutting benefits to certain people, but they have not reviewed discriminatory provisions in the tax and social security systems with similar speed.
The hon. Lady said that the Government's proposals would be explained to the House in due course. However, we need something rather more precise.[Mr. Heathcoat-Amory]
Before the Committee finishes debating the clause, the Government must demonstrate a greater commitment to tackling the discrimination that we have discovered. Instead of simply saying that it will be done at some future date, will she give a commitment that before the end of the Bill's Committee stage and certainly before debate on the Bill ceases in this House the Government will introduce proposals to correct the imbalance, particularly in view of the vulnerability to appeals or cases brought under various human rights provisions or domestic legislation? Does the Financial Secretary believe that the Bill is vulnerable? If it is, it would be wrong and would implicate the Committee if we proceeded knowing that all tax and benefit legislation was vulnerable to attack. We should have her assurance on that before allowing the clauses to become law.
The Chairman: Is the hon. Gentleman pressing his amendment?
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I need a response from the Minister.
The Chairman: The Chair is not, fortunately, responsible for the Minister. Is the hon. Gentleman pressing his amendment?
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I should say a little more and make the point
The Chairman: Mr. Heathcoat-Amory, I would never dream of cutting you off.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: If the Financial Secretary is slipping back into the bad habit of not responding to reasonable questions, I remind her that the day is young. We have plenty of time for debate this morning, this afternoon and this evening and we shall return to the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) is indicating that he would like to participate in the debate, perhaps to encourage the hon. Lady to be a little more co-operative.
The Chairman: The hon. Member for Sevenoaks will have to rise to his feet if he wishes to speak.
Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks): I was about to do so, Mrs. Dunwoody, and a very good morning to you.
We are waiting to hear from the Financial Secretary whether she accepts the principle of the amendment and accepts that the discrimination that she is tackling in the remainder of the clause should also be tackled for widows and widowers. It would be helpful if she could tell the Committee, because we want to know whether the Government accept the spirit of the amendment. We want to hear the magic phrase that we elicited from her at our previous sitting that the amendment is not without elements of desirability. That would encourage those outside the House who welcome the fact that the Government are tackling one area of discrimination in the clause and would like to know whether they are prepared to tackle the further element of discrimination.
The Financial Secretary said that wider issues were involved. Wider issues are always involved, but she did not say what they were. Did she mean the benefits system, other legislation or cost? We would be prepared not to press the matter if the Government said that they accepted the principle of removing the discrimination in the bereavement allowance and that they would undertake to return to the House at some stage and tell us how they intended to do that.
Dawn Primarolo: I do not respond to threats, veiled or otherwise, when responding, on the Government's behalf, to amendments. I made it clear earlier, as Hansard will show, that the Government are reviewing the whole tax system for any discrimination. They have done so more than the previous Government did in 18 years. I explained to the Committee the complications and necessity of considering the social security system, too. That is the Government's policy.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Good morning, Mrs. Dunwoody, I am pleased to see you back in the Chair.
The Chairman: Order. May I counsel members of the Committee against either welcoming me to the Chair or welcoming me back to the Chair? I am afraid that I shall be with hon. Members for some time. I hope that they will be able to bear that as best they can. May I also point out that, as there is a great deal of noise in the Room, hon. Members must speak up. I call Mr. Clifton-Brown fortissimo!
10.45 am
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): Mrs. Dunwoody, you could never be missed in the Chair. I hope that you will be able to hear clearly what I am saying.
I found it difficult to understand what the Financial Secretary said in her reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), but I think that I got the gist of it. Now that there is much greater sex equality in the workplace and that both women and men receive substantial earnings, it seems to me that anything in the tax system which discriminates against women or men must be undesirable. My right hon. Friend was right to ask the Financial Secretary for an undertaking in principle on whether the Government intended to remove this distortion and discrimination in the tax system.
For too long, widowers have not benefited from the bereavement allowance. That is unfair, just as it was unfair on women when they did not have an independent taxation system. Do the Government intend to ensure that men and women are able to maintain independent taxation systems? The Financial Secretary hinted that the clause might have wider implications. I wonder whether that was what she meant. I shall certainly want to return to that matter on Third Reading and on Report if the Financial Secretary does not let us know that the Government are prepared to end the matter once and for all.
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