| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Webb: I promise not to hog the hon. Lady's time--she would not let me anyway. The money will go through the pay packet either in lots of cases or in not very many. If it will do so in lots of cases, lots of women will lose money; if it will do so in not many, we do not need this whole edifice. Which is it--lots or not many?
Lorna Fitzsimons: You make great play of the internet, Mr. Worldwide Webb--I am glad you have such an interesting moniker. The Inland Revenue website, which is available in the Vote Office, gives all the details of how the scheme will be implemented. It says that there are three ways in which people can elect to have the money paid. One is by girocheque. The woman can choose. The money does not have to go through the pay packet, even if the woman is the earner. She can choose to have it paid a different way. That is laid out on the website and, as you have seen it, I am surprised that you did not refer to that fact--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady because I do not want her to think that I am telling her off all the time, but I have to tell her about the term "you".
Lorna Fitzsimons: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I know that it is a terrible habit. It is just that I am getting into my stride and enjoying the debate. You will be aware, given that you have been a Member of Parliament for some time, that, of the 767,000 recipients of family credit in 1998, just over 300,000 women could possibly fit into these circumstances. It is known that a third of those already elect to put the money into a joint bank account or make some other similar arrangement. So we are talking about two thirds of those 300,000. I wish that we would put this matter in context. I am not trying to belittle the effect on those women's lives, but the reality is that we are not talking about the vast number of people currently in receipt of family credit.
The Government have tackled the problems that were set out when the working families tax credit was first debated on the Floor of the House. We must acknowledge that there has been vast movement since then to ensure that we go forward with the philosophy of making work pay while trying to protect women in vulnerable situations and provide choice.
The biggest barrier to work or choice is child care. Many women do not have the choice to work because they just cannot afford child care. The issue that I was clobbered with on the doorstep when I was canvassing before my election to this wonderful place was child care. People said that they could not afford to work. With the working families tax credit, and especially the child care element of it, literally hundreds of women whom I canvassed will be able to choose to work. That has to be a welcome move. Many of them are single mothers. Many of them trained before they became single parents and they want to use the investment that we made in them and they made in themselves. Now they will be able to.
Some hon. Members have said that child care tax credit is not referred to in the Bill. It is clearly referred to in the whole gamut of documentation on the working families tax credit. The child care tax credit is integral with the working families tax credit. The fact that the Government realise the reality of working families' lives and the barriers to employment shows the sensitivity of our Government. I am proud to sit on the Government Benches as we make the advances which, sadly, have been lacking over the past 20 years. I found the comments of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar laughable, because I doubt the sincerity of his concern about the complexities or otherwise of the child care tax credit.
People inside and outside the House have argued that the tax credit puts single-earner couples at a disadvantage compared with single parents. There are many commentators in the Chamber today who are more eminent than I am, but having examined the details, I can tell the House that, under the working families tax credit, the positions of a single-earner couple and a single parent will differ only if, in certain cases, their entitlement to child care tax credit is different because of their different child care needs.
The whole structure of the working families tax credit contains no intrinsic disbenefit to single-earner couples. It is important that we nail that lie and so prevent people
from claiming disingenuously that the WFTC is anti- family or pro-single parents. The measure is all about families, whether headed by single parents or by two parents. It is about making work pay for them and ensuring that their children are provided for.
We must bear in mind the anomaly whereby people on the sharpest end of poverty paid more tax. Under our proposals, people will earn more and keep more. In my constituency, the old work ethic persists: if people can get work, they will work as hard as they can; they are also prepared to work longer hours to earn a minimal additional sum, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) pointed out, places additional stress on the family unit. After our proposals are implemented, those people will have a chance to make real choices about whether to stay at home, to listen to the children read and to help them with homework.
Mr. Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs):
I am sure that many Labour Members sincerely believe that the new arrangements contained in the Bill will help the less well-off, reduce poverty traps and provide incentives to work. The main cause of our opposition to the Bill is that, as the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) pointed out, it will be a disaster in practice.
Questions have been asked about problem cases, such as when someone is on strike or an employer is not behaving properly. We are told that people can go and complain to the Revenue and get the matter dealt with, but most companies Revenue offices are miles away, elsewhere in the country. How can we expect ordinary people to go to the extent of finding out where their company's Revenue office is, getting hold of someone there and raising their problem with that person? By the time all that has been done, people will be many weeks out of their money.
We have been assured that companies will not experience cash-flow strains and that there will be grants in the event of their paying out more than they are collecting. However, a company cannot get the grant until it knows what it is paying out. If cash-flow problems arise in a small company, weeks, if not months, will pass before agreement is reached with the Revenue and the grant is paid.
The Government have got themselves hooked on a concept that has been considered twice before in this country: in the early 1970s and in the 1980s. They are caught on the hook of thinking that the solutions and answers to our problems can be found in north America, where so many things are wonderful, without thinking through the nitty-gritty detail or conducting a proper case study into why, in Canada, a similar system went so wrong that it had to be scrapped. I have to say, with all due respect to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Lorna Fitzsimons), that it is shallow to believe that the proposals will solve all our problems without causing an administrative shambles.
My next point has been made light of, but I believe that it is not proper to come to the House with a Bill of this nature, from which the important provision of help with
child care is excluded. In addition, the measure will place an enormous burden on businesses: an assessment was promised, but it has not been delivered. It is constitutionally improper to have reached Second Reading of a Bill without that Bill being in anything close to its final shape.
No doubt, the Government hope that the Bill will be popular, but in principle, I believe that the Bill is both conceptually wrong and wrongly drafted. The Government will rue the day they went ahead with the legislation when, as has been pointed out, there was already a perfectly effective and straightforward system of family credit. Family credit could be made more generous and the system tweaked about, but it must be acknowledged that administratively, it has been one of the most successful welfare arrangements.
My first specific objection relates to the near future. When the Social Security Committee took evidence from various civil servants at the Inland Revenue, I discerned a high risk that, over the next 18 months, the implementation of the WFTC will be chaotic. I was not satisfied by answers saying that issues of implementation were being adequately addressed. I do not doubt that the Revenue's staff have worked overtime and produced a detailed document, but it is most unlikely that the system will be up and running efficiently within 18 months of its being put into effect in the workplace and the massive change made from benefits distribution by the Benefits Agency to distribution via the employer or the Revenue.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough):
While on the subject of the Social Security Committee, will my hon. Friend remind the House of the amendments that he tabled with me and our hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride)? He has come to the fourth of those amendments, which deals with the cost of administration, but will he stress that we also tried to persuade the Committee to accept an amendment stating our concern that:
"this proposal will place the two couple household, one of whom works and one of whom looks after small children (the classic Beveridge family) in a disadvantaged position"?
Will my hon. Friend refer to our amendments at some point in his speech?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |