| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon): The hon. Gentleman and I share a belief in the institution of marriage. However, he makes a point about the stability of marriage in a debate on a group of amendments which deals specifically with allowances for pensioners. Is there any evidence to suggest that there is instability in pensioners' marriages?
Mr. Brazier: The hon. Gentleman allows me a second bite at the question. I congratulate him on his clever phrasing, which I think, Sir Alan, allows me to reply. The short answer is that I have seen no clear statistical evidence of that. Most of us come to this House because we believe that the signals that Members of Parliament send matter. It seems extraordinary that we should tear up a signal which, since 1918, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer--two were from the Liberal party and others were from the Labour and Conservative parties--have believed to be very important. That signal is that the House believes that marriage matters and that, in this context, people approaching retirement deserve some recognition through the tax system of the fact that they are married.
4.15 pm
Dawn Primarolo: Will the hon. Gentleman explain to the Committee why the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and announced a further reduction under the Conservative Government of the married couples allowance, described it as an anomaly in the system that we did not need?
Mr. Brazier: Bluntly, I do not agree with my right hon. and learned Friend.
Mr. Edward Davey: The hon. Gentleman voted for it.
Mr. Brazier: The hon. Gentleman is right to remind me that I voted for it. At the time, I was in the middle of a rebellion on another family issue, as some hon. Members may remember. The married couples allowance is not an anomaly. I believe that that was the wrong
decision, and a wrong justification for the reduction. The allowance has existed since 1918, and I am delighted that the Conservative party as a whole--Conservative Members on the Front Bench and on the Back Benches--will shortly be able to vote against this measure. I hope that the Liberal Democrats will join us in the Lobby.
This issue is not just about signals or the importance of marriage: there is a practical point. I said at the beginning of my speech that the most effective form of welfare is that provided within the family. We all know of couples--many of us have examples in our own families--one of whom looks after the other. It is more often the wife who looks after the husband, but sometimes it is the other way round.
The Chairman:
Order. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is taking on board my signals. The debate is about the age-related married couples allowance. He is making a speech that would fit more naturally into the clause stand part debate. I ask him for the final time to keep within the terms of the amendment.
Mr. Brazier:
I was about to mention nursing care for the elderly. The key point is that if the husband looks after the wife or the wife looks after the husband, the little bit of extra income that is currently provided by the married couples allowance may assist in ensuring that that unpaid, unrecognised, undervalued carer feels able to go on. Any reasonable person would accept that several hundred pounds a year might, at the margin, make the difference, and enable a wife or a husband, who, for a number of years has looked after an elderly or less fit spouse, to go on.
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings):
Specifically within the terms of the amendment, does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the majority of registered disabled people are over retirement age? The Government want to drive them into work as part of their reforms, but that is neither here nor there. Many of the people to whom my hon. Friend refers have severe disabilities and will be particularly hard hit by this measure.
Mr. Brazier:
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend will remember the touching testimony of the shadow Secretary of State for Social Security, our hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith). For many years, his mother nursed his elderly father, who was suffering partly as a result of the wounds he acquired during the war. She was unpaid and unrecognised by the benefit system, but she nursed him through it. Such couples will lose the married couples allowance.
It is extraordinary that, after all these years, we should remove this cover. It is particularly sad and arbitrary for the Government to say that people who have already retired are different from those who are about to retire. The aim of my right hon. Friend's excellent amendment is to ensure that married couples who retire in the future get the same benefit as people who are currently retired, the value of which the Government have recognised by leaving it in place for people who reach 65 before 2000-01.
Mr. Geraint Davies:
We should consider the financial impact of what I consider to be an unfortunate wrecking amendment. The Government propose to scrap an
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton):
Did not the hon. Gentleman stand for election on the platform that his party was committed to not raising taxes? During the general election campaign, the leader of his party said that there would be no tax rises at all. Is not the abolition of the married couples allowance, particularly for pensioners, simply an increase in income tax? How does the hon. Gentleman justify that?
Mr. Davies:
The hon. Gentleman refers to a myth that is being peddled continually. The commitment was for income tax not to be increased. I was not going to mention this, but we have reduced income tax rates to 23p and 10p, which is a remarkable achievement.
Mr. Gibb:
How can the hon. Gentleman say that his Government have reduced income tax? The abolition of the married couples allowance will mean that an ordinary married couple will pay an extra £197 in income tax. How does the hon. Gentleman square the two statements?
Mr. Davies:
The commitment was to reduce the rate of income tax, and that is what we have done--as well as reducing the rate of corporation tax, and other taxes. It would be bizarre for any Government to say that they would never increase any taxes. Apart from anything else, what would they ever do? It is unbelievable that any sensible person could interpret anything that the Prime Minister has ever said as meaning that we, as a new Government, would never raise taxes. That is a farcical idea.
I have been distracted. Let me return to the narrow arena of the amendment. We have spent about £2 billion a year on the married couples allowance, an increasing proportion of which is used by people over 65 as they grow older. The question is whether that should continue--as it would if the amendment were passed--or whether the money should be targeted on families who are in greater need, as our general strategy suggests. I hope that the Opposition will answer this question at some point today: where would they find the money to fund that increasing share of the £2 billion? Would they take it from impoverished families with children, or would they tax it? Do they entirely dismiss the Government's overall strategy of directing money towards families to enable them to work and to care for their children?
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) mentioned family values. He also referred to "child rearing", as though he was talking about chicken farming. The Government's strategy is intended to help families: that is the whole point of it. As for "signals", does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the signal that the Opposition are sending the community in the amendment
is "Do not get married until you are 65"? The amendment poses the danger of a sudden surge of people marrying at 65.
Mr. Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs)
rose--
Mr. Davies:
Here they come! They are surging ahead! They are surging everywhere!
Mr. Flight:
Surely, according to the hon. Gentleman's logic, the tax incentive that the Government have given to 65-year-olds will lead them to contract serial marriages and start families again.
Mr. Davies:
That is obviously the signal that the hon. Gentleman has received. No doubt he intends to go off and do that, but I do not think that such a move would be rational. I think that he should reconsider his personal position.
Mr. Edward Davey:
I shall not try now to enter into subject matter that will be dealt with in later debates, on amendment No. 8, on clause 28 stand part, and on the principle behind the married couples allowance, except to say that the comment of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier)--that one must support the married couples allowance if one is in favour of the family and marriage--simply does not stand up. The idea that the tax system must support marriage and the family is a complete fallacy. There are 101 other policies that would be more effective in supporting marriage and the family, and I shall describe some of them in our later debates. However, I felt that I should make those preliminary remarks, so that my subsequent remarks flow logically.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) said, in his intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Canterbury, there is no evidence that the married couples allowance has increased the stability of marriage among elderly people. I have figures, which the hon. Member for Canterbury did not have with him, from "Social Trends 1999", suggesting that, over the years--as the previous Conservative Government phased out the married couples allowance--the stability of marriage among elderly groups has, if anything, increased. In 1971, the divorce rate among those who had been married for 30 years or more was 9 per cent. In 1996, the percentage had gone down to 5 per cent.
Therefore, if anything, the stability of marriage among the elderly has increased.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |