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Kali Mountford: My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Davies) was quite right to say that the amendment is a wrecking amendment. If the official Opposition were serious about amending the clause, they would have suggested some reasonable future date. If they disagree with our date, why not suggest another proper date two or three years hence? The Tories are simply opposed to the resolution. They simply do not like the abolition of the married couples allowance. Rather than be straightforward, they have produced a wrecking amendment without talking about the age group that would be affected by it.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Will the hon. Lady give way?
Kali Mountford: No, I shall make my point.
A couple who had had no married couples allowance would suddenly receive it on their retirement date. That makes no logical sense. In his considered speech, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) rightly noted that, if we are to find resources to fund measures that I think are the right ones, money must be found sensibly and logically in a way that fits with the Government's overall strategy. The age group is critical in that sense.
If we are to support children, we must be consistent. Opposition Members really want to talk about families, but they must consider the effects of their nonsensical amendment. It makes no sense to encourage marriage in retirement, but not the rest of the time. Tory Members
will surely vote against the clause at the stand part stage. So why spend the Committee's time on discussing this amendment? I find it all very confusing.
Mr. Alan Johnson (Hull, West and Hessle):
Give way to the good-looking one.
Kali Mountford:
My hon. Friend must not try to guide me. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) asked first.
Mr. Hayes:
The hon. Lady is very kind and I am extremely flattered.
Kali Mountford:
The logic of what the hon. Gentleman says is the same as that behind what I have been saying. If he believes that people need an adjustment time in which to make their financial arrangements, why does he support the amendment? It would not achieve that end; it would simply wipe out our attempts to get rid of the married couples allowance. I do not believe in a married couples allowance.
Kali Mountford:
People get married--and divorced--for all sorts of reasons, but not for tax incentives. That argument is irrelevant.
Mr. Bercow:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Kali Mountford:
I think that the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) asked me first, but I wanted to complete my point first.
Mr. Brazier
indicated dissent.
Kali Mountford:
In that case, I give way to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow).
Mr. Bercow:
Will the hon. Lady tell the Committee when and where she informed the voters in her constituency that she opposed the married couples allowance, and would take every opportunity to try to get rid of it?
Kali Mountford:
The hon. Gentleman knows that the proposal was made clear in the Chancellor's fine speech.
I have always made it clear that we should support children, but the amendment goes down the wrong line. It would affect pensioners. It was right for the Government not to remove allowances from people who have already had the allowance and made their retirement arrangements on that basis. To remove their allowances would have been harsh and wrong, this year, when people have not had a chance to consider their arrangements.
If Opposition Members were serious about what they say that they are trying to achieve, they would have specified a date in the future--but their amendment is nonsense, and I cannot possibly agree with it.
A few other spurious measures have been discussed in the debate. The one that horrified me most was the idea of a 14-year timetable for the changes in the state earnings-related pension scheme. Why did not the Conservative Government make proper arrangements when they made the changes in 1986? It is a disgrace that they did not do so, and people could not make proper arrangements for their retirement.
It is a bit rich for Opposition Members to complain to the Committee today about SERPS, and to say that people need time to make proper, considered arrangements for their retirement. People were never given any information in the first place, and now the Labour Government are having to pick up the pieces and put things right.
The issue was debated at length in the Standing Committee on the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill, and the arguments remain the same. The Opposition Members on the Committee at least had the decency to apologise for their Government's mistake in not administering the change in SERPS properly.
Mr. Brazier:
The hon. Lady and I served together on that Committee. Will she follow her logic through and think for a moment? She is berating us for publicising something insufficiently 14 years ago, yet the interval until the change comes through is less than the interval associated with the clause. Even if the changes were published to the heavens, it is far too late for people to make provision.
Kali Mountford:
The hon. Gentleman's comments might make sense if his party had ever done anything about the change in the first place. In some cases, we now have only a matter of months in which to deal with the change that people are facing. We are having to go back and think about ways of compensating people who made decisions based on the SERPS arrangement in 1986, and were not made aware of the change. Given that they left us with such a fiasco, it is a bit rich for the Tories to start arguing about proper time being allowed for changes in people's tax arrangements so that they can make proper provision for the future.
Surely, as we have made the decision, it is better to be clear about it. We are being clear about it today, and people can make their decisions for the future.
The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton made some valid points about how to deal with compensation for people's changed arrangements and ensuring that they can make proper arrangements for the future. We can debate at length later in the Bill's passage how to make such provisions but this amendment would not achieve any of them. Conservative Members are being disingenuous in their remarks.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
Sir Alan, I assume that we will not get a clause stand part debate and that you will therefore allow us to range a little wider than normal on the amendment.
The Chairman:
I hope that I am always generous in allowing Members to speak to amendments, but I cannot be over-generous. We must not go outside the rules of order. This is about age-related married couples allowance. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not provoke me too much. I cannot say whether there will be a later debate.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
Thank you for that advice, Sir Alan.
Clause 28 abolishes the non-age-related married couples allowance from April 2000. Unfortunately, the Chancellor has seen fit to compensate some people by a child tax allowance to be introduced one year later. People who would have been eligible for married couples allowance, whether elderly pensioners or not, will have to suffer for a whole year without any form of compensation. That enables the Chancellor to retain about £1 billion that he would otherwise have had to pay out in allowances.
In his Budget speech, the Chancellor deliberately duped the public when he set out his reasons for abolishing married couples allowance. He claimed:
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) said, not only is the additional personal allowance being abolished, but the reliefs that go with it. Widows bereavement allowance and relief for maintenance payments, which are both available to elderly pensioners and others, are being abolished. It is an especially mean abolition because widows should particularly be helped a little by the tax system.
"It is in fact a tax credit paid at the same flat rate to married couples, single parents and unmarried parents living together."--[Official Report, 9 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 182.]
We know that that is not true because it is the additional personal allowance that is available to unmarried and single people, and that is being abolished as well.
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