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Pete Wishart (North Tayside): What particular measures has the Secretary of State taken to ensure that SARS does not spread to the nations and the regions of the United Kingdom? Given the current purdah in the Scottish Parliament, what discussions has he had with representative bodies in Scotland to ensure that the disease does not spread there?
Mr. Milburn: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the chief medical officer in England has discussions, through the Health Protection Agency and the usual channels, with chief medical officers in the other countries of the UK. On public health issues, we try to maintain as far as possible a UK-wide response, so our response in England is largely mirrored in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington): Given that the largest number of people entering this country from SARS-affected areas will come through Heathrow airport in my constituency, will the Secretary of State or a member of his ministerial team meet local Members of Parliament and representatives of primary care trusts and the local authority to discuss the resource implications of these incidents, especially in the light of his second recommendation that there should be wider screening of incoming passenger flights under certain conditions?
Mr. Milburn: My hon. Friend has written to me about those issues and I know that he has received several representations from members of the community and possibly from staff at Heathrow. I thank people who work there, especially those working in public health and the environmental health officers who have behaved extremely responsibly. Indeed, they have, off their own bat, introduced a system of random boarding of aircraft
arriving from some SARS-affected areas to ensure that airlines are fulfilling their international health obligations. That is very welcome and if we can extend that system we should do so.My hon. Friend asks about a meeting with a Minister from the Department of Health. I am sure that we can arrange that.
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): What advice and reassurance can the Secretary of State offer the family of a teenager in my constituency who has a severely damaged immune system? They have already withdrawn her from school so that she does not come into contact with children returning from seriously affected countries after the Easter holiday. Would it not be helpful if the Secretary of State's guidance to local education authorities included information about the number of children returning from such areas and monitoring of their health?
Mr. Milburn: The best advice that I can give is to refer the hon. Gentleman and his constituents to the information that is widely available through various websites, including NHS Direct. If he or his constituents have been unable to obtain access to that advice, I shall be more than happy to provide it in written form so that he can pass it on to them.
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam): Given the importance of rigorous control of cross-infection, to which the Secretary of State referred, does he share my concern that scrupulous attention to hygiene and infection control in the NHS—for example, by hand washing—should be a key ingredient to ensure that not only SARS but any infection does not spread? Given that only a few years ago an Audit Commission report showed that hand washing was not being adequately done and given the fact that it is still not being adequately done, can we be as confident as the Secretary of State that the matter will not become a wider problem in the health service?
Mr. Milburn: The hon. Gentleman is right to raise those concerns, which many of us share. That is why we have sent two communications to the NHS—a third will be sent either today or later this week—stressing the importance, at senior and chief executive level, of ensuring that the appropriate infectious disease control mechanisms are in place in NHS trusts. It is not simply a question of hand washing; probable SARS cases will need to be treated in an isolated environment. The WHO recommends barrier nursing. So far, such processes have proven effective in that they have successfully looked after six people with probable SARS and limited further spread. It is that—the limitation of further spread—which is so important in dealing with this serious illness.
Tax Credits
5.23 pm
The Paymaster General (Dawn Primarolo): Mr. Deputy Speaker, with your permission, I should like to make a statement about the child and working tax credits that have been introduced this month.
The introduction of the child tax credit is the biggest single change in support for families since the Beveridge reforms of the 1940s, and a more radical change than the introduction of child benefit 25 years ago. Ninety per cent. of families with children are eligible to benefit from the credit.
The new tax credits represent the biggest-ever investment in families; no Government have spent so much on children and families. A single-earner couple working full-time at the national minimum wage, with two children, will receive about £400 a year more from the new tax credits compared with the working families tax credit and the children's tax credit which they replace. Some families are receiving as much as £4,800 a year; more than £90 a week for the maintenance of two children—a doubling of support since 1997. With these new tax credits, some groups are receiving extra child support for the first time, including student nurses and students.
We are integrating the tax and benefits system to produce a fairer system, so the new tax credits are administered by the Inland Revenue and they continue to be paid to families when they move from welfare into work. The child tax credit is being introduced at the same time as the working tax credit, with its more generous help for low-paid workers, including disabled men and women or older people returning to work.
I want to deal with each of the issues about the introduction of child tax credit that MPs have brought to me; but, first, it will perhaps help the House if I update it about the details on the current take-up of the new tax credits. I am pleased to say that the Inland Revenue has received more than 4 million applications. In addition, 1.3 million families on income support and jobseeker's allowance will be transferred automatically from next April to the child tax credit, but they are already benefiting from the increased level of support.
There are many, including some Members, who said that families would simply not apply for the new tax credits and that take-up would be, and remain, low. That is simply wrong. All those families with incomes below £58,000 are entitled to receive a tax credit. More than 5.3 million people have either applied or are receiving it already. As a result, enhanced family support is reaching a far larger number of people than the old system of family credit or the working families tax credit, which it replaces. So far from people failing to claim those new tax credits, millions have claimed, and because we are not complacent, the take-up campaign will continue.
I remind the House that families can still claim and get their tax credits backdated to 6 April. So with more than 4 million claims received in addition to the 1.3 million on income support and jobseeker's allowance, let me remind the House that families were given a choice about how often they receive payments: they could request to be paid either weekly or monthly. In addition to those on income support and jobseeker's allowance,
more than 1 million families asked to be paid weekly, and the Inland Revenue is already making regular payments to those families. Most of those families are now in their fourth week of payment.However, two thirds of families asked to be paid monthly. The first date for monthly payment is today, followed by payments throughout the rest of this week. Indeed, one of the facts that the helpline has consistently had to confirm is that the earliest date for the first monthly payment is 28 April. So today, as planned, we have begun, as we told families, to pay the 2 million due to be paid every four weeks. I can tell the House that our aim is that those families will get their money by Friday of this week.
The Inland Revenue informed families that they should claim their tax credits by 31 January, so that their awards could be set up in good time for the payment of tax credits to start in April. I have to tell the House that nearly 1 million claims have been received since the beginning of March. Those claims are being processed as fast as possible by the Inland Revenue, which is prioritising people who have asked to be paid weekly and those families who claimed working families tax credit.
Some Members have also raised with me instances of families who did not receive their money when they expected it, particularly those who had claimed tax credits before 31 January but had not received their award notice or payment. I apologise for the difficulties experienced by individual families, and I can assure the House that the Revenue is doing all that it can to put things right. The Revenue has now contacted almost all those families, and the vast majority of them are already receiving payment. It is our intention that anyone who has made a complete application and has yet to receive money will do so by the end of this week, and arrangements are in place to make interim payments to people where necessary.
Our first priority has been to ensure that all families receive the money due to them, but it has also been necessary to increase the number of staff to provide advice on the helpline by more than 700. At its peak, the helpline was receiving nearly 2 million calls a day, and it is still receiving 400,000 a day. In addition, the number of staff covering the MPs' helpline has been tripled, and because some claimants are now using the MPs' helpline number, the Inland Revenue will set up a new, additional direct number for MPs. I will write to every Member individually to inform them of the new number. So 1.3 million income support claimants are receiving their payments—as planned. For weekly claims, we are already paying more than 1 million families—as planned. From today, for monthly claimants, we are making payments to 2 million families—as planned—and we will continue to raise the number of payments as more and more claims are processed over the coming weeks.
In doing so, we are tackling the problem of child poverty that we inherited and ensuring decent family incomes, in and out of work. We are making work pay for a wider range of people, helping them to help themselves out of poverty and to stay out of poverty. We are tackling the barriers to work by enabling people to afford the child care that they need. We are investing an extra £2.7 billion in supporting families with children and those in low-paid work.
Because our child tax credit is available to nine out of 10 families with children, in and out of work, on top of child benefit, to the main carer, money no longer depends on the work status of the adult in the household, and the stream of income stays with people when they move into work. In the same way, the working tax credit will reach a wide range of those at risk of being in poverty even though they are in work, as well as continuing to support disabled workers and working families with children.
It is a big undertaking to deliver a reform on this scale. We are determined, however, to pursue the objectives that we have set ourselves on tackling poverty and making work pay, and to make the investment in our country's future that these tax credits represent. The numbers who have claimed belie the persistent criticism that people would not claim, so we are well placed to do that.
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