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Mr. Laws: Obviously one of the Government's concerns is the cost of all the extensions and entitlements. Is one potential way of funding them in the future to means-test child benefit? Are the Government including that in their review?
Dawn Primarolo: It is always difficult for Ministers to predict what other Ministers may do, particularly in the distant future, but child benefit will remain undisturbed for those specific requirements. As for evidence, I do not know the answer. The hon. Gentleman has been pressing me on that point, as have others. For ages 19 and over, is child benefit the appropriate tool, or should there be something else? If the hon. Gentleman is asking me whether I am planning to tax child benefit in the future, or to make it means-tested in some way, then the answer is that I do not have that intention.
Mr. Francois: I thank the Paymaster General for her thoughtful response to our questions. As it transpired, some of her staff had obviously been doing their homework after we had tabled our amendments, and she effectively sought to answer them in part in her opening remarks when she was talking to clause 1.
Our purpose in tabling these amendments was to tease out some of the Government's thinking. I hope we have succeeded. The Paymaster General has provided us with a rationale for what the Government want to do. She mentioned adult learning grants, and I thank her for that additional information. I realise that she attempted to quantify the issue, and again I may have missed it, but I do not think she answered my specific question regarding the Government's estimate of raising to 20 the age at which one could qualify. [Interruption.] It is being indicated to me that they were not able to answer that question. If at some point they are able to come up with an answer, we would appreciate receiving it in writing. I appreciate that the
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Paymaster General did her best with the information she had available, but the question is legitimate, and it would be useful to have it answered at some point.
We on these Benches also note with interest the Paymaster General's response regarding the potential means-testing of child benefit. She gave a carefully worded reply in which she implied that it would not happen in the short term, but she did not entirely rule it out for ever.
Dawn Primarolo: On a point of order, Miss Begg, I did not say that at all. I gave a statement with regard to my period as a Minister, and clarified the point. The hon. Gentleman is being mischievous. I have avoided making any comment about what the Conservative party has been saying for the past two days about what it would do, and about how everything we have been discussing would be totally destroyed by its Budget proposals. I do not expect the hon. Gentleman to engage in such mischief.
The Chairman: That is not a matter for the Chair, but I think the Paymaster General has made her point.
Mr. Francois: Procedurally, I could almost take the Paymaster General's remarks as a kind of offered intervention. Perish the thought, Miss Begg, that an Opposition spokesman should even dare to be mischievous in Committee. What would happen to parliamentary democracy if such procedures were allowed to pertain?
Nevertheless, as one would expect with a Minister of her experience, she obviously chose her words carefully, and I think those words may bear some further scrutiny. I think our amendment has achieved its aim in probing the Government's thinking. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
3.30 pm
Mr. Tyrie: This is the key clause, so this is as good a place as any to make a couple of brief points. I will not rehearse what was said on Second Reading, but the plain fact is that deep concern must remain that the Government have not thought through the measure clearly and do not know what the costs or benefits will be or who the beneficiaries will be. Despite a lot of planning, survey work and estimates of the effects on behaviour are not in place.
Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, which I may be, but I suspect that he voted for military action in Iraq. Such factors as he has just delineated about uncertainty could have been outlined, and were outlined, at that point. However, one cannot foretell the future.
Mr. Tyrie: As it happens, I opposed the war in Iraq. I voted for the motion that the case for war had not been made. I will not go further down that path, although it is an interesting subject. The hon.
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Gentleman's general point is that we live in an uncertain world. I think that he was trying to draw an analogy, which, if I may say so, was probably not the best available to him at that moment, particularly in view of my voting record on the war.
One must ask oneself if all the reasonable steps have been taken to discover what the effects on behaviour might be. The answer is clearly no. As far as I know, no survey work has been done on what the impact will be. I would think that it was relatively straightforward to do some survey work to establish what the effects on behaviour might be and to publish it.
I will not prolong my introductory remarks, despite the intervention. Committee members should take it as preamble that I believe that there is and should be deep concern about the scale of the costs, and about who the beneficiaries will be and how many there will be. The whole purpose of scrutinising the Government is to establish whether they have worked out whether spending an extra pound here and there will deliver something worth while per extra person benefited. We do not know the answer.
Whenever the Paymaster General is asked a remotely awkward question, she always says, ''This is only an interim measure. We want to do something now.'' That is a reasonable response. However, she is asking us to accept what is quite a significant change, if one takes it in conjunction with the regulations, on the basis that it is an interim measure that we will have only for a short while, that we will then have a Budget that will alter it quite a bit, and that the long-term vision will be implemented shortly thereafter if the Government win the next election.
We should assess the measure in the light of what the long-term vision is. I am not going to go into any more detail, because that would not be in order, but it is important to bear it in mind that the Paymaster General has referred many times to the long-term vision as a way of justifying this interim measure.
Table 4.1 of the consultation paper states, under the heading, ''Living with parents'':
''Support paid to the family, dependent on household income with threshold applied to young person's income''.
That is, of course, bureaucratese—a point that relates very much to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and by the hon. Member for Yeovil when he first raised the issue. Doing my best to try to understand what that means, I believe that it means means-testing, which is the only reasonable conclusion that one can draw from that passage on the long-term vision. What exactly is it means-testing? That is slightly more difficult to discover, but I believe that it means means-testing household income by proxy based on the young person's income. In other words, if a household contains a young person collecting child benefit or whatever the income might be, that may affect the assessment—the means-testing—of the household income.
Rob Marris: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, especially in the light of my earlier intervention, to which he graciously responded. Is it not the case that
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we are talking about the means-testing of young persons to find out whether they are financially dependent on their parents, in a household? For example, if Wayne Rooney lived under his parents' roof but left professional football and went on a training course with the money that I imagine he has in the bank, despite his alleged spending, it would be strange to say that he was financially dependent on his parents and that they should therefore receive the qualifying person's child benefit on his behalf. The means-testing is of the young person to see whether that young person is financially dependent on the parents, to whom the child benefit would be paid.
Mr. Tyrie: The hon. Gentleman is digging a rather deeper hole. He suggests not what I suggested, which was that the means-testing would take place by the back door, but that it will be means-testing by the front door. If he is saying that he thinks that his party should means-test child benefit, I am grateful to him for making that clear. I am sure that that will accelerate the speed at which he acquires a red box.
Rob Marris: On a point of order, Miss Begg. I did not say that I believed in means-testing child benefit.
Mr. Tyrie: That was not a point of order—at least I could not detect one, but then I am not in the Chair.
There was a clear statement that the Government intend to means-test child benefit. When the Paymaster General was asked for a denial, he said that they did not have that intention at that time, or words to effect. I remember that when I worked in the Treasury we were told, ''Whatever you do on such matters, use the same sentence each time. Don't vary the words.'' The words used to be, ''We have no plans to change X''.
As an analogy, when I asked the Prime Minister on the Floor of the House whether the Government had any intention of assisting the United States in military action in Iran, he said, ''We have no plans to do so''. Six other hon. Members asked him the same question in different ways and he kept on saying, ''We have no plans to do so''. We have heard today that the Government have no intention to means-test child benefit, which concerns me.
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