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Dawn Primarolo rose—
Mr. Tyrie: I am not giving way because I am about to end my remarks.
Dawn Primarolo: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Mr. Tyrie: I will.
Dawn Primarolo: I smell an election in the air and I can feel the hon. Gentleman working himself up to something. We will not be means-testing child benefit. That is the end of the matter. The hon. Gentleman is not going to get a quotation that he can use in a campaign.
Mr. Tyrie: I am grateful for that clarification. For the first time, we have had some clarity from the Paymaster General, although when she was asked
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about the issue she said that Ministers change. That was another heavily qualifying comment, so even if Labour wins the election, we may—who knows?—have a Minister who changes his mind.
Also, in response to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh made, the Paymaster General said that child benefit would be left undisturbed for its specific requirements, not that the Government would not means-test child benefit—and so on.
I said that I would be brief, but I have taken three or four interventions, which have led me to speak for rather longer than I intended. I have only one general point to make, which is that table 4.1 does not amount to ''setting out the vision''. Frankly, it is extremely scrappy, and inasmuch as it amounts to a vision, it is extremely ill thought through. It was almost certainly drafted by an official, and Ministers have not read it carefully enough before allowing it to be printed. I cannot believe that any Minister would have allowed the passage that I read out, which so clearly alludes to a form of means-testing, to be included in a document in the run-up to an election. The Paymaster General assured me that means-testing is not the Government's intention and we will hold them to that assurance if they get the chance to show that they are not going to means-test child benefit.
Rob Marris: I did not intend to speak in the stand part debate but, with the greatest of respect to the hon. Member for Chichester, he did not understand what I was saying earlier. I hope that I can clarify things for him and the Committee, although he may still disagree with me.
Section 114 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 relates to ''persons maintaining dependence''. Child and qualifying young persons benefit will be paid to those on whom a young person is financially dependent. Those people will usually, but not always, be the parents—they may be guardians, but for the sake of simplicity I shall refer to them as parents—and they will have to demonstrate that they are financially maintaining said dependent young person.
I used the extreme example of Wayne Rooney, although I know nothing about his personal finances other than what is reported in the newspapers. It would be difficult for the parents of a very wealthy 18 or 19-year-old to demonstrate that they should receive—to use my phrase—extended child benefit for over-17s, and to say that they are maintaining a millionaire. In that sense alone, one could talk of means-testing. That touches on the issue that I was raising, but the Committee will be pleased to know that I will not rehearse it in detail.
The problem, as was alluded to by the hon. Member for Yeovil, is the question of the extended nature of childhood. Under this Bill, we would be paying something called ''child benefit'' to adults aged 18 or 19. I have reservations about that concept, and that is why I am pleased that my right hon. Friend said that the matter will be kept under review and that the packages in the Bill are interim measures.
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I assure the hon. Member for Chichester that the narrow way in which I was referring to means-testing of what the Bill calls child benefit—we shall come to my amendments later—was in terms of ''qualifying young persons''. I want to ensure that they qualify with regards both to their educational training—for example, they may be attending a college of further education—and to their being financially dependent on their parents or a guardian even though they may be adults.
Mr. Laws: I want to return to two points that we discussed during this debate. First—I have raised this issue a number of times but am not trying to be particularly difficult—I hope that the Paymaster General will not mind me returning to the 80,000 individuals who will be the unwaged trainees entitled to child benefit and child tax credit.
I am unclear whether a large group of unwaged trainees may not be covered by the Bill because they are not on Government-supported training programmes. If I were a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills team or the Department for Work and Pensions team, I would probably have a better understanding of who the unwaged trainees are.
I appreciate the Paymaster General's point that there may not be adequate data to indicate the number of people on those types of training programmes. I wonder whether she would consider—perhaps this could be in the form of a note if the information is not available here and the Paymaster General has to go back to colleagues in other Departments—giving us a better understanding of who these unwaged trainees are likely to be. Are these people who are on programmes that are not Government or Government-approved programmes, or are they likely to be predominantly working for individual businesses and employers on an unwaged basis, on some type of formal or informal training?
3.45 pm
This is an important point because, first, we need to know how many unwaged trainees are not going to be included in these provisions. The hon. Member for Rayleigh raised the question of whether young people would actually understand their entitlements in this area. They will probably not, if we do not understand how many unwaged trainees are not included.
Secondly, I understand the Paymaster General's concern about the potential abuse if there is a transference of individuals from waged trainees to unwaged trainees in order to exploit new benefit rules. We need to know more about these people, and I would be interested to know whether the Paymaster General has any idea of the numbers involved, and whether she can specify the types of people we are talking about. That is a very important issue, and I do not know the answers to any of those questions. I am therefore genuinely looking for enlightenment.
Because it obviously stretches the terms of our debate, I want to touch only generally on the comments that the Paymaster General has made about the means-testing of child benefit, and the proposals in
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the Government's consultation paper ''Supporting young people to achieve'', issued in March 2004, that the hon. Member for Chichester referred to earlier.
The Paymaster General gave us a kind of cast-iron guarantee a few minutes ago that the Government were not going to extend means-testing to child benefit. We know from long experience how careful Treasury Ministers under this Chancellor of the Exchequer are about making any commitments. We also know that all Ministers of all parties, including former Conservative Ministers, are careful about the terms in which they frame their commitments. I wonder whether I can probe a little further into what she meant by saying that she would not extend means-testing to child benefit.
Presumably, under the Government's long-term vision, child benefit may disappear altogether for a particular category of young people who currently receive it—that is the older young people. It may called something else, such as ''young people financial support'', ''children's financial support'', or ''educational financial support''. Perhaps that, and not something called child benefit, will be means-tested. That is how I read paragraphs 4.14 and 4.17 of the consultation paper, which touch on the issue of household income, and how that would be assessed. They clearly say:
''The Government will adopt a consistent approach to income testing wherever possible.''
They talk about the targeting of the educational maintenance allowance in the context of that. The section on young persons' income in paragraph 4.17 clearly says that
''the Government proposes to consider an income threshold so that young people with individual income over that threshold are treated as independent, but other young people do not face a disincentive to supplement their income through part-time work.''
In spite of the Paymaster General's attempt to be very helpful and nail this one, there is a real possibility that the Government are moving towards a system that may or may not be justified of means-testing support for young people at and above the age of 16. If she really wants to nail this possibility, so that it does not appear on the posters of the Conservative party and others that will appear across the country over the next few months. [Interruption.] I include the Liberal Democrats. We do not have many posters but we could put it on a few of them. The Paymaster General may therefore want to nail not only the means-testing of child benefit, but the means-testing of support for young people over the age of 16.
Mr. Francois: In my remarks on clause stand part, I shall resist the temptation to come back to the issue of child benefit. I would not want to cause any more mischief than I have already, but I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester for picking up on it so quickly and driving the point home. So we have given that a good go.
In addition, I was very interested by the Paymaster General's remarks about likely announcements in the Budget. I would have attempted to pursue that now,
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but if the Chairman of the Committee is content, it seems the logical place to do that is under clause 6 when we debate commencement and the timings of the Bill. There are points to be made about that, but that is probably a more suitable place to do it.
I now wish to raise two points on clause stand part. The first is about the so-called ''missing million''. I gave notice on Second Reading that I wanted to press the Government further in Committee on what the Bill is likely to do for these people. They can be defined as the more than 1 million young people who are not in employment, education or training. I am seeking to keep my word on that, not least because the Economic Secretary did not really address the points that I had raised in my winding-up speech when he made his on Second Reading. We gave fair notice to the Government that we would return to the issue.
The consultation document, ''Supporting young people to achieve: towards a new deal for skills'', touched on exactly that point at paragraph 3.32. I admit that that document goes back to last March. It said:
''Recent evidence on the NEET group''—
as it is usually referred to—
''points to a subset of young people who are currently untouched by the Government's interventions to raise post-16 participation. They are living at home with their parents, not engaged in active search for education, training and employment and have no interaction with the state. The Connexions service is remitted to track young people, but young people have no incentive to engage with services or to actively seek work or training.''
The latest figures relating to that group show that, for the quarter August to October 2004, the number of under-25s unemployed and not in education rose by 36,000, and the number economically inactive and not in education rose by 5,000. That is a combined increase of 41,000, giving an overall total of 1,118,000, which represents one sixth of young people under 25. They are often referred to as the lost generation.
It is still not clear what the Bill, a relatively minor measure, will do to help to address the problem of that scale in our society. Will the Government furnish us with additional information this afternoon about how the Bill will specifically deal with that increasingly pressing problem? Will they, for instance, provide us with an estimate of the number of additional young people whom they believe will be enticed into unwaged training as a result of the Bill's introduction? It would be helpful to have that information.
Secondly, I want to talk briefly about the potential for the paying of benefit to young people individually, rather than via the people who are responsible for them. I appreciate that the Bill deals with payment made in that way, but I want to touch on the alternative, not least because it was raised on Second Reading by several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, who gave an artful description of driving licences as he tried to press home his point.
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