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Mr. Forman: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Primarolo: I promised the Minister that I would sit down by 20 minutes to 10. As Conservative Members have made so many long speeches, I shall take only 15 minutes; so, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will continue.
Lack of child care has been identified as one of the major barriers to women taking up full or part-time employment and the Government still refuse to deal with that. Not only that, they will not recognise that women are driven from the labour market by a lack of elder care. The Budget has not helped the low-paid individually and it has done nothing to attack the over-reliance of our economy on low skills. There has been no closing of the poverty trap, and benefit penalties on earnings will continue to act as a disincentive for people to go to work.
The conditions under which the Beveridge welfare state was created half a century ago have changed. Beveridge's--and the Government's--assumptions that women should not work outside the home and that the nuclear family should always exist are no longer the norm. Mothers deserve incentives to return to work rather than having their hopes that they can afford to work and still care for their children shattered.
The Women's Budget Group pointed out that, unlike an increasing number of countries, the United Kingdom does not publish an assessment of the differential effects of fiscal and public expenditure on women as distinct from men. The House and Conservative Members are so preoccupied with male-only interpretations that they do
not realise that using the household as a focal economic unit is now recognised as producing gross social inequalities--inequalities which they do not challenge.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke:
The hon. Lady cannot be serious.
Ms Primarolo:
The low political representation of women in the UK also means that women's diverse views and needs are not heard. Yes, Chancellor, I am serious: 52 per cent. of the population are women and his Budget does nothing to assist them.
Ms Primarolo:
Let me explain. One in six people aged under 25 are unemployed; 3 million Britons earn less than £58 a week. They are not able to make contributions to their own pensions, as the Chancellor tells them to. The majority of those people are women, and while a quarter of people with occupations are women, most are unable to accumulate savings. They cannot be more thrifty, because they do not have the money in the first place and the Chancellor's Budget does nothing to assist them.
The Chancellor clearly says that lone parents need no extra help, but that flies in the face of common knowledge and understanding. It costs more to bring up children in a lone-parent family. There are no economies of scale or shared housing or fuel costs. There is less opportunity to share responsibility for caring for the children and more need to pay for child care. The shameful attack on lone parents is a piece of punitive symbolism through which the Government seek more scapegoats instead of addressing the problems that our welfare state is creating.
The Budget does nothing to help most of those in poverty in old age, women. Women cannot afford to rely on private pension schemes and they are affected by a casualised labour market. The effects of discrimination and low pay throughout their lives guarantee their poverty in old age. While the Chancellor referred to older couples, the reality is that most of the elderly and frail are women who have outlived their spouses and who are more likely to be reliant on Government benefits.
We welcome the rise of the thresholds for residential nursing homes. The majority of frail, disabled and elderly women live in their own homes and die in them. Only 5 per cent. of them are in residential care. The increase has little to do with preventing old, frail people from being insecure in their homes and everything to do with the Government trying to save their skin at the next election.
How can the Chancellor claim to be a one-nation Tory when he encourages division, privatisation and the exclusion of people from our society; when he cuts employment programmes and the hospital capital building programme; forces up council taxes and deepens the poverty trap and the divisions in our society?
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Michael Jack):
I was amazed by the closing remarks of the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms Primarolo). The Budget was for the men and women of this country. The Budget benefits men and women in work. The hon. Lady does not seem to acknowledge that under the Conservative Government we now have one of the highest proportions of women in employment anywhere in the European Union.
The Budget benefits men and women with savings. The Budget benefits men and women with children at school, who can now enjoy more resources as a result of the Budget. It will benefit men and women in their old age who need care. The Budget is for the whole of the United Kingdom, and not for the small sectional interest described by the hon. Lady.
The other Saturday night I saw the television programme "Have I Got News for You". It is little wonder that, when the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) was asked to comment on Labour's economic policy, he said:
The hon. Member for Bristol, South referred to people being "allegedly" £9 better off. She obviously was not listening to "Any Questions" on Friday, unlike her hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), when I explained clearly that had it not been for a Budget that would lead to growth, one could not have a combination of tax cuts and increases in earnings, which will deliver to the average family £9 per week. I do not recant one part of the achievements of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor in producing a Budget that can deliver that money to the average family.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South and some of her hon. Friends mentioned their desire to see yet lower taxes. That leads on to the question of the so-called 10p tax. I want to talk about that tax, because I was particularly interested in what the hon. Member for Garscadden said about it at Bilston on Friday. I probed him very hard about it, and he acknowledged that he was not certain whether it would cover all those currently covered by our 20p band. He and his hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) seem to be at odds about that.
I challenged the hon. Member for Garscadden about the cost of introducing the 10p tax--£8 billion--but no answer did we get about where the money will come from. I challenge the hon. Gentleman again to say whether he is aware that just 10 per cent. of the low-paid whom he aims to assist with the 10p tax would benefit, whereas 90 per cent. of its benefit would accrue to standard and higher rate taxpayers. That proposal is supposed to be a great one for work incentives. Does any Opposition Member who cares to break the Trappist vows that the Opposition have all had to take agree with the likely cost of that tax? Do they have any figures of their own? Do they agree with anything that we have said about taxation?
I am prepared to give way, but no answer will be forthcoming, because Tribune this week--[Interruption.] The Opposition may laugh, but read what it says. The hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) said there could be
We heard some sane economic voices from my hon. Friends the Members for North-West Hampshire (Sir D. Mitchell), for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman), for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait), for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant), for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) and for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen), all of whom made a positive contribution to the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire rightly drew the attention of the House to the effects of the reductions in taxation achieved, not only by 1p off the standard rate of income tax, but by some substantial changes in tax allowances. He asked me how much a married man may earn before he pays any tax. I will tell him. The answer is £5,108 per year--£98.23 per week.
I hope that that will help my hon. Friend in the task that he will be undertaking--to communicate to his constituents the fact that the Budget went far beyond a straightforward 1p off the standard rate of tax. It had the benefit of extending the 20p band to a quarter of all taxpayers. It took more than 200,000 people out of tax altogether. It answered in clear and unequivocal terms the question, what were we doing for work incentives-- unlike the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, who refuses to answer similar basic questions.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire drew our attention to the subject of small businesses, and I was glad that he did so. He mentioned the penny off the small companies rate of corporation tax. He will note also that national insurance charges have decreased, not only for smaller companies, but for larger employers. There will also be deregulation packages in relation to annual VAT accounting, and special help for the transitional arrangements with business rates. The Government take the role of small businesses seriously and have acted in their interests, as witnessed by their strong endorsement of my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget.
My hon. Friend mentioned deregulation. He knows that the Inland Revenue will shortly publish a report on that subject, arising from section 160 of the Finance Act 1995.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington, who has been a doughty campaigner on the subject of employee share ownership, paid tribute to some important changes that we are making regarding such ownership, because that is a significant way in which working people can share, not only in the success of the companies that they work for, but in the success of the growth of the economy that will surely result from my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget.
As my hon. Friend knows, we introduced in the Budget improvements to the save-as-you-earn option scheme, coupling it for the first time with the work of employee share-owning trusts. I am glad that my hon. Friend was keen in his advocacy of that change. We have opened it up to people who can save as little as £5 a week, who can invest in the success of the companies that they work for. Improvements have also been made to the profit-sharing scheme. Both those schemes incorporate a total of about 2 million people.
We listened carefully to what industry and employees told us. Sometimes little people working for multiple supermarkets wanted a share in their company. Their employees wanted to give them that. We introduced in the Budget the new company share option plan, which has been widely welcomed. I am delighted about that.
My hon. Friend asked why it was not possible to put the national insurance cut into effect earlier than April 1997. It is linked with the timing of the landfill tax, which does not start until October 1996, and it was fair to employers to make the changes later, in April 1997.
A moment of rare history occurred when my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West made a sage, balanced and well-judged contribution to the debate. It was such that he admitted that he was able to support my right hon. and learned Friend unequivocally. It will bring joy to the Chancellor's heart to hear that, and I am sure that a framed copy of Hansard will hang on his wall for many a long day to come.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, in a wide-ranging and helpful contribution, reminded the House that the Budget went beyond the issue of health, to which I shall return later, and would benefit education especially. She rightly drew our attention to the Chancellor's challenge in his speech, in which he threw out the words to remind every local authority in the land that they must pass on to the schools of the country the full benefit of the £778 million of additional revenue passed through the revenue support grant. My hon. Friend did the House a service in reminding us of that perspective.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham reminded us that it was a good Budget for both pensioners and savers. The age allowance changes that we have made in tax help those with modest incomes or occupational pensions, and those savers within the 20p band will enjoy more of what they can earn through their savings. Pensioners are the major beneficiaries of that change. My hon. Friend also drew our attention to the benefits to communities throughout this land of the additional expenditure available for close circuit television and the police. That will find an echo in every town, city and village throughout the country.
My hon. Friend asked a question about one other welcome aspect of the Budget: my right hon. and learned Friend's repudiation of the non-story in the newspapers about redundancy. My right hon. and learned Friend confirmed that there would be no tax on the £30,000 exemption and that there was no intention to restrict that exemption's scope. The precise definition of the payments covered by the exemption was causing difficulties in practice, and discussions are presently continuing between the Revenue and interested parties, particularly the Law Society, to clarify the details.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye made a useful contribution to our debate. I am delighted with her comments on the way local business has responded to the Budget, and her support for the private finance initiative.
Those were some of the saner comments during the debate. I shall now turn to the comments of those hon. Members who perhaps require some education on the benefits of my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget.
"Let me know what it is and I'll comment on it."
Today's debate has left us no wiser as to what is Labour economic policy. It is therefore extremely difficult to comment on it in detail. I accept, however, that we were offered a brief glimpse of it, and I shall say something about that later.
"no commitments on levels of tax and spending beyond the existing Budget."
The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East is present. He has had the figures. He knows what the Budget says, and he has read the Red Book. Will he now come clean and tell us what his targets are for inflation, growth and spending? The facts are there in the Red Book. We are not setting him the difficult question about what he would do if, God forbid, the Opposition ever became the Government. We will set the Opposition the easy question. We will supply the answers. Silence comes from the Labour Benches. We know that they are well and truly rumbled.
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