Clause 38 - Persons subject to immigration control
Tax Credits Bill
4:15 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
I shall be brief. I should like my hon. Friend the Paymaster General to clarify her thinking on the implications of the new tax credits for people with immigration status. As an inner-city Member of
Parliament, I know that levels of poverty among black and ethnic minority families are significantly greater than among white families; there are an estimated three times as many Pakistani and Bangladeshi families in households of below-average income as white families. That is an important context for the discussion.
The amendment seeks to make immigration status irrelevant for entitlement to working tax credit and child tax credit, and a return to the 1996 status when child benefit was not dependent on the immigration status of the claimant. Those people who are entitled to work in this country, have a tax allowance and are protected by other Government legislation such as the minimum wage—I stress that I am not talking about people whose immigration status prevents them from taking employment in this country—should be able to draw upon the working tax credit and child tax credit. In some cases, such people will already be taxpayers and will have been making contributions through national insurance for many years before they fall into low-income status because of a change in situation or employment. It is by no means true that they will not have earned their entitlement. We are not talking about visitors to the country who will be prevented from drawing on benefits by the habitual residence test.
Perhaps, more importantly, a significant proportion of people who are prevented from drawing on working families tax credit and child benefit are families that are bringing up children who will remain in this country. A particularly important group are foreign spouses and their children, who come to join someone with settled status or British citizenship. They are not allowed to claim children's benefits and could live, for a significant period, on a single person's benefit. Such people, and particularly foreign spouses, will receive a decision on indefinite leave to remain possibly after a year or two, and during that time their children will have lived in extreme poverty. We have as much of an investment to make in those children as in any others. Our commitment to tackle child poverty in all its manifestations should apply to the children of people who do not yet have a settled immigration status that entitles them to draw on such benefits. They deserve the right to be lifted out of poverty as much as anyone else.