Clause 1 - Introductory
Tax Credits Bill
10:45 am
Ms Dawn Primarolo (Paymaster General, HM Treasury; Bristol South, Labour)
This is a very specific amendment, which I shall treat as a probing amendment. I can answer the hon. Gentleman's question, but it is not necessary for the Bill to be amended, because the provision exists anyway. The amendment is not appropriate, and if the hon. Member for Northavon were to press it to a Division, I would have to ask the Committee to oppose it.
Such provisions do not need to be included in a Bill. The European regulation to which the hon. Member for Northavon refers is, rightly, directly applicable, and it is not necessary to transpose the provisions in that regulation into domestic law. It would be much better, and it would make for a better Bill, if the hon. Member for Northavon were to withdraw his amendment.
The hon. Member for Northavon asks for clarification about how European social security law within the regulation will treat the new tax credits. A small caveat is necessary. The field is complex and evolving, and the precise treatment of the tax credits under European law may depend on some of the detailed aspects in the final design, which we are considering carefully. Our provisional view is that, as the hon. Member for Northavon said, family credit, and working families tax credit, was, like child benefit, considered to be a family benefit under the regulations. We therefore believe that the child tax credit will fall within the family benefit.
We believe that the working tax credit will fall outside the scope of the main co-ordinating instrument to which the hon. Member for Northavon referred in European law. As we conclude the Bill, we shall be able to take a view on that. However, that is our provisional view, and that will happen automatically. That implies treatments under European law, which I shall not discuss now, as later amendments relate to those issues.
I hope that my explanation has been clear and that the hon. Member for Northavon will agree that the amendment is unnecessary. It is clear and on the record which credits, under the regulations to which he refers, will be designated a family benefit and why the working tax credit would not.