Clause 11 - Maximum rate
Tax Credits Bill
4:45 pm
Ms Dawn Primarolo (Paymaster General, HM Treasury; Bristol South, Labour)
I shall try once more, but my back hurts, because I have had to keep rising to my feet.
The working tax credit needs to cover a single person who has no children and no disability; they will get the basic credit. The other area that needs to be covered is the question of who will get the extras—whatever they are. Lone parents, couples and individuals with disabilities will get extra, in recognition of their extra costs. For instance, a lone parent does not get a reduction on their rent, gas or electricity; there are certain costs that can be shared between people.
If a lone parent household were extended so that there were two parents—two adults in the household—the lone parent would lose the lone parent element but gain the couple element. As I suggested to the Committee, the variation is so tiny that it would not act as an incentive. If an individual were deciding whether to live with another person, they would not be greatly influenced by the marginal difference between lone and couple elements.
There are lone parent, couple and disability premiums that recognise extra costs. A person could not get them all: they could be a lone parent, or a couple, and have the disability premium, but they could not have lone parent, couple and disability premiums.
I am confident that the balance will not suddenly encourage families all over the country to decide that they should be lone parents, and if they thought about making that choice the position should certainly be explained. People would have to manipulate their households in a spectacular fashion to get more out of the system, and that will be revealed under later clauses on enforcement and the correctness of details and applications.
I hope that that clarifies the matter and that the hon. Gentleman feels slightly more at ease with the proposal. I understand his point: a dramatic change in household structure needs to be notified, because a second income might dramatically affect the household income and trigger a reassessment in the current year. There are several ways through the problem. The household may end up with more because of the way in which the system works, and because of the inter-relation of child credit and working tax credit.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.