Clause 9 - Supplementary contribution by
Child Trust Funds Bill
4:45 pm
Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)
I am not entirely convinced by the Minister's arguments. As I said, I am happy to be convinced by hard evidence. I suspect that the income of a family tends to be less in the year in which a child is born, because they often forgo the mother's full income, at least for part of the year. However, the Minister assures me that that is not the case. It would be interesting to see some hard evidence. If my position, based entirely on anecdotal experience, is right and people's income actually is lower in the year in which the child is born, the cohort of children born between 1 September 2002 and April 2003 will lose out under the device set up by the Government.
However, the Minister says that she errs on the side of generosity; that would be a first for the Treasury. I suppose that we will only have the proof of the pudding in the eating. Since I do not have hard evidence to deploy to knock down her arguments, but have only a hunch or ''intuition''—to use Mr. Kelly's phrase—I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.