Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)

I shall deal first with amendment No. 125, which is the less important of the two and would omit subsection (5)(b). The clause establishes the eligibility for the supplementary contribution, which will be linked to receipt of child tax credit. That is spelt out in subsection (5)(a) which states that the condition is

''that a person was, or persons were, entitled to child tax credit in respect of the child for the child benefit commencement date''.

I do not understand the point of the second condition and amendment No. 125 is a probing amendment. The second condition seems to be that the household does not exceed the income threshold for child tax credit, or that a member of the household was receiving either income support or income-based jobseeker's allowance. Perhaps the Minister could explain why that is necessary; perhaps I am missing something obvious. If the household income does not exceed the income threshold for child tax credit, surely the household is in receipt of that benefit, thus satisfying the condition in subsection 5(a).

Amendment No. 179 is more fundamental. Although I do not propose to press it to a vote, I tabled it in an attempt to debate means-testing and the means-tested supplementary contribution. My amendment says that the supplementary contribution could be zero. The Minister boasts that one of the

great virtues of child trust funds is that this is both a universal and progressive policy. She calls it progressive universalism, which will definitely go in my lexicon of new Labour phrases.

See this speech in context