Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Treasury – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 10 May 2001.
Malcolm Chisholm
Labour, Edinburgh North and Leith
11:30,
10 May 2001
I served on several Finance Bills during the previous Parliament, in which the Conservatives cut and cut the married couples allowance without any compensating action for families. Is it not the case that the Majority of people welcome the Government's focus on child poverty, and that they welcome not only the children's tax credit but the record increase in child benefit, the working families tax credit and child care tax credits, which have benefited families more than twice over, as my hon. Friend has said?
A proposal for new legislation that is debated by Parliament.
The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
