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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I am sorry—a slight omission—but certainly no mention was made of the fact that the consultation was carried out in the context of an income tax provision, which did not have nearly the same significance as section 89. Furthermore, again, I quote the QC to whom I referred earlier:"““Until now the tax reliefs for disabled persons have been almost entirely irrelevant because the value and importance of the reliefs have been trivial. The reliefs have not been significantly used because they are more trouble than they are worth. Thus it does not matter that the definition of disabled has been drawn extremely narrowly.””" Even more importantly, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 had not been finalised when the consultation was carried out, so it would have been difficult for the organisations to refer to such matters directly. Although a significant number of charitable organisations were involved in the consultation, only six responded on that issue during the two consultation exercises that were carried out. A number of influential organisations protested that the definition was too narrow. On this point, the Treasury summary of the responses states:"““There was concern that the definition of vulnerable set out in the discussion papers—which covered disabled people and orphaned children—was too narrow.””" In Committee, the Paymaster General referred to the Disability Alliance as supporting the current section 89 definition. I would therefore like to quote from its response on the consultation, which it publishes on its website. Under the heading ““Defining categories of disabled people””, it states:"““The proposals to restrict eligibility to those mentioned in paragraph 2 above appears to be far too restrictive and would exclude many disabled people who are currently defined under social security legislation. In this regard it would not appear to fit in with the government’s proposal of fairness.””" I was only too happy to take up the Minister’s invitation to refer to the consultation.