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Finance Bill

As the Chief Secretary knows, it was the Treasury Committee that recognised that the 10p tax rate withdrawal would cause problems for many people; indeed, the Treasury official who appeared before the Committee last year mentioned that 5.3 million was the ball-park figure. In our report, we have asked the Treasury to look at that, but I will go one step further today and give the Chief Secretary and the Chancellor time to think about this before the end of the Second Reading debate tonight: I will ask my Committee to explore with the Chancellor and his officials who will lose out as a result of this 10p tax rate withdrawal and to look at any measures that could be implemented sooner rather than later to compensate them. I will ask my Committee members to look at that so that we can report back before June or July in order to inform the Treasury, in the hope that we can go a step further towards ensuring that we do not penalise poor people unnecessarily.