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Finance Bill

Whenever I see the hon. Gentleman bouncing up and down, I think of the old adage that empty vessels make the most noise. However, he occasionally makes interesting contributions, as his speech today showed. If he will allow me to make a few more comments, I will take interventions. The changes to income tax in the Bill must be seen as part of a package that puts additional resources into those tax credits. The child element of the child tax credit has been increased, as I said. Those changes mean that 3 million of Britain's 7 million families with children will now have their income tax liability effectively wiped out by the tax credits and child benefit that they receive. Together with the changes in the National Insurance Contributions Bill, which is before another place, the above-inflation increases in personal allowances for pensioners and the reduction in the basic rate of income to 20 per cent., those changes were designed to interact as a package. As my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) and for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown) said, the overall impact of those changes is to provide more support for families and pensioners. Some 80 per cent. of families with children will be better off, 200,000 children will be lifted above the poverty line and 600,000 pensioners will be taken out of paying income tax, meaning that 59 per cent. of pensioners aged 65 and over will get their incomes free of tax.