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Finance Bill

I am very clear that if we start delaying the arrangements for tax and other payments, the consequences could well be problematic. If I asked my constituents whether they wanted the country run properly or not, I suspect that they would side with what I am doing. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), have said that this is all about poverty. For some, that is absolutely true—it is about the poorest in our society—but the people who have lobbied me most on this issue, particularly the women in the age category I mentioned, suggest that it is not just about the depth of poverty. A number of those women were not in the poorest groups; they were on modest and reasonable incomes. I am thinking in particular of a woman whose door I knocked on some time ago. What grieved her most was that although she could afford to pay tax, she had worked really hard all her life and budgeted for a certain income in her retirement, yet suddenly saw it being hit. She will be hit because although the tax threshold has been raised, she has not been fully compensated.