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Finance Bill

I agree. The changes being made to housing benefit will not do anything to help families stay together. My hon. Friend is a London Member, so he will know that families will be forced to move out of central London because of the Government's changes to housing benefit rules. That is one of the inconsistencies of this Government. On the one hand they say that a tax break of £150, or £20 a week, will help to keep the social unit together, and on the other they—the same Minister, I hasten to add—pursue policies on housing benefit and other benefit changes that will not help at all to keep families together but will lead to the root cause of most of these issues: the poverty that affects such individuals. I turn to some of the problems with the Bill as framed, and to what we have before us. New clause 5 is not the measure in the Conservative party's most recent election manifesto. This proposed change includes married couples but excludes civil partners, who would not be covered by the new clause. When there was an outcry and complaints about what had been proposed at the election, the Prime Minister included civil partners at the last minute. People would have opt into this system and elect to transfer their part of an allowance. That would be very unfair to many people who do not understand tax codes. I have just got my annual tax return and I keep putting it to one side, as most people do, until the deadline arrives. Introducing a system whereby people have to elect to transfer a certain allowance may well help the more articulate middle-class people who can do that when they fill in the form, but I am not sure that some of the people on poor council housing estates in Glasgow whom the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is trying to address will have the wherewithal or knowledge to do it even if they knew that the option was available. The Government have told us that they wish to simplify the tax system, but the new clause would make it a lot more complicated. In trying to bolster marriage, it would help certain groups of people but not others. Whenever we do anything with the taxation system, we should try to make it as user-friendly as possible. If someone opted to move their allowance around, that would be quite complicated because people's incomes change throughout the year, so they might have a certain allowance available in one year but not another. The system would incur not only the £3 billion-plus cost of having it open to everyone but the cost of trying to work out how the tax office would administer it. In that respect, the new clause is not well thought out. The Government have got themselves into a bit of a logjam on this. The Prime Minister is clearly committed to this policy. His Back Benchers are now worried that it cannot be implemented because of the coalition agreement. Huge amounts of public money would be used, but would it have any effect on child poverty? No, it would not, and neither would it affect most families. Moreover, it would help people without any children, including pensioners.