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(Clauses 1, 4, 8, 189 and 209, Schedules 1, 23 and 33, and new Clauses and new Schedules relating to value added tax)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As I have outlined, the problems could be similar if both partners had an income in excess of £50,000. The charge would then apply to the partner with the higher income, and to avoid it being applied twice the partners would presumably have to share information with each other on their incomes and co-ordinate responses in their respective self-assessment forms or HMRC would have to implement some mechanism to link together individuals' tax records to decide which partner was liable for the charge. As was mentioned earlier, there would potentially be further difficulties if somebody who did not expect to come within the income bracket for the child benefit charge discovered at the end of the tax year that their income exceeded the limit. It can be quite common for self-employed people to find on preparing their accounts that their income was greater than expected. HMRC would then apply the charge retrospectively, but in order to do so it would need full details of the person's cohabitation history for the year end. I gently tell the Minister that the potential for disputes is fairly obvious. The living together as husband and wife test is an established feature of the social security system, but we all know from the people who come to our constituency surgeries the problems that emerge. Its extension to the tax system raises a huge range of other issues. Whether a partnership exists will have to be determined on an ongoing basis throughout the year, rather than just at a single point of time, and individuals might not be aware of the need to report changes in their personal circumstances to the tax authorities. We have already heard that there is a danger that the plan will encourage people to deny the status of their relationship to avoid the child benefit change, which will effectively introduce a couple penalty. That could be a disincentive for a lone parent considering moving in with a higher income person and could create an incentive for couples to split up when one partner has a high income. For people with several children, partnering decisions could have significant financial implications.